The Manhunt/Chapter 3

“I cannot believe you are taking such a lighthearted jocular remark so seriously,”

“‘Lighthearted jocular remark’ is eight syllables that can be fitted into one,” Airmid had replied. “But then again, you don’t know how to joke.”

The physician had been fixated on the concept of the trip, almost non-stop talking about DNA sequencing and genetic patterns. It made Bastion feel guilty, with Airmid more invested in his legacy than he was.

So guilty, in fact, that he had been throwing himself in relentless work. Cover letters and spreadsheets and piles of neatly organised documents sorted into even neater folders was calmly. Everything predictable and organised. A sharp contrast to the turbulence of his own thoughts.

“Oh, I’m taking this seriously, alright,” Airmid had continued with their rambling. “Legacy and our predecessors built this world. The World of Ever After is founded on tradition. You know what people say: stand on the shoulders of giants, look further into the past so you can look further into the future. If we knew more about our predecessors, who they were, where they’ve been – we can be enlightened on who we are and what we are to do!”

Bastion didn’t want to tell Airmid he had blanked out for the second half of their rambling, so he nodded politely. “That is… very illuminating.”

The physician grinned a thanks.

To be fair, Bastion had nothing to do in his breaks. Debate was off-season, and he needed something other than reading depressing news articles on the lunchtimes when he wasn’t able to talk politics with Pythia. He never turned up to Dead Epics: the place was a mess and the pent-up anger of the room was highly distressing.

He swore he didn’t actually enjoy the concept of planning the trip, but with nothing to do, it was the only distraction. He hated himself for it. He hated that he was even considering the idea. He hated that he thought he had a way out of– whatever this was. Whatever Ever After and the constant threat of destiny meant to him.

It was surprisingly – almost painfully easy – to locate sources on the previous Fanfarinet’s wanderings.

Bastion heard enough anecdotes to know that right after graduation, Jacques Fanfarinet had spent the short gap between school and destiny partying. He had been living it up across France, with the intention of “going out with a bang (or several)”.

(Author damn it, some people just had no shame.)

There were no Princestagram accounts or MirrorNet records back then, of course. No one would post their shenanigans on an easily accessible server.

Diaries and letters, however, had once definitely a thing.

He rung up the staff at home, asked if his mother had been sent any letters from her brother while he was on his “gap year”, telling them that he needed them for a school project – and please, not to disturb his mother, for she was too busy to be distracted by the schoolwork he could readily handle.

Through being his uncle’s current heir, Bastion located Jacques Fanfarinet’s medical records, though they made no sense to him. He emailed a copy to Airmid, who responded excitedly about Jacques’ “AB blood type”.

Crawling through some MirrorNet databases, he found some articles featuring his uncle, downloaded them and stored him on a server. Bas only glanced over them briefly. Hearing too much about that man always made him slightly sick in the stomach.

(He took four shots of espresso in one go, managed not to throw up in the nearest bathroom, and continued hunting.)

A few days later, Bastion Fanfarinet finally contacted people whom he knew, that knew people who knew people who knew slightly shadier people. He sent them an anonymous message asking if they were able to track illegitimate children of legacies, to which they sent an affirmation back. Once Bastion gathered all the details and evidence he found, the slightly shadier people fulfilled his request (after having enlisted the help of even shadier people).

The list was beyond impressive, roughly half a dozen names, with contact details – emails, MirrorPhone number, and the addresses of both their work and home.

Bastion Fanfarinet was too afraid to ask how the information was obtained. He didn’t even know whether it was correct. Luckily, Airmid’s briefcase would solve the issue of the latter. The former... well, that was done through not posing any questions and glancing in the opposite direction to any answers coming one’s way.

He made a sizeable donation to the slightly shadier people’s charity of choice. It was the least he could do.

The cities in which the six given people were from got plotted on a map of Europe, and lines were drawn up to determine the most efficient route.

Bas emailed that plotted map to Airmid.

He felt as if he was actually beginning to enjoy this idea – of travelling and self discovery–, and shoved that thought to the back of his head.

“I made an itinerary,” Airmid said, one day in Study Ball. “I skipped Ge-orge-fairy to do so.”

They handed him a piece of paper, clearly a mess of ballpoint pen scrawling over a cheap piece of lined paper. Bastion frowned at it, biting his tongue to stop any rude unsolicited remarks.

“It’s… lovely,” he said. “Terribly disorganised, though.”

Instead of going to Kingdom Mismanagement, Bastion went to the Li-fairy to rewrite the grimm-damn thing. Instead of lined paper, he pulled up a Hexcel sheet. Dissatisfied with mere bullet points of arranged activities, he added an hourly timetable. Then, he colour-coded it.

For a grand moment, he felt productive and organised.

