April 1, 1998, U.S. Naval Hospital Naples:
Sgt. George Rubin looks down at his newborn son and couldn’t believe how tiny he looked. He had his mother’s looks and his eyes and ears.

“We’ve made a beautiful son together.” George looks at his wife as she laid in the bed.

“I think so. He has your eyes and ears.” Mary was glad she finally gave birth to their son.

“But he has your looks and hair color.” George noticed his son took after his mother.

“Well, hopefully, he won’t have my stubbornness.” Mary knew how stubborn she could be.

George hands his son back to Mary. He didn’t care what their first child's gender would be, but he was thrilled that he had a son.

“So, have you decided what his name is going to be?” George knew his wife had a list of names she has been thinking about.

“I was thinking about Douglas after your favorite general.” Mary looks at her husband. She knew how much he admired Douglas MacArthur.

“Are you sure, sweetie? We could name him after one of our father’s liked we talked about.”

“I’m sure. I know how much you like General MacArthur.” Mary looks down into her son’s eyes.

“Then Douglas it is. Douglas Evans Rubin.” A smile appears on Mary’s face.

September 13, 2004, Howard Elementary School, Kings Bay, Georgia:
Douglas waves goodbye to his parents as he walks towards the school front doors. It was his first day of school. He was feeling scared and excited. His first day goes by nicely and he likes his teacher.

The next few days he makes a few friends and enjoys playing games with some of the girls in his class. He also makes friends with some of the guys, as well. He does get bored at times because he finds schoolwork too easy.

He makes friends with a girl by the name of Brenda Somers. Douglas and Brenda become good friends. He spends a lot of time over at her house. As they get older, he plays house with her and dresses up in some of the outfits her mother makes.

Throughout his formative years, he finds a lot of what they teach in school boring. But he completes the assignments anyway. He and Brenda stay friends in high school. His parents also noticed something about him. He starts liking things that are more suited for girls. He even asks his parents for a few baby dolls. Certain ones that he liked a lot. There were a few times his mother would find some of her clothes hidden in his bedroom or find female clothes she didn’t know who they belonged to in his room.

Douglas looks at his parents when he is confronted by what his mother found. He didn’t know why he liked wearing them. He watches his parents as he explains that he liked wearing them and wishes he was a girl. Neither one of his parents knew what to make of how he felt.

So, they made an appointment with a psychologist who specializes in gender dysphoria. Douglas starts seeing Dr. Hudson about his gender dysphoria. While he is in high school, his mother buys him gender-neutral clothes, which isn’t easy, but she manages. His doctor starts him on puberty-blocking drugs.

His best friend Brenda ends up moving away when they are in tenth grade. Douglas developed depression because Brenda has always supported him and helped him adjust to the fact that he should have been born a girl.

Dr. Hudson helps Douglas through his depression and by his senior year, he is more open about how he feels at school. There are a few times he has to protect himself from some of the bible thumpers and homophobes in school. Sometimes he wins, other times he ends up going to the doctor for injuries he sustained.

The night of his school prom, he manages to talk his parents into letting him wear a prom dress. Some of the girls in his class help prepare him for the prom. When some of the parents of the other students complain about Douglas wearing a prom dress. His father tells them to go to hell and if they don’t like it, he is happy to put them in jail.

Douglas’s father was on the police force. He had put in his twenty in the Marines and retired from the Marines. He joined the police force, while Douglas’s mother went to work at the local hospital. His parents allow him to change his name to Aurora. It was his great aunt’s name.

The colleges she applied for, she was rejected. But she did get accepted at Texas A&M University. Instead of asking her parents to pay for her college or signing for any loans. She managed to get an intern job with a tech research firm that specialized in military development.

At first, most of the jobs she was given were low-level jobs. The people she was working for and under didn’t think she knew anything. They held the fact she went to a public school against her.

When one of the people she worked under said something, she held her tongue. She didn’t mind the work and when no one wasn’t around. She would go over some of the stuff they did and find flaws in their work. She would make small corrections to their work and leave.

One evening, while she was cleaning the lab, they had been working in. She looked at what they were working on and discovered that someone had miscalculated again. She fixes the calculation and she finishes fixing the calculations. She hears a voice coming from behind her.

“So, it has been you fixing our mistakes.” Professor Carson looks at Aurora Diesel.

Aurora turns around to look at Professor Carson. She thought he was gone for the day along with the other researchers.

“Someone wasn’t paying attention to their math or formulas when they were figuring this out.” Aurora looks at Professor Carson.

“And you figured this out all by yourself? No one helped you or walked you through it?” Professor Carson watched Aurora’s body language.

“Yes sir. I figured it out on my own and noticed that whoever has been writing the information upon the whiteboard, has been making mistakes.” Aurora watches professor Carson.

“Why didn’t you ever speak up or say anything to any of us?”

“Because most of your workers see me as being uneducated and lacking certain skills.” Aurora has heard the comments and rumors when people didn’t think she did.

“Maybe you should have said something to prove them wrong, instead of remaining quiet.” Professor Carson has heard what people said about Aurora.

