There were two addresses for the Phoenicias: One was owned by a hedgehog named Hyperion and the other by an elderly hedgehog named Minerva. Hyperion was Selene's father, so Silver wrote down the first address and began to make his way into a very upper-class neighborhood, with gated fences and long winding driveways. The address was of a lot where a chateau stood, and the plate on the fence read PHOENICIA on it. He was at the right place.

He pressed the button on the gate's lock to ask to come in. He waited anxiously before a woman answered.

"Hello?"

"Hi, um..." What was he supposed to say? He couldn't very well show up if they- but surely they did know about the- "I'm looking for a Mr. Hyperion Phoenicia."

"He's not home at the moment... but would you like to come in?"

"Yes, please... I'd appreciate that." The message ended and the iron gate swung open. Silver made his way up the driveway. He glanced around cautiously and took out his contacts and took off his leather jacket. He didn't want to give his grandparents a scare with the Mercury get up.

He contemplated his situation as he knocked on the door. It swung open, revealing a middle-aged dark-orange hedgehog, who smiled politely.

"What can I do for you, young man?" she asked.

"I'm, uh, looking for some information about a girl named Selene." The woman's face flashed and her eyes darkened. "Do you know anything about her?"

"Why, yes," she said softly. "Selene was my daughter..My name is Theia, Hyperion's wife. Do come in...uh..."

"Mercury," Silver answered, stepping into the mansion. It was so elegant; the staircase and the chandelier and- "You have a lovely home, Mrs. Phoenicia."

"Thank you," she said, guiding him into the living room to the left. The sofa was patterned and soft while Theia took a seat in the armchair next to an expensive-looking end table. "You wanted to know about Selene?" she said, sounding a little bothered by the thought.

"Um, yes. I'm curious about the whole story. My uncle told me about the newsflash about the accident..." Theia's face darkened and lowered. "So I was wondering what'd happened to her."

The woman took awhile to answer him, holding her hands together and fiddling with them. "Selene... Selene was a twin of our daughter Aurora, a fraternal one. She was the runt, and she looked nothing like the rest of us." Silver's eyes fell on a portrait on the mantlepiece, and the gray distinction against the shades of orange and yellow of the rest of the family.

"Selene was also...um, clinically depressed and anxious," she went on, "and we were afraid it was because she was different. So we treated her like we treated Aurora, but... it didn't work out. She had already differed so much in her personality, and when her brother went off to college... She grew even more distant from us.

"But then... After her seventeenth birthday, she started to act more...happy. I was glad to see the change in mood; we all were. She was getting better." Better... But why so suddenly?

"Then... she wanted us to meet someone..." Silver's ears perked up intently. "Someone she'd met and seen for a while. A boy." His heart skipped a beat.

"But, Hyperion thought that she'd been... uh... manipulated, by this new friend. So he immediately shot her down, and..." Mrs. Phoenicia put her hands to her mouth and clamped her eyes shut, probably recalling the night.

"Selene snapped, violently. She screamed that we never loved her because she wasn't Aurora, that we could never love her for who she was and that we didn't want her to be happy, and that she was better off dead.." A tear streaked down her cheek. "And she ran up to her room and locked herself in there.

"I was scared that I was going to find my baby dead, that she killed herself,- but... even though there were her pills scattered all over the floor of her bathroom, she was gone. Utterly gone..."

Silver felt a pang, seeming to see Vienna in Theia's place, crying over him running off after that fight at the dinner table.

"You...you never saw her again, huh?"

"Not at all. Not until..." she broke out crying and Mercury brought over a box of tissues for Mrs. Phoenicia. He let her cry it out, heart throbbing as he watched his grandmother cry over his mother. Once she had calmed down, he asked about the strange boy.

"Do you think... that your daughter ran off with that boy?" he asked quietly.

The woman nodded and wiped her eyes. "I'm-uh-I'm certain she did... because... when they autopsied my little girl...sniff-they found out something that made them believe that she'd had a baby just minutes before she died."

