Chapter Text
To Professor Hershel Layton
You don’t know me, but I can safely say that I know you pretty dang well by now. You’re probably wondering how that’s possible, but you’ll have to read all the way to the end of this letter if you want to find out. Got it? Good. As for who I am… if you do as I say, you won’t need to know. Now make sure you’re paying attention, because there’s a lot riding on this and I’m not about to repeat myself.
You see, Mr Layton, I have a friend. A very good friend who’s helped me out of more than one tight spot, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’ve done the same for him every now and then (not that the ungrateful jerk ever thanks me for it). I love him a lot and the last thing I want is to lose him, but I’m worried that if someone doesn’t do something, that’s going to happen and there’s nothing I can do.
See, last I heard from him, he was headed up to Scotland. Wouldn’t tell me why, just that it was too important for him to bring me or anyone else along and “let me cause yet more trouble” whatever that means. I’ve enclosed a map marked with the village he told me he was headed to and details on how it can be reached without risking driving like this idiot did. Be warned that the bus only goes up into the mountains every five days. Safety reasons, of course. The roads get pretty icy that far north.
You’ve probably caught on by now that I want you to find this guy. I did my homework on you, Professor, and I know what you’ve been up to during the past half-decade or so. You’re one of the best investigators in Great Britain. Heck, maybe even one of the best in the world! Next to this friend of mine, of course. He’s pretty fantastic too. I’m sure that you’ll get to see that for yourself when you track him down and figure out what happened to him.
However, if you get it into your head that you don’t need to worry about this – that someone else can solve this particular mystery while you sit in your office drinking tea and listening to opera music or whatever it is posh English people do – then allow me to provide a little bit of incentive.
Does the name Misthallery ring a bell? Or perhaps Monte d’Or or Froenborg? How about Ambrosia? I know you must remember St. Mystere, Folsense and a certain cavern unofficially dubbed Future London.
I’m a thief, Mr Layton, and what I steal is information. As such, I’ve stolen information about every single one of those locations and your quite frankly intimate involvement with them. Information that I know for a fact you would prefer to remain secret. I’m sure we both know exactly what would happen, Mr Layton, if somebody were to pass this information on to the press or, even worse, leak it onto the Internet. There’s nothing social media loves more than a tasty little scandal and I have a feeling they would eat this up like hotcakes. How is little Ms Reinhold, by the way? Not having to deal with a creepy robot mother anymore, I hope.
So here’s the sitch if you were just skimming up to now: find the man I’ve enclosed details on in this envelope if you don’t want the entire world to find out what you’ve been up to and trying to keep secret, Mr Layton. You might call this blackmail, but if you haven’t noticed by now, I don’t really care about that. Even if my friend is dead, I want to know what happened to him. I don’t want to think that such an awesome person just vanished off the face of the earth.
Track him down if you don’t want your reputation trashed, okay?
Yours sincerely
The Great Thief Yatagarasu
“You know,” he muttered under his breath, “you haven’t exactly left me a great deal of choice.”
There wasn’t much left to do right now, so he cast another glance down at the card this so-called Great Thief had slipped into the envelope along with everything else:
Quite frankly, with all the other items that had been haphazardly stuffed into the cheap business envelope, it may have been more efficient for this Great Thief to invest in a wax seal. Or perhaps an ink stamp somewhere on what little space remained around the bottom of the letter.
Admittedly that was a rather old-fashioned notion.
But then again, as his headwear indicated, Hershel Layton was a rather old-fashioned person.
The envelope he still held tempted him with its contents, but there was no way of telling how much time he had left to wait on this bench. Besides which, the north wind was blowing a light drizzle across the platform, so if he checked over this little dossier one last time, he’d only get a few sentences in before the paper was soaked to the point of uselessness.
There wasn’t much else he could do besides slip it back into his coat and wait.
He folded the letter up and pressed it back into the envelope beside all the other papers that had been crammed in with it and rested it with the card on his lap as he cast his eyes around the station.
Surely he didn’t have much longer to wait before he was allowed to board the train, did he? A nearby clock informed him that it was 7:12am and… Layton pulled his ticket out of his pocket and confirmed that yes, this train was due to depart at 7:15am, and forced back a yawn as he put it away for safety.
Somewhere on another platform, muffled by distance and the sleepiness clouding his mind, one of the newer train models gave a brief blast of its horn to tell those yet to board it that they were going to be late for work. From elsewhere came the rising whirs of an engine kicking into gear and another engine, one directly behind him, blew out a long hissing puff of steam that no doubt fluttered away into the drizzle.
Layton took a deep breath, trying to kick his mind into gear, and regretted it as his nostrils were filled with the stench of burning diesel and the hundreds of cups of coffee held by commuters all over the station.
