This is a fan fic for Lilith Langtree's Comics Retcon Universe. As fan fic I have not asked permission from Lilith. There is no planned interaction between this and characters in Lillith's universe. It is I hope, a story of pain and redemption. I hope that it gives someone some entertainment. It is my first publication and written on an iPad by someone who has long forgotten their HTML. No more cavilling, story follows the jump.

I sit and curse my life yet again.   The dull burning anger licks at my soul.   Always, always the anger burning inside me is like a living flame.   So much a part of me, yet unwanted and totally despised.   Why was I so angry, so bitter? Why had I allowed this anger to poison and twist me and my life to such a miserable end?

I need to to push this anger back, to make it retreat for a while.   I know how to do this.   I know how to obtain a few moments peace.

Crippled and twisted, I lurch up from my desk, grab my cane and leave my room, knowing it will be only minutes before I return to my seat, my uncomfortable throne but I will be better for it.

I stagger along the corridor cursing the blocked arteries that had made me accept my retreat into the single shuttered room that has been my life for all these many years.

Ah, the stairs.   I would call them my nemesis but I know that is just an excuse.   Carefully I negotiate getting down them, my hip joints and knee joints screaming flames at every step.   I reach the bottom and wait for a little while as fresh cooling blood slowly seeps into my muscles.

Okay now, through the door and into the kitchen, slowly, slowly over to the 'fridge.   I wrench it open and grab the half used packet of minced beef.   

Twenty feet to the back door.   I negotiate that and struggle out the back door. A few more feet and a few more after that.   One step at a time.   What am I, an alcoholic?   Round the corner and I am at the back of the house.   I collapse onto the concrete step, stretch my legs out and look at the dried grass and gum trees running down to the creek.   Peace.

They are waiting for me.   Every day they wait for me but I do not always come.   That I regret.   Just like everything else.

The Kookaburras, seven of them, three generations.   

I lay down my cane and fumble at the packet of meat. I ball a little piece and toss it beyond my feet. They watch.   Their heads twist as I throw down several more pieces.   Then they come.

In their black, brown, grey and white beauty they swoop down, land and take the meat.   They are in no hurry to leave.   They know they are safe.   The fire of rage within me retreats.

A few more pieces are grabbed, tossed out and down their long smokey-black beaks.   One hops and flaps and lands on my ankle.   Physical contact, how wonderful, even if they do not care.

I fumble at the packet again and hold out a lump.   It walks up my leg to my thigh and cranes its neck and as I stretch forward it takes the meat from my hand and looks me in the eye.

I toss a few more pieces around me.   Another one swoops down to take some and then lands on my shoulder as if I were a convenient log.   It wipes its beak on my lank blonde hair and I feel grateful for the contact.   But there is smoke on the horizon.

I feel …better.   The rage, the fire inside is not quenched but held in abeyance.

With no more food forthcoming, the kookaburras begin to return to their nomad routines, checking for grubs and taking high roosts to look for lizards and other small prey.   Ah, well, it was good while it lasted.

I roll onto my bloated stomach and force myself upright.   Time to return to my 'throne'.   I struggle to the back door.   Somehow the pain is less important.   Up the stairs along the corridor, and with a gasp, I sink back into my so despised seat.

I am 'home'.   So, what to do now?   What can I do to while away a few more hours while I wait for an ending?   I bring up Firefox, but before I go anywhere, anywhere but here, the phone rings.

"Bushfire Alert!   Bushfire Alert! Extreme Danger. Final alert.   This is an automated message.   All people receiving this call must evacuate now.   Do not stop to pack.   Leave now.   Use only main highways and evacuate to the west.   All fire refuges are open.   Evacuate now. Extreme danger.   Message repeats …"   Oh, fuck.   That is why there was smoke on the horizon.

I should have known.   I get off my seat again, (So soon?   Unheard of!), and push myself down the corridor, onto the balcony and look out the window.   A trace of grey smoke has turned to dirt black roiling clouds.   No bushfire that; it is a firestorm.   Nothing is going to survive it.   Not the refuges, not my Kookaburras, not my house, and not me.   I am glad that I am alone.   I shudder with pity for all that will be lost but I do not regret my coming extinction.

Evacuate? Moi? Thirty kilometres of dirt road before I hit the highway and the firestorm ten minutes away at best.   I don't have a prayer.   Thank God.

