A/N: Hey guys! So apparently, I can't stop! I'm writing a sequel to Going It Alone called Coming of Age (already posted the first chapter) that loosely follows the Black Moon Arc and takes place about a year later. The prologue is included below to hopefully peak your interests. Hope you will join me once again!

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Prologue

It had seemed like an ordinary day. The sun had risen into a brilliant cloudless blue sky, the white-eyed birds flittered back and forth between the tree branches outside her window, and her senshi have given her a list five kilometers long of all the things she had to accomplish this week.

But then the world broke.

She never heard the bomb go off. One second everything was fine - she was giggling at some silly to do item her husband had somehow squeezed onto her list, and then she was on the floor amidst broken glass and fragmented debris, every cell in her body screaming in unimaginable agony.

"Small Lady!" she cried, only caring about the fate of the tiny child. She didn't think of her city or the world, or even her husband. She thought of her little girl, alone and lost in this sudden maelstrom – not understanding any of it.

Short shouted orders and pounding boots reverberated through the marble floor and her skull. Screams of both agony and grief drifted through the shattered window, and sirens echoed past moments later.

"Serenity! Are you okay?" one of her senshi no doubt, demanded in her ear having fallen immediately to her side. But Serenity couldn't bring anything into focus to identify her rescuer.

"Small Lady?" the queen begged, unable to consider anything else.

"She's okay. She was outside the palace when the blast struck."

Serenity thanked whatever gods could hear her for that small blessing.

"Endymion?" she asked.

"We don't know. We have yet to find him."

The queen bit back a cry at the uncertainty of that pronouncement. The sound of rapid tapping into a handheld computer revealed the senshi at her side.

"What happened Mercury?" the queen asked into the silence between them.

"I don't have time to explain. You have sustained heavy injuries. If you were truly still human, you would already be dead. I need to put you into stasis or you will not survive. We're going to do it right here on the floor."

"How long?"

"The estimates can be unreliable," the senshi in blue said evasively.

"Mercury, so help me Selene – you will tell me right now," she said tightly trying to be sensible and remain unmoving.

"Approximately seventeen hundred years," was the clipped response.

All desire to be sensible fled her form. She immediately tried to bolt upwards in objection, the resulting lancing pain ignored. But soiled-white gloves held her on her down, and Serenity was appalled at her lack of strength.

"I need you to calm down! It's going to take another five minutes to set this process up, but every time you move you're adding ten years onto your healing."

"What's ten years in the face of two millennia?" she screamed. She had spent time in stasis before, but never for more than a matter of months – once it had taken a year. Endymion had complained about it for a century afterward. If it was going to take almost two millennia her injuries were grave indeed.

"It won't be that long. I promise," Mercury whispered.

"How?"

White gloved fingers danced across the tablet for a second.

"I just need a power graft from the silver crystal to accelerate the process."

"You can't pull that off without me," the queen objected.

"I think I can now."

"How?" the golden-haired woman demanded. Each time any of the others were seriously wounded she had been able to use Mercury's process and the silver crystal to heal them almost immediately. She was the only one that had to take the long way around because she was the only one who could use the crystal.

"Mama?" the tiny high pitched voice floated from the doorway, soft, uncertain and terrified.

Her blue eyes took in the site of her daughter filthy, but uninjured and smiled in relief. She barely noticed the two senshi that flanked the child on either side.

"Small Lady," the queen greeted. "Come here child."

The small form darted forward into her arms. "I love you Small Lady. I'm so relieved to see that you are safe. I have to go to sleep for awhile. Will you be good for the senshi while I'm resting?"

The pink haired child nodded slowly.

"That's a good girl."

"Small Lady!" Mercury greeted brightly, as she urged the child back a pace. "Do you want to help me heal your mama?"

The queen's eyes then darted back to Mercury, wide with realization.

"No! You will not use her! She is just a child!"

"You are correct. She will need to come of age to use the crystal anyway."

This did nothing to calm the raging queen who once again tried to sit up. Mercury pushed her down. "Just thirty seconds left. Try to stay calm."

The queen ignored the directive. "You swore to me you couldn't do anything - that she would forever remain a child!" she shrieked.

"… As long as she lives under the protection of the Crystal Millennium you have created here, she will never age."

Serenity thrashed in place, three pairs of arms forcing her down. "No, please… don't send her away. She will have no one…"

"She will have you," Mercury's words were soft, and Serenity couldn't fight anymore as she felt the crystal growing around her form. All she could think was that her daughter was going to grow up.

And it would be without her.

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A/N:

Read the next chapter of Coming Of Age. It's linked in my profile!