Chapter Text
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into moving to London!” the purple haired woman laughed as she sat in the back of the cab with her husband. Said husband, Luke Triton, grinned at his wife of a year, Marina, and gave her a squeeze.
“Honestly, neither can I!” he admitted with a laugh, causing Marina to laugh as well, leaning against his shoulder, before looking out the window.
“It’s so different from New York,” she sighed, her American accent clear. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it.”
“I think you will,” Luke said warmly, giving her hand a loving squeeze. “After all, I’ll be with you every step of the way, to help you.” Marina looked up at Luke, and smiled warmly at that.
“I can’t wait. Especially for those mysteries you promised me,” she added. Luke could only grin at that.
The cab dropped them off at a small, lovely two story house made of green stone, trimmed in white with blue awnings. There were also large windows and a white picket fence. Bushes surrounded the house, separating it slightly from the taller building to the side, and the red brick building behind it. Marina gasped, her eyes growing wide.
“This is our new house?” she said, her whole face lighting up. Luke smiled, glancing between the address, and the paper in his hand.
“According to the note from the real estate agent. It looked amazing in the photos, but this…” he shook his head, liking it even more in person.
“Let’s go check it out!” Marina said, snagging Luke’s hand and pulling him towards the front door. Luke laughed at that.
“Marina, wait! Our bags!” he said, making the woman pause and glance back at the still waiting cab.
“Right,” she giggled, letting go of her husband and helping him unload their suitcases from the back of the car, before walking into the beautiful house.
Luke and Marina had started packing and shipping their belongings overseas to the new house last month, and the real estate agent had been kind enough to collect the packages and bring them inside, meaning most of their belongings were already at the new house, but still packed up. Luke and Marina spent their time unpacking the necessities, and moving the rest into the attic, which sat above the room Luke had decided to use for his study.
Luke carefully climbed the ladder, pushing the box ahead of him and into the attic, when he realized that the previous house owner had left a few things behind. Just three boxes in the back corner, nothing more. Driven by curiosity, Luke moved closer, placing his box against the wall near the trap door, and knelt by the closer of the three older boxes. After a moment’s hesitation, he opened the box, and blinked at its contents.
“Books?” he muttered, pulling one of them out and thumbing through it. The book looked to be on Egyptian mythology. Luke placed that one aside and flipped through a few more. “Greek mythology, Norse, Azran mythology,” Luke muttered, before blinking. “Geology? That seems out of place,” he muttered, looking back in the box, only to find a few more books about Geology, along with architecture, maths, a few older atlases, even an almanac.
At the bottom of the box, however, in the corner, was a dark purple crystal. Luke blinked at that, reaching into the box and carefully pulling it out, weighing it in his hand.
“Amethyst? No… hmm,” Luke hummed, putting a hand to his chin, holding the crystal up to the light to examine it.
“Luke! Here’s another box that needs to go up there. It looks like those old Christmas decorations Brenda gave us,” Marina called from the foot of the ladder. Luke jumped slightly, pocketing the crystal and leaning over so he could see Marina through the trap door.
“Alright, I’ll be right there,” he said with a smile, quickly putting the old books back into the box, before climbing back down the ladder.
In all of the business of moving and getting settled in to the house and their new jobs, it was a week before Luke could even think to visit Professor Layton. His archeology job saw him placed at a museum; not the London Museum, but a much smaller one, and he was eager to talk to the professor about his work.
He was also curious to see if the professor knew what the stone he found was, so he placed it in his bag as he headed out the door, kissing Marina on the cheek.
I can’t wait to see them again, Luke thought as he walked, his feet leading him towards the University he knew so well. Kat would be ten at this point, and Alfendi is already 18! Luke shook his head, remembering the red-haired-hot-headed teenage genius that the Professor had adopted not too long after Katrielle. I hope they like the gifts I bought them from America. He adjusted his grip on his book bag strap, only to realize a man in a black trench coat was trailing him. Luke tensed slightly, memories of Targent coming to mind, but he realized that whoever this man was, he was sloppier than most of those agents.
As casually as ever, Luke turned down a quieter street, one most people had no reason to walk on. A moment later, the man followed him onto the street, confirming Luke’s suspicion. Alright, then. Have it your way, Luke thought, before suddenly turning down another street, and breaking into a run. He didn’t make it too far before two more trench coat wearing men stepped out of an alleyway just in front of him. Luke dropped into a baseball slide, taking out the feet of one of the men. He was just flipping himself back to his feet with a fourth man he hadn’t noticed before stepped from the alleyway and grabbed him by the bookbag, throwing him deeper into the space between the two buildings, and away from the street, where prying eyes would notice the attack.
Luke rolled with the impact, using the momentum to quickly get back to his feet, and bought his hands up to defend his face, maneuvering so his back was to the wall, not letting anyone else sneak up on him. The first man joined his comrades, and there were three more waiting in the alleyway, bringing their total to seven. Luke frowned deeply.