"Did you ever find out who the father was? Or did they ever find the baby?"

"Oh, no, Mercury... They tried so hard for us. They searched everywhere for the baby, trying to find the father... but... but they didn't find a trace of either of them.

"Oh, God, I hope he loved her," she sobbed. "I hope he showed her she could be loved, and that her life was worth living..."

Sure he did, Mercury scoffed. Silver felt the bile in his mouth again, but tried to remain calm. "So... did your daughter have any close friends?"

Mrs. Phoenicia wiped her eyes and blinked back the last of her tears. "Hunh? Oh... Um, there was a girl... her name was Haku Furosuto. Her family's from Shima,"- an island country off the coast of this continent, but then she added, "they live on the other side of town. Mr. Furosuto hasn't told me much about what Haku's been up to lately..."

Once Mercury offered his condolences and received an address for the Furosuto's place, he left the grand chateau of the Phoenicias and began to work his way back into the city. He looked up at the sky, darkening and beginning to have little white dots inside of it. Pretty sky...

Mercury spat. "Preetty sky?" What, are you still five?! *#%$&, you could at least make it sound a bit more mature than that, you stupid little %#$^%*$%.

Silver cringed, feeling the contents of his stomach being forced upwards, but he didn't vomit. Mercury... what was going on? He didn't even feel safe in his own mind anymore.

But it would be too late for a visit, he supposed, but as he headed towards the direction, he thought he saw something again.

Platinum white hair again, and fur, teetering onto metallic blue. Silver stopped for a bit, and tried to peer past the crowd's faces to see the two. He felt his heart lurch at her laughter, even though it sounded really weird to him, all slow, and why was her shape wobbling like that?

Black fur snapped him to look at the third figure, holding up a bottle. He was laughing with the girl too. But to his frustration, the group was swallowed up in the crowd.

"Whooo-hoo!" the platinum-white hedgehog hollered, leaning onto the android trying to keep both drunks balanced as he walked them home. "Woo... Oh, sorry, babe," to the android, "did I spit on you?"

"No, Haku," the Badnik informed, pulling the black hedgehog closer so his bottle wouldn't crack someone's head. "You're good. Just try not to fall, okay?"

"Oh, for #$%#*'s sake, Bolts," the other hedgehog coughed, "Lighten up! You're just drunk you can't get jealous like us, am I right? Heh-hehh..."

"Why on Mobius did you start drinking, Stripes?" Bolts grumbled to his intoxicated friend.

"I'll tell you why," the hedgehog pointed and poked at the android. "'Cuz I've been fed up with the way I get treated like #$%&# for all my hard work! Fifty dollars for that piece my #$%#. #% $%#$&*. That #$&%^$ of a son, you said it yourself, Metal. That was a hundred dollar art of work!"

"Oh God, stop him now before he gets on his novels," Haku groaned, almost swaying into a short wall.

"My novels?" the hog sputtered. "Do you see the piles of #$&% they send me? Those #%$*&s keep rejecting 'em unopened like as soon as they look at the name they think it's crap! Conspiracy government, I think... They must've told 'em about me, and they think I'm some sort of criminal..."

"You'd think they'd forget about you," Bolts buzzed.

"You know... She really novelled my enjoys... God I miss that girl..."

"Easy, Stripes," Haku slurred. Even when she was under the influence, she knew that the member of the once Quartet was a touchy subject.

"No, no... It's okay," the hedgehog wheezed. "Ugh... Is it that time of year already, Bolts n' Booze?"

"Yes indeed," Bolts confirmed as his girl bobbed her head weakly.

"I must've #%$&ed like look before I got drunk, huh?" he chuckled awkwardly, knowing that after all this time there was no way to stop the weakening pain for good.

Booze raised her bottle in the air. "To Snow White!" she toasted. Bolts and Stripes echoed her.