Roasting deep like fries and Fridays

[[[PLvsAA and MM spoilers all the way]]]

We flip around the ill fated cave incident people, we have Randy and Hersh discover the bell that friggin shuts you off. Time isn't real anyways so Hershel already has custody of Flora, and Kat gets there way earlier as well, whom Randall takes under his wing instead. The girls ring thr bell, the whole biggest baddest witch incident occurs, Kat takes the blame, but instead of fairytales Randy and Kat obsessed over detective novels, so the fantasy that later grows into a whole lamp city takes shape of a detective game that strictly follows the Knox rules, with baby Kat as a detective. And since one of the rules is that the detective must not be the killer, that's how they keep the whole guilt part of it repressed. Randy himself doesn't give himself any outward role in her stories, but moonlights as the Masked Gentleman, her arch nemesis, criminal mastermind who always leaves notes warning where he strikes next, functioning the same way the Storyteller's writing would have, conditioning everyone to view the narrative the same way. He often stages his events as if they were magic, and Kat spends most of her time debunking it since that's also part of the Knox commandments. It also gives her the tools to later unravel the whole fake city mystery, which Randall didn't accoumt for. Kat doesn't figure his identity out before they split, but she does still leave because the closer she got to figuring it out, the more Randall had to work on his schemes and the more distant he became.

Flora is a police inspector(or maybe straight up a prosecutor since by ace attorney rules it's basically both sides doing all the detective work on their own), taking part in organizing the cops and robbers charade like Darklaw did, always at odds with Kat but it's only to serve the narrative, until she begins to rebell and tries to actually accuse Kat of causing the fire.

Layton is still a uni professor and he's basically Kat's guy in the chair, always inexplicably educated on every topic relevant to the current case, even if it has nothing to do with archeology. ... although it almost always has to do with archeology cause Randall and Hershel come up with the crimes and you write what you know. And also since their city is based on Monte D'or it has a convenient big museum for any heist you want.

And that's about it on the Layton side of things except I don't know if the remains of stansbury gang should be part of the dead wife backstory or if they play their usual rich hotel owner folk roles within the Monte D'or fantasy

F to Hershel though we do have to kill him off for the story to kick into gear

Now to the inverse, Arthur and Newton (Stpryteller and Alchemist, I forgot their real names and had to look them up tbh) do the whole akbadain drop, but we'll have to swap the azran out for smth more medieval for the whole thing to male sense, maybe swap the mask for the grand grinoire. Arthur loses his memory, Newton basically speed runs the Hershel experience and in addition to his own teenage daughter adopts Espella. He unintentionally plants the idea of finding her father through attracting his attention, and both Eve and Espella become obsessed with the idea. Labyrinthia is built as a huge historical reconstruction, half attraction half actual excavation site. Basically one big Renaissance fair 24/7/365. Newton is not on board with the idea, and doesn't play along and that puts a dent in his relationship with his own daughters since they see it as him not being willing to but it all on the line for his best friend. He puts distance between them by moving to London, and basically laytoning it up there, before he gets a letter from Eve seeking his help

Arthur comes back, real grimoire w him, takes on the role of a prophet or smth, actually convinces ppl to start irl witchhunting because he believes he's been set up by Eve who somehow took possession of the treasure that he found, unaware Espella was behind the idea, she was just too young to make full use of the wealth at the time the whole ordeal started. Arthur comes back and figures the situation out, also reconnecting w his daughters, everyone lives yey yippee