That feeling soon dissipated when Bastion Fanfarinet realised he had forgotten to eat and needed to throw up.

“Bastion! My associate! Fellow person!” Airmid nearly crashed into him the next time the two shared a Study Ball. “How’s the planning going for our trip? Are you ready to potentially pull it off?"

“Oh, I thought this was purely theoretical,” Bastion said, as if he hadn’t been obsessing over the concept for weeks. “As if we could pull this off. Wouldn’t that be a thought?”

It was a thought, alright. One that dug at the back of your mind and disrupted any other ponderings. The thought was begging to him, desperate to come to fruition. Dare he say it, there was a part of him who wanted change.

No. He was 16, for D’Aulnoy’s sake. Not an ideal time to get a mid-life crisis.

(Though, with his neatly plotted and arranged five-year-plan, it would be more of a three-quarter-life crisis.)

“All the world’s great ideas started out as thoughts."

"I would not cite the trip as one of the world's great ideas."

"Perhaps not,” Airmid shrugged. "But it might be one of the few great things you'll ever do."

"Is that sass? Or a threat?"

"Bas, it is merely a simple statement!"

He blinked. “And may I say, all of the world's most terrible ideas also started out as thoughts.”

Still, Airmid Valerian was right. Their logic was a mess, and the banter exchanged with them made no sense. But there was something oddly compelling about the idea. It tugged at Bastion, drew him in.

The next words from his mouth frightened him. "Let's skip next week, and the week after. If we keep it waiting any longer, I'll change my mind."

To leave was surreal.

Ridiculously, utterly surreal.

There was a constant ache in Bastion’s stomach at the mere thought of this trip. Of course, that ache may have been due to Bastion skipping breakfast again to finish a report, but that suspicion was swiftly quelled when, after a quick bakery stop, the feeling remained.

Being so impulsive was terrifying. He had never once thought about jumping into the unknown without the safety net of destiny for buffering.

Instead, Bastion tried to avoid thinking about it – the risk, the impropriety. Such hastiness was not a trait of Bastion Fanfarinet.

He let out a sigh.

How in Ever After did he talk himself into this?

Airmid Valerian was at the lower steps of the main school building, suitcase already by their side. The physician was distracted on their phone, and didn’t look up until Bastion had called their name at least three times. Held by the hand without the phone, was the briefcase.

A funny thing it was, that briefcase. Airmid had scarcely let it out of their sight.

(“There’s something extraordinary about how far we’ve come,” they had said. “To think less than a century ago, people thought genes were inherited on proteins, and now we can sequence DNA in such a portable means! We can determine a person’s heritage and lineage through a box we can carry!”)

“Well,” Bas said. “Lead the way?"

And so, the two walked through BookEnd to the bus stop resting at the outskirts.

A lone bus tended to park there. Its pink exterior was lined with faux-gold edges; its surface a faded coral. For a brief moment, the bus and the scenery around it seemed far too bright, too artificial. One could have wondered why everything in this world had that insincere pastel tinge.

The two glanced at each other. Bastion politely gestured for Airmid to board first: an action not merely out of decorum, but also because Airmid actually knew how to use public transport.

At 10am, the bus was starkly empty. Airmid swiped their bus card twice, and gave a quick nod and salute to the bus driver.

Having boarded the bus near the back, Bastion pulled out a small pocket diary from his inner blazer pocket. His five-year plan, he called it, for the diary only contained enough pages for five years.

“So, to confirm,” he checked, “we’re taking the bus out of the Ever After to the nearest train station, where we should find a train to our first destination.” It was a reasonable plan: Airmid had thought of it, and Bastion had edited it until it was actually feasible.

Once the damned thing finally started moving, Airmid knelt up off their seat, turning to look back at BookEnd through the rearview window. “Are you– do you think you’ll miss school while we’re absent?”

“Would you?”

The physician shook their head. Ever After High no longer served a purpose for them – they already knew what to do to secure their destiny, and they could already outmatch the medical skills present in those hallowed walls.

“I doubt I would either,” Bastion said.

A half lie. Ever After High was certain. People told you exactly how to behave, and exactly what to say. There was none of that “find yourself” fairycrap. Not until recently.

Not until Raven Queen and her author-damn erasure of destiny.

“I think,” the physician said, in that voice that wanted everyone to listen, “that if you truly gave no shits about Ever After High, you would look back at the school with a scowl and raise your middle fingers at it."

Bastion shook his head. “That’s obscene."

“Does obscenity truly matter if no one sees you doing it?”

He forced a laugh at Airmid’s remark, and told them to dream on. But when their back was turned and eyes on their phone, Bastion Fanfarinet, in the most timid fashion, attempted a rude gesture at the castle.