“Give us yer backpack boy, and everything in yer pockets, and no one has to get hurt,” one of the men said, stepping forward. He was taller than the others, with a blond ponytail sticking out of the back of his fedora. He also had a scruffy pale beard, and a scar over his left eye. Luke scowled at him, lifting his fists more to better protect his face.
“Somehow, I don’t believe you,” he said, having dealt with these types before. Not only in the criminals he faced with the Professor, but also the ones he faced in New York, alongside Marina.
“Hah. We warned ya,” the man said, pulling a switch knife out of his coat and lunging at Luke. Luke swayed to the side, avoiding the first attack, a thrust, and ducked under the second second attack, a horizontal swipe. He then surged upward, slamming his shoulder into the man’s chest to throw him off balance, before following up with two right jabs, first to the chest, then to the face. The man staggered backwards, surprised by that, before scowling.
“Don’ jus’ stand there. Get ‘im!” the man yelled, his voice thick with the sound of a broken nose. Luke quickly looked left to right, watching as the other six men surged towards him, attempting to gauge who would reach him first. The first guy was the one on the far right, who threw a left hook at Luke. Luke ducked under the attack and surged up, delivering a devastating uppercut. He then spun on his heel to block a kick from behind, catching the man’s leg against his side and throwing the man’s weight into his neighbor. He went to turn again, to block another attack, when fire raced across his right shoulder.
Luke felt the strap of the bookbag loosen, and spun around, slamming the heel of his palm into the jaw of the man holding the knife. Luke caught a quick glimpse of red on the blade, and his stomach did a backflip. He ignored it, though, and swung the bag off his back, slamming it into the faces of two of my attackers, who stumbled back. Seeing a clear path, Luke shot over the heads of his downed attackers to make a run for it, when pain flashed across the back of his hand. Gasping, he let go of the bag as a reflex, bringing his now bleeding hand to my chest. Before he could turn, one of the men tackled him into the wall of the alleyway.
Dazed, he weakly tried to shove the man off who went through his pockets, but didn’t have the strength to fully push him off.
“Let’s just take the bag. He only has his wallet in his pockets,” the man said, swiping the cash out of the wallet before flinging it back in Luke’s face and running after his companions, just as Luke’s mind started to clear. Shaking his head, he quickly pushed himself up and ran to the end of the alleyway, only to see that all seven attackers had already vanished.
The walk home seemed longer than earlier. Rather than visiting the Professor after his attack, Luke decided to just head back to the house. He wasn’t seriously injured, thank goodness, but the cut on his hand and shoulder stung, and he was sore from where he was thrown into the alley, and slammed into the wall.
As he entered the house, thankful his keys had been in his pocket and uninteresting to his attackers, Marina poked her head out from the kitchen.
“You’re back ear—Luke!?” she gasped, alarmed at the state he was in. Luke smiled weakly at his wife as she rushed over, taking him by the elbows and leading him over to the sofa. She immediately pulled off his jacket and shirt to inspect the damage to his shoulder. “What happened?” she demanded as she inspected the damage.
“I was mugged. They got away with my bag and all my cash,” Luke explained. Marina frowned deeply at that, standing and going to grab the first aid kit. She carefully cleaned out the cut on his shoulder first, sighing in relief that it was a shallow cut.
“Did you go to the police?” she asked. Luke shook his head.
“Not yet. I was gonna call them after I got home,” he replied, leaning into her. Marina shook her head at that, taking care of the cut on his hand, too, before standing and making him tea.
Luke sighed and stood, going over to their phone and calling Scotland Yard.
After giving his statement to the inspectors, who were unable to find to find the attackers or his bag, Luke sat heavily in his study, dropping his chin into his palm, elbow resting on his desk. There was a notebook on the top with mysteries he and Marina had solved together, a few pictures, and some other small keepsakes, but he wasn’t really seeing them. His mind kept going over the attack, and everything that happened.
They were definitely after something specific that they thought he had, but what it was, he had no idea. It seemed like they thought it would be in his bag, but all that was in there were his journal, some books from the library, his gifts to Alfendi and Kat, and that purple crystal—
His thoughts grinded to a halt as his eyes fell onto a picture of himself holding Katrielle. She was still a baby, while Luke himself was fifteen. It was a few months after the ship had sunk, and he had flown to London to visit for a few weeks at the beginning of his summer vacation.
There had been a book open on Professor Layton's desk, with a pencil sketch in it, that looked exactly like…
“No way… the Relics?” Luke breathed, before realizing exactly what his attackers had been after, and just how dangerous this mystery would be. He turned to look at the door to his study, then back at the picture.
“I… I’m sorry, Marina,” he sighed, before delving into this new mystery, hoping, beyond hope, to not get anyone else involved. At least, not until the end.