literature

Number One Apprentice - Don Paolo

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“Nothing shall stand in the way of the Great Don Paolo's Number One Apprentice! Not Layton! Not Scotland Yard! N-not...!”

This great proclamation trailed off into a a spluttering cough that made Don Paolo look over from where he'd been working on his latest flying machine. He frowned at the sight of young Luke, almost hacking his lungs up in front of a mirror.

“Kid, stop trying to imitate my voice. You can't do it. And if you keep trying I'll have to take you to the hospital,” he grumbled. It didn't even do to imagine such a thing, given that he was a wanted criminal who probably wasn't free to wander into anywhere without someone recognising him. Things would definitely get messy quickly.

Recovering from his coughing and seemingly undeterred by it, Luke walked over, smiling cheerfully as he replied, “I'm sorry. It's just that I really want to be the best inventor in the world, just like you are.”

Flattery was possibly the whole reason that Don Paolo kept him around.

“Well, the fastest way to be a great inventor is to actually invent something, not just yell in front of a mirror,” Don Paolo reminded.

“Yelling is important as well,” argued Luke, having reached this conclusion from listening to Don Paolo shouting at pretty much everyone he'd ever met on a regular basis, “You've got to show that dastardly Layton who's in charge, after all.”

“Y-yes, quite,” mumbled Don Paolo.

Admittedly, he felt a little guilty that the boy had developed such a dim view of Layton because of him. Of course, as far as he was concerned, Layton really was an awful person who didn't deserve kindness from anyone. But at the same time any problems that he had with the Professor weren't any of Luke's business. Luke's business was to learn from him, although that stemmed mostly from the fact that Don Paolo had been unable to get rid of the boy since he'd decided that he wanted to be an apprentice. Why anyone might want to be educated by him was beyond Don Paolo, but it was... nice to have someone around who not only thought you were worth talking to, but also really admired you.

“I can't believe that he's fooled everyone with his act,” Luke went on, “Even my dad!”

“Yeah, well they did go to college together,” muttered Don Paolo. He vaguely remembered Clark being there some of the times when he was watching Layton steal Claire from him...

“But that doesn't mean he's not a bad person. He... couldn't help Misthallery, after all...” Luke trailed off, looking dejected.

As much as possible, Don Paolo tried not to pry into other people's personal history. However, that didn't stop him from feeling sorry for what Luke had went through. After putting all of his faith into Layton coming to save their town from that spectre, it turned out that the mystery wasn't solved in time. The Golden Garden was destroyed in a battle between some... giant sea creature (Don Paolo was a bit hazy on the details) and that glorified amateur, Descole. Apparently, a girl who was friends with Luke had been relying on something in the garden to save her from a terminal illness. And... well, in all fairness Luke probably did have a better reason not to like Layton than he did.

It seemed odd that such a cheerful person would even hold a grudge like that, but here Luke was, trying to help him work on a flying machine that was clearly going way over the boy's head in terms of construction. Unfortunately, Don Paolo already knew that his apprentice would never make a great engineer, but he was eager enough to be helpful if he was told what to do.

After a few minutes of silence, Luke said, “So what are we going to do when this is finished?”

“We're going to take it for a test fly,” replied Don Paolo, watching Luke's face light up with excitement, “I've gotten word that Layton's headed out to some nowhere village called St. Mystere, to solve some sort of inheritance dispute or something. But we'll get there first and stop him from stealing the treasure for his own.”

“That's great! Then I can make my first appearance as your apprentice!” Luke chimed.

“If you have to,” Don Paolo muttered. If he was entirely honest, he wasn't looking forward to Layton's response to finding out that he'd unintentionally kidnapped Clark's son.

“Layton won't know what hit him!” continued Luke.

Now that was something that Don Paolo definitely could look forward to him.

“Yes, we'll show him who's boss,” he chuckled, “But we'd better get back to work or he'll have come and gone before we're finished.”

“Not on my watch!” Luke proclaimed, hammering at the machine with renewed vigour. If anything, he was probably doing more harm than good to its construction by doing that, but Don Paolo admired his enthusiasm and let him get on with it.

Soon enough, Layton would pay for all the damage that he'd done to them both.
Title: Number One Apprentice
Chapter: Don Paolo
Rating: G
Genre: Normal
Series: Professor Layton
Pairing(s): None
Character(s): Don Paolo, Luke Triton
Summary: Don Paolo and his apprentice Luke work on a flying machine to help get revenge on Layton.
Notes: This chapter has Luke as the apprentice of Don Paolo, as suggested by ~guaguagirl. Set sometime before Curious Village, with spoilers for PL1 and PL4. Sorry that it's been so long since I've updated this series, I sadly haven't had a lot of time to work on it between other projects lately. Also, this chapter reads a little wonky, which I apologise for. After failing to fix it a few times I figured that I'd just upload it as is so I can move onto another apprentice AU.
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KehXKeova's avatar
This is so amazing!! :wow:

I love this!! :clap: