Author's Note:

See Extended A/N for the reason this chapter is so short (wtf, not even 2,000 words! I'm actually ashamed of myself), and why it's late, and why there are no puzzles.

Yes, spoiler, no puzzles.

This chapter contains very few words, OOC-ness, and Barton being a pervert. Because he's such a small character, and I find him adorable, so obviously, he must be hiding some form of dark, perverted-ness.

Thanks for sticking with the story. Thanks for reading. Sorry this chapter isn't much. I really am. For my full list of excuses, see the end of this chapter. If you can even call it that.

Also, I don't own Layton or whatever. We established this, but I felt the need to point it out. For some stupid reason.

Oh, and hopefully you noticed this story has a cover. Or should have a cover. Whatever. I drew that. It's sucky, but it was a piece of fanart that got me wanting to write this story, so I felt compelled to do this. I drew the picture for the first time in an old sketchbook months ago, and it featured characters yet to be introduced. I then drew it again, in better detail, on a scrap piece of paper. Last week, I drew only the picture of Arianna into my newest skecthbook, took a bad quality picture, and attempted to set it as cover art. Yay if it worked. If you can't tell, because of my lack of talent and the picture's quality, that thing that looks like a dot is Beasley.

"Ki- Kidnap?" Arianna spluttered out the words, well aware of the colour draining from her face. "Surely- You can't seriously believe-"

"Miss, the two of us have never met, and I understand that these circumstances are less than ideal," Chemly tilted his hat. "You can't honnestly believe that I would take the word of a stranger over that of my Queen?"

Arianna's stomach plummeted towards the ground. His Queen -Luke's Queen- had placed this accusation against her. She couldn't expect any one to trust her when the Queen, the bloody Queen, had her down as a criminal. Her voice thick with displeasure and sorrow, she managed to choke out, "And whom exactly am I meant to have kidnapped?"

She could feel her eyes clouding with tears, and tried to fight the urge to blink, not wanting to appear weaker than she already did. She didn't need this right now; trapped in a world of lunatics and madmen, a world with a justice system probably completely different to that of her own. She felt every inch of her body freeze as she realised this world could very possibly enfource the death penalty. It could be a world without fair trial. Arianna did not want to spend the rest of her days sat in a prison cell, wondering if her illness or her captors would kill her first.

Chelmy coughed, before saying in his rough, accented voice, a voice that made him sound as if he had grown up in the East End of London, as oppossed to in this world of nightmares Arianna now found herself in, "The, er, Queen's beloved, I believe. That right, Barton?"

Arianna had probably been too shocked and preoccupied to notice the shorter Tweedle leave his seat and plod over. He nodded, pulling a notebook from his back pocket. "Yep, the Queen's beloved," he chirped in agreement, and Arianna couldn't help but notice the drastic difference in the height of the two men, as well as the pitch and tone of their voices.

"And whom might that be?" Arianna asked. "I can assure you, I know nothing at all about your Queen, let alone whoever the hell she's in love with."

"Don't know nothin' about the Queen, eh?" repeated Chemly, nudging Barton, who then took this down. He stooped, shoving his large nose into Arianna's face. She could taste his meal on his foul-smelling breath as he spoke. "Call yourself a citizen of Wonderland, but don't know nothin' about the Queen?"

Barton shook his head. "Disgraceful," came his insufferably high addition. "Just disgraceful."

Arianna was about to open her mouth to protest that she certainly did not call herself a citizen of Wonderland, and was only there to find Luke so he could take her home, when she was halted by Chelmy's disapproving, "Betcha gonna tell me you don't know 'ho the White Rabbit is, either."

"Well, actually," Arianna began, her elegant, well brought up tones echoeing in her head, and, in her opinion, making her sound far more refined and elegant than the Tweedles, "I do know the White Rabbit. I know him rather well. At least, I did."

There was a moment of utter silence as Barton and Chelmy stared at her, the former with his jaw slack and pencil dangling loosely in his hand. Chelmy was the first of the pair to recover, and spoke with a voice laced in anger, though it was clear he was attempting to keep in neutral. "What do you mean, you did?"

"We had a falling out, you see?" Arianna was unsure why she was telling them this. It wasn't as if her relationship with Luke was any of their business. "I- I hurt him."

To her surprise, Tweedle Barton gasped, and loudly. "Is this a confession?" he asked, his pencil scratching rappidly against the paper of his notebook.

"A confession to what?" Arianna replied, confused.

"Are you confessing to the kidnap and murder of the White Rabbit, Miss?" His voice was emotionless, but when he looked up and met Arianna's gaze, the his eyes told a completely different story.

"What? No!" She was outraged, her voice high in both pitch and volume. "That's-"

"In what way did you "hurt" the White Rabbit?" Tweedle Chelmy lifted his hat, and attempted to brush his greasy hair to the side of his face, in order to better see Arianna.

"I hurt his feelings!" Arianna cried, distraught. "I didn't-"

"Is that a polite way of sayin' you lured 'im inta your bed?" Barton's watery eyes met Arianna's wide, horrified violet pair. His comment earnt him a sharp slap on the head from Chelmy.

"Why is it," the taller growled, "that whenever we have an attractive young female suspect, you always assume they're a whore?"

Barton shrugged. "I don't ever call 'em that. But you can never be too sure, you know boss? Girls these days ain't got a shred of modesty. Only decent woman in Wonderland is her majesty."

Chelmy folded his arms and began to grumble under his breath. Arianna told herself to run, while they were distracted but for some reason, she just couldn't do it. Her legs were rooted to the ground, fear and curiosity forming an anchor that held her in place. She wanted to know more about Wonderland, about it's Queen, about Luke, and she fashioned it would only make her look guiltier were she to attempt to escape. The last thing an injured, terminally ill girl lost in a world that couldn't possibly exist needed was the inhabitants of that impossible world chasing after her, trying to arrest her for a crime she didn't commit.

"Right, I've had enough," Chelmy growled. "We'll take her down the station, the Queen can send someone to identify her-"

"Wouldn't it make more sense for the Queen to identify her herself?" came Barton's contribution; a contribution that caused Chelmy's face to fill with colour.

"You interrupt your superior to suggest the Queen. Hay herself with something as trivial as this?" he yelled, his cheeks red. "What kind of imbecile-"

But Arianna didn't stick around to hear the rest of the argument. Something finally clicked. She had been set up, clearly. She didn't know by whom- someone who knew she was friends with Luke. She wanted to assume that very few people did, but then she remembered how the Cat had known everything about her, or, at least, her name.

There was only one way she was escaping this.

She pivoted on her ankle, completely forgetting if was injured, and came crashing down to meet the floor with a spectacular bang. She felt a blaze of pain, a heat source becoming uncovered around her nose... It was probably bleeding, she could feel something warm. The impact with the ground seemed to have caused the world to become distorted; her sense of sound had become less clear, and her vision was slowly starting to cloud, like she was seeing the world through a sheet of paper, a sheet with it's corners set on fire that was slowly crumpling in on itself.

And when the paper finally did roll itself into a burning ball of flame? What would she see then?

Well, that riddle hardly required a second's thought.

Nothing.

Extended A/N:

Those of you who are reading this because you follow me as an author, and I doubt there are many of you, because from what I've seen, there aren't many people on the website who seem interested in both Hetalia and Layton, and those are the only fandoms I've written for (argh, I know, dissapointment. I want to write for others, I just... haven't), will know that recently I promised to update this story on the tenth of every month, with an update for my other ongoing story the nineteenth of every month, as well as a oneshot (should that be "an oneshot"? That sounds so wrong...) every other Wednesday. You will also know that there was no oneshot, because I suck, and hadn't finished the one I planned to update. Regardless of whether you read the others, you'll know that today is not the tenth of July. Not only have I kept you waiting two days for an update, it's also a really dissapointing update, that contains nothing that you were promised.

Why?

I got sick. Saturday I was so ill I couldn't even watch anime; the noise was too loud, even on quiet, and even with my glasses the light burnt my eyes. There's a week and a bit left of school, so you'd think all the teacher's will be chill and whatever, but no, some of them are pushing harder than ever. I'm behind on Biology coursework, Music coursework, Spanish coursework, and my History teacher sets us an essay every bloody week. Add the fact that I was off all of last week on Work Experience, which was exhausting, and yeah, you have my excuse.