How did I, Gordon Muir, get myself into such a sorry angst ridden state?   Perhaps a little of my history will explain it best.   I was brought up in a small country town on the eastern edge of Australia.   That is the green part.

I had spent most of my life surrounded by forested hills turned blue by the evaporation of eucalyptus oil from the gum trees. A truly beautiful area with abundant wildlife.

A few farms and vineyards scattered around on dirt roads that twisted through the forest following the contours of the land.   Creeks and streams abounded, flowing down to the river that ran through the town.   My father ran a small mechanic’s workshop next to the apiary where he worked on, well, anything.   Anything at all from cars and trucks and tractors to strange machinery for all the myriad of eccentric farms and businesses that not only made the place viable but a fascinating place to live. He kept his workshop and tools very clean, no heavy smells of oil and grease.   

With the smell of honey being extracted next door and the drift of lavender from a field servicing the perfumery on the hill behind, the workshop loft was a beautiful place to read books from the library or watch the ducks in the river.

When that palled, there was always my bike to take me into the bush, where there were creeks to swim in, with sun-warmed rocks to dry my clothes and towel. I would watch clouds of crimson rosellas flash among the trees or Wedge-tailed Eagles and hawks circling in the pale blue sky that seemed to go up and up forever.   Rocks and cliffs to climb, hills to conquer. Idyllic summer days.   

Winter was still beautiful but it could be dangerous for those caught unaware or not used to it.   With overcast skies, mists abounding and a foot of snow on the ground it was pretty easy to get lost thirty feet from the road.   That is when you had to pay attention to the slopes so you would know what direction to use to return to the track.   Just being lost overnight was cause enough to die from exposure.   But still a cold harsh heartless beauty was to be found among trees shut down but still leaved for the winter.   

The bush, summer or winter, active or still was always peace incarnate.   An excellent place to be.

The people were earthy and varied.   Few would have claimed to be creative, but it was there.   It was there in the foods created and shared, the machines made and the earth remodelled.   The creativity had always been there even back to the fish farms and stone buildings built by supposedly "uncivilised" aborigines a thousand years before while my ancestors painted themselves blue and starved in mud huts over winter half a world away.

So how then did I lose my peace in such a slice of heaven?

My own fault, you see.   Too many people telling me how smart I was and giving me the chance to show it off.   Well truth be told, smart is not worth as much as persistence.      Being able to see a better way of doing things does not count for much if you never actually do it, but just go on to see the next thing to improve.   Success is not achieved by finding the best way to do something but by actually doing that something despite the method.

So I set myself up for failure in life.   Too clever for my own good.   They told me that but I did not understand.   Now if I had been brought up in poverty I might have learned the benefits, the necessity of the hard slog, but the earth was rich and kind to us and there was no need for children to learn this at an early age.

Well, not for me at least.   What was the point of memorising times tables when you knew the result?   What was the point of memorising formulae when you could see how they were derived?   So I had much success at school but none in scholarship.

Naturally enough I drifted into "programming" before the world even created the term IT.   There I could put in the hard yards because to me they simply were not hard and I was good at it.

But the slog in IT is not doing the work, but in setting up a career, picking the right job, cultivating the right people, so office politics always did me in; and all I could do was cry "Why don't they understand?".

So my career stagnated for want of my understanding.   I blundered through life; through poor relationships and even marriage, one after the other always with that same idiot cry for understanding from people who understood me all too well.

My mind whirring, clicking at warp speed, but but never focussing on the right issues.   Never "catering" to people, never realising that sometimes they need precisely that.   Emotional intelligence?   I thought it a contradiction in terms.

The phone rings again.   My mobile this time.   A flash of annoyance, the furnace inside me flares.   Can't they leave me in peace to face my ending?

I answer it.   It is my elder daughter, Catherine.   "Dad, Sascha and I are on our way up, we'll be five minutes, put the kettle on please.".

The phone disconnects and I put it down.   I am stunned and my anger flares.   I grip the balcony rail with both hands and the wood chars with my rage but I do not see it.   So much is swarming through my mind and I see…    …no possibilities.

Red rage.   No! This will not happen.

I run (run?) and grab all the bedding and towels I can find, from my bed, from the cupboard, from the bathroom and pile it in the driveway.   It takes me three trips.   I lay out the pitiful hose.   