From a speaker somewhere overhead came an announcement, muffled as all train station announcements tend to be but perfectly audible to those well-versed in the language of public transport tannoy systems:
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. The 7:15 express service to Aberdeen is now boarding on platform 7. I repeat; the 7:15 express service to Aberdeen is now boarding on platform 7. Thank you.”
That was it. He couldn’t wait any longer.
He pressed himself up to his feet and straightened his hat, and turned to find the nearest door that would let him onto the-
“Professor?”
There he was.
The voice was deeper, older, but unmistakable. Layton couldn’t avoid a soft gasp of surprise as he saw the teen standing not five metres away from him, one hand resting on the handle of his suitcase and the other adjusting the flat cap that sat atop his mop of dark blond hair.
The rest of the world faded into the distance as the boy’s eyes widened in delight, and Layton couldn’t suppress the gentle smile that crept onto his face.
“Hello, Luke.”
“Professor!” Luke took that as his cue to abandon his suitcase and dive forward to wrap his old friend in a hug so tight and heavy that he almost bowled the poor man over onto the concrete. “Professor! I can’t believe it’s actually you!”
“Neither can I,” Layton chuckled. “It’s certainly been too long, hasn’t it?”
“Far too long!” cried Luke, and he pressed himself out of the hug to look his old mentor in the face. “Wow, Professor. You haven’t changed a bit!”
“I certainly can’t say the same about you.” Layton gave his apprentice an affectionate pat on the head. “Would you just look at how much you’ve grown!”
The 15-year-old giggled and shrank, embarrassed, into his shoulders.
“Cut that out!” He continued smiling as he pushed Layton’s hand away. “You say that, but I’m the shortest person in my class! One of the shortest in my whole school!”
“Are you now?” Layton tried to avoid laughing again; the world may have changed and time marched on, but Luke Triton being small for his age was forever. “You’re going to have to tell me all about this school of yours once we get on board.”
“Oh!” Luke seemed to suddenly remember where they were, and he darted back to snatch up his suitcase. “Yes!” he gasped. “Yes, of course! And you’ll have to tell me about this latest mystery you’ve been enlisted to solve!”
Layton glanced down at the envelope he still clutched, now somehow more crumpled than it had been when it had first arrived at his office.
“Well, I wouldn’t quite say I was ‘enlisted’ to solve a mystery,” he said, and decided against trying to fit that card back into the mess of tightly packed papers. “Quite frankly, it’s more accurate to say this is a situation I was blackmailed into.”
“Blackmailed?!” Luke almost dropped his suitcase again in shock. “Who on earth would think they could get away with blackmailing Professor Layton?!”
Layton slipped the card into his coat’s pocket for safekeeping.
“It’ll be easier to explain once we’re on board,” he decided. “Come along then, Luke. We don’t want to be left behind, do we?”
“Right you are, Professor!”
Enthusiastic as he ever had been, Luke seized the handle of Layton’s suitcase and towed it onto the train, and Layton hurried after him to make sure he didn’t break his back trying to haul it over the gap and onto the carriage.
“Right, let’s go down the list one last time just to be sure.”
“Okay, Daddy!”
“Winter clothes?”
“Check!”
“Mr Hat polish?”
“Check!”
“Spare cards, wand and handkerchiefs?”
“Check, check and check!”
“Toothbrush?”
No reply.
Phoenix Wright halted in his tracks and looked down at the little girl rummaging through her bag.
“Toothbrush?” he repeated as pointedly as he could.
His young daughter paused in her rifling and lowered her bag, looking up at him from under her hat with the biggest and saddest blue eyes she could possibly manage.
“Daddy,” she whined, “I think I left my toothbrush back in our last motel.”
Phoenix forced down a groan that tried to fight its way out of his throat.
“You can’t find it anywhere?” he asked. “You’re sure you aren’t just saying that to get out of having to brush your teeth?”
“No, I’m not!” Trucy insisted. “I can’t find it anywhere! I-I had it this morning before we left, but we were in a hurry to get here in time for the train and…”
She hugged her luggage to her chest.
“…and I guess I just forgot it in the bathroom,” she said. “I didn’t do it on purpose, I swear!”
“Hey, hey!” Phoenix kneeled down and checked that she wasn’t crying. “I’m not angry, I promise! You can use my spare, okay?”
Trucy wiped her eyes with a sniff.
“You have a spare?” she asked.
Phoenix dragged his own suitcase closer and rummaged through its contents until he found what he was after: a cheap toothbrush, still in its thin plastic packaging, that he’d bought from the convenience store the day before they’d departed for their grand tour of the United Kingdom.
“It was either a package of two or a package of six,” he explained, “and unless you lose this one too, we don’t need six toothbrushes, do we? So here.”
He held it out for his daughter to take.
“Make sure you don’t lose this one,” he told her, “or else you’ll end up rubbing toothpaste on your teeth with your finger and nobody wants to do that.”
To his relief, Trucy giggled and accepted the unused toothbrush.