Every free second I had, when I wasn't like, crying about how tired I was, or drawing, I was working on this. It was hard work that made me want to scream, because I was tired and ill and miserable, but I did it. And then, on Tuesday, I found out it was all for nought when I uploaded the file to fanfiction, and found only half of the chapter was saved. It depressed me, I turned the laptop off and went out and sulked. I couldn't bring myself to re-write it, I was that pissed. I understand you'll all be pissed too, mainly because this note is longer than the story. I just hate it when people post notes as their own chapters, so you guys get the opening of a chapter and a note.

As soon as school is out, and I've updated Normality, I will re-write the rest of this chapter. I would've tonight, but I'm still miserable that it didn't save, and have to work on the chapter for the other story.

This was supposed to be an awesome chapter, like the previous chapter (which I re-read and am rather proud of. I think it might be some of my best work), in order to celebrate both the fact this would be getting regular updates and that I now have a laptop until at least September, but it isn't, and I'm sorry. Now, to end the note on a somewhat joyous note, I want to thank all of you for reading this, and let you know how special you are to me. This story's doing pretty well, and seems to be getting a nice response, so yay!

Please forgive me for the suckyness of the updating situation. At least I updated. I don't want you all to hate me, and I hope you'll stick with the story. There will be an update later on in the month, and it won't suck. I swear!

Finally, NoOneOfConsequence earns fifty picarats for sucessfully answering both riddles, as well as which book one of the riddle's are from.

Puzzle 006:

I have freedom from hate, but not from lies. I'm usually seen through clouded eyes. I come unexpected, though you may wait all your life. I can't be bought yet some people try

Love

Puzzle 007:

It cannot be seen, cannot be felt,

Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt.

It lies behind stars and under hills,

And empty holes it fills.

It comes first and follows after,

Ends life, kills laughter

Darkness, from The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

I'm going to leave you with a couple puzzles I found online now. They were going to make appearances in this chapter before it got deleted. There were a lot of puzzles in this chapter. Answer in a review. I'll gove you picarats just for taking up the challenge (and for forgiving me for this chapter, hopefully).

Puzzle 008:
This puzzle claims to be one of Einstein's, but I'm sceptical.

There are five houses in five different colours
In each house lives a person with a different nationality
These five owners drink a certain type of beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar, and keep a certain pet
No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar or drink the same drink.
Here's the question: Who owns the fish?
The Brit lives in a red house
The Swede keeps dogs as pets
The Dane drinks tea
The green house is on the left of the white house
The green house owner drinks coffee
The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds
The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill
The man living in the house right in the middle drinks milk
The Norwegian lives in the first house
The man who smokes Blend lives next door to the one who keeps cats.
The man who keeps horses lives next door to the man who smokes Dunhill
The owner who smokes Blue Master drinks beer
The German smokes Prince
The Norwegian lives next to the blue house
The man who smokes Blend has a neighbor who drinks water
With these fifteen clues the problem is (supposedly) solvable.

Puzzle 009:

He's not the nicest of men; 'e's always got this stupid 'at, an' 'e 'as a cane. Drives me mental. One time, I asked 'im to come down 'ere for questionin', an' 'e just tilted 'is 'at an' drew 'is cane, an' laughed. Can't you work out my brother's name from that, Miss Barde? God, you Alice's are as stupid as they say.

Puzzle 010:

This is an unusual paragraph. I'm curious how quickly you can find out what is so unusual about it? It looks so plain you would think nothing was wrong with it! In fact, nothing is wrong with it! It is unusual though. Study it, and think about it, but you still may not find anything odd. But if you work at it a bit, you might find out! Try to do so without any coaching!

Puzzle 011:

A couple go out for a walk, but the man forgets his umbrella. The woman offers to share hers with him, but her umbrella isn't quite big enough for both of them, and because he's taller, he takes up most of the room. However, though they don't both fit, neither of them get wet. How?

Puzzle 012:

The beginning of eternity
The end of time and space
The beginning of every end,
And the end of every place

These were all featured in the chapter, I just had them saved in my Notes page so I knew both the answer and the question for when people tried to answer them. I really liked these riddles, and am probably going to put them in the next chapter, seen as that's where they belong, but I'd really like you all to try and answer them as soon as you read them, so I don't feel bad about posting the answers in the next chapter. If you're nervous about an answer PM it to me, so no one else has to see. I'll give out twenty picarats for each guess, to make up for how much this chapter sucks.