There are burning embers starting to fall from the sky as my daughter's Mitsubishi careers around the corner and comes to a stop.   They leap out in panic and I shoo them back inside their car and start throwing blankets and towels over the car to cover all the windows.

Embers are falling fast now and small fires are starting everywhere.   

There are only seconds left now before this whole area erupts in a maelstrom of fire and heat.   I start the hose and wet down the bedding as much as I can while two sets of blue eyes watch me from a gap in the bedding at the bottom of a window almost as if they were again children at play.

It isn't going to be enough.   These fires melt metal.   I keep wetting the covered car down as the red hot rage fills me on the inside while the radiant heat starts to sizzle my hair and char my clothes on the outside.

It isn't going to be enough.   My children will burn. The rage and frustration hit critical mass just as the maelstrom roars.   Time slows down and my rage spills out.   I will not let my beautiful daughters die!

I draw upon the rage and pull the fire into me. I become the fire.    I cannot tell where I end and the fire begins.   My rage and the fire are one and the same.   I draw it into me, all of it. I rise up into the superheated air and draw in the heat, the flame that has become an extension of me.

Across a thirty mile front the temperature plummets and the fire falters, as it is drawn into me.   Not as pain, not as rage but the energy of pure unadulterated joy. I have eaten the maelstrom.

It is over.   My daughters live.   I laugh giggling at my burnt out rage and I fall naked but unashamed to the soothing of cold, cold gravel. I sleep.   Peace at last. It is over, i am over. Blackness fills me like ash.

"Cat…   What just happened, are we safe, is Daddy safe? Can we get out of the car?" asked Sasha.

They got out of the car and ran to their father who was lying crumpled and face down in the driveway.   Turning him over they gasped.   They were looking at a young woman, maybe eighteen years of age.   Blue eyes and long strawberry blonde hair.   Cat checked her pulse, steady and strong but slow.   

"Sash, you remember we were talking about the metagene yesterday?   I think that is what happened.   It activates in times of stress.   Dad was trying to save us and he must have had the metagene." said Catherine.

"But that isn't Daddy, where is he?" asked Sascha.

"Four out of five times a rejuvenation and a sex change comes with metagene activation, Sash" replied Catherine.   "It looks like Dad is now a young woman, a woman a bit younger than us".

"Oh my gawd, is he ever going to freak out when he wakes up" said Sascha, putting her hand in front of her mouth.   "he will wake up won' he? Can they fix him?"

"No,   and I am not sure she would want them to, Sash.   She has dropped forty years at least and gained some sort of super power.   Would you want to take that away from her?"

"She, Her?   That's DADDY, not a her.   They have to fix this."

"Look sis, this is as big a shock to me as it is to you but we have things to do now, and she will need us.   Our father needs us. I think Dad would say you have to take the bad with the good, Sash.   All we can do is to try and help her though this and that means getting used to   him being a her.   She is still your daddy, even if she looks more like our sister and she is going to need us more than ever now."

"Well then, I suppose we should get her inside and warm and comfortable.   It is pretty chilly out here right now."   

Without too much difficulty Catherine and Sascha managed to get the newly transformed girl down the drive into the house and placed on the upstairs sofa, covering her with pillows.

"Ok, now, what?   Emergency services?" asked Sascha.   

"Probably not the best bet.   We don't want a media circus; but as a doctor I can't legally treat a relative anyway, and dad does need checking out by doctors who know far more about this than I do.   I think a call to Dr. Harrison our registrar might be a good idea.   He will know what to do."

Catherine called Dr. Harrison and told him she had witnessed a metagene activation.   Since this was the first in Australia, she got his immediate attention.   Very shortly an air ambulance was on its way.   They moved the car and hung out the bedding to dry.   By the time they finally got their cups of tea the helicopter was landing and took the three of them back to the teaching hospital where Catherine was a resident and Dr.   Harrison the registrar.

To be continued....

This is my first attempt at writing and publishing. I find it pretentious and self centered but it just a story so I guess that is ok. If you got any pleasure from reading this please let me know how it might be improved. This is supposed to set a scene for the rest of the story. If there is ant interest then I will try to continue with a weekly chapter. But I am scared that this does not cut the mustard. If you have any feedback there is no need to be gentle.