“Thank you, Daddy,” she said. “I’ll make sure I keep an eye on this one.”
“Promise?”
“Promise!”
Relieved that the crisis had been tearlessly averted, Phoenix straightened up and turned back to his list.
“Oh! Dad!”
“Hmm?” He looked back down at his still-rummaging daughter.
“I made something for you!” she told him. “Something for our vacation! I totally forgot about it until now, but I just found it again!”
“You made something for me?” Phoenix leaned down, trying to see inside her bag. “What did you make?”
Trucy looked back up at him, the sorrow in her eyes now replaced with cunning.
“How about I show you rather than telling you?” she asked. “Close your eyes.”
“Huh?”
“Just do it! Or else it won’t be a surprise!”
“Okay…”
“But stay leaning down!”
“Okay, okay!” Phoenix closed his eyes and kneeled down so that he wasn’t sticking his butt out at everybody on the platform. “Go ahead, little magical girl. What did you make me?”
Whatever it was, he couldn’t tell by sound. The hissing steam and chatter of other passengers, commuters and conductors was drowning out any hints he might have gathered and he definitely wouldn’t be able to smell anything with all this steam and fumes filling his nose-
“Alaka-ZAM!”
“GYAH!” The force of something being yanked onto his head almost sent Phoenix toppling to the ground and, with his eyes still closed, he picked up the sound of Trucy laughing at his plight.
“Sorry!” she cried. “I think I did that harder than I meant to!”
“It’s fine, it’s fine…” Phoenix straightened up and pulled whatever-it-was up off his face, and he turned to view himself in the train’s window to see just what had been wrapped around his head.
It was, he quickly realised, a hat. It had been meticulously crocheted from vivid blue wool so soft that touching it left his fingers dry and smooth and, when he turned his head to one side to get a better look, he noticed the word “Papa” spelled out in massive lettering, stitched into the knitting in a deep and rich shade of pink.
He looked down at the little girl who’d shoved it onto his head. She was rocking back and forth on her heels, hands crossed in front of her as she awaited his verdict.
“You made this?” he asked to confirm. “This looks like it came from some high-end clothing store!”
“Nope!” Trucy piped up proudly. “I made it all myself! I’ve been working on it in all the time I get between school and my shows. Do you like it?”
Phoenix ran his hand over the hat, again admiring how soft the wool was, his fingers tracing over the knots and weaving his lovely little girl had put together to keep him warm.
What was a person usually supposed to say in response to such a lovely gift?
“You…” he said slowly. “…I hope you didn’t sacrifice your homework for this.”
“Oh, come on, Daddy!” Trucy whined. “I always make sure to get my homework done! I just wanted to do this for you too! It didn’t feel fair that I have a hat and you don’t, so I figured I could make you one and, well…”
She looked up at him with the best puppy-dog eyes she could manage.
“Do you like it?” she asked again.
Phoenix checked himself again in the “mirror”.
Sure, the colour was very bright, but he’d be kidding himself if he tried to say he’d ever been in a position to criticise something for standing out.
In that respect, this hat was goddamn perfect.
He folded up the brim and tucked a few straggling locks of hair underneath, since he may as well make some kind of effort to look presentable.
“Sweetheart,” he said, “I love it.”
Trucy hugged her luggage with a gasp of delight.
“You did a fantastic job, Trucy,” said Phoenix, and he lifted her hat aside to ruffle her hair. “I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect piece of headwear.”
“Daddy, it’s just a hat!” Trucy pushed his hand away and straightened her own headwear, though it would have taken a disaster to shift the smile from her face.
“It’s a hat you made yourself,” Phoenix pointed out. “And it’s the softest thing I’ve ever gotten to wear on my head on top of just being generally awesome. So don’t blame me if I never take it off again.”
He kneeled down again as the little girl giggled and lifted up her hat so that he could look at her properly.
“I love it, sweetie,” he told her again. “Thank you.”
He could have sworn that he physically felt his heart grow warmer as he watched Trucy smile. This little girl could light up a room on wholesomeness alone if she tried, magic tricks be damned.
The stupor was only broken by the blowing of a nearby whistle and a shout of “All aboard!” that slammed into Phoenix like a bolt of lightning.
“Okay, let’s go!” He snatched up his suitcase as he straightened to his feet. “We got up THIS early for the train, there’s no way we’re going to miss it!”
“You got it, Daddy!” Trucy obediently and happily leapt across the threshold and onto the train, her father hot on her heels and determined not to be separated from his little girl.
As they made their way down the carriage’s corridor, searching for an empty compartment where they could sit and relax and practise a few tricks while the wintry English countryside rolled by, the train’s doors slid slowly into place and the engine purred into life.
With a steady rising whirr and a brief blast of its horn, the 7:15 to Aberdeen departed from platform 7 and soon left the mismatched architecture of the city of London behind.