“Why try convincing small minds? If people who think they are smarter or better, show how stupid and ignorant they are.” Aurora would rather show them up or let them make fools of themselves.

“Why do you keep helping us, if you want to prove everyone wrong?”

“Because I have a bad habit of wanting to fix something wrong or broken.” Aurora had a bad habit of wanting to fix the mistakes.

“Well, how about you come in early tomorrow and speak with the team.” Professor Carson figures he would speak to the others about Aurora joining the team and helping.

“I can do that, Professor. Have a good night.” Aurora turns to leave.

Instead of heading home, Aurora heads towards a new nightclub that just opened. She wasn’t the nightclub type, but she wanted to experience what it felt like to be among other people like her. She wasn’t gay or anything, but where she grew up, there weren’t many transgenders.

When she walks into the club, it didn’t look too busy. The lights were turned down and there were some people out on the dance floor, dancing. She walks over to the bar area and sits down on a stool.

“What would you like darling?” Eric spotted a new person sitting at the counter.

“How about a Fireball?” Aurora has been wanting to try one since some of her friends told her about it.

“I need to see your Id, sweetie.” Eric wasn’t sure if the new girl was legal.

“No problem.” Aurora pulls out her fake id and shows it.

The bartender takes it and looks at it. After a few seconds, he hands it back to Aurora.

“One fireball coming up.” Eric turns and walks away.

A smile appears on her face. The fake id she used had been done by a fellow her father arrested. He made fake ids for college students and for people who lost their driver's licenses. She figured it would come in handy for when she went to college.

Eric returns with the drink and sets it down in front of the young woman. He looks at her “Bottoms up.”

“Thank you.” Aurora picks it up and takes a sip of it.

She liked how it tasted. It had the same taste as the old fireball candy, she uses to suck on when she was a child. So, that she didn’t get drunk on an empty stomach. She orders a hamburger with some onion rings. Around eight o’clock, the dance floor clears and raises to form a stage.

A drag queen by the name of Coco comes out dressed wildly. She lip-syncs to a few songs by Tina Turner and goes onto another song by Nicki Minaj. By the time she finishes singing, the patrons had tossed several bills towards her.

Aurora had liked the act and decided to watch more. She orders another drink and some more onion rings. She watches as another drag queen comes out and starts lip-syncing to Brittney Spears's song, Oops!... I Did It Again.

A smile appears on Aurora’s face when the performer misses a certain line of the song. She was performing a complex dance step when she missed it. However, the rest of her performance was good. Aurora sits there and thinks about an idea that has popped into her head. She doesn’t know how many gay clubs there are in Texas, but there were a lot of bars and such.

The places would be a good place to gather information about people and such. She watches the rest of the performers. By the time she leaves for the night, she ends up owing twenty-five dollars.

She covers up a yawn in class the next day. She records the information her instructor puts up on the whiteboard. She didn’t get back to her apartment until one-thirty in the morning.

She’s been thinking about learning how to bartend and doing drag as well. The problem was, she didn’t have enough hours in the day to do everything she wanted to do. She had classes during the day and work in the afternoon, sometimes late in the evening.

The next month or so, Aurora spends her time at the club and gets to know some of the drag queens at the club. One of the drag queens took her under her wing. The drag queen’s name was Texas Star. She was a little older than Aurora. Her real name was Keith Kenny.

Aurora drives towards Keith’s place. They were going to go camping with a few other people that Aurora has met. When she and her friend Debbie and Jack pull up in front of the house Keith rented. They spotted a blue SUV that looked like it was being loaded.

Aurora parks her car along the curb. She and her friends get out and head inside the house.

“Is anyone home?” Aurora looks around.

“We’re out back.”

Aurora, Debbie, and Jack head through the patio door and spot Keith, another person she didn’t know, and a person named Shawn. Keith and the person she doesn’t know were rolling up something, that might be a tent or something.

“Watch you doing?” Aurora was curious.

“It’s a pavilion. We were making sure it was still in good shape and had everything we need to use it.” Keith and his helper finishes rolling it up and slip it into the carry bag it came in.

“Cool. So, are there any last-minute items we need to get?” Debbie was ready to go.

“Nope, we have everything. Just need to put this in the SUV and get underway.” Keith looks at Aurora with a smirk on his face.

“No more sailor jokes please.” Aurora knew she made a mistake telling Keith about her mother. She uses to be in the Navy.

“I promise. Now, let’s get going.” Keith picks the pavilion bag up.

“Sounds good to me.” Debbie and Jack were ready to go.

Everyone heads out to the two vehicles. Debbie and Jack get in Aurora’s car. While the other people get into Keith’s SUV. Since Keith knew where they were going. Aurora follows behind Keith as he led them to the campsite.

The campsite was two drives from Texas A&M. It was called McKinney Falls State Park and it was Aurora’s first time camping. When they arrive at the campsite, it takes them about an hour to set up the tents, pavilion, and the outdoor cooking gear they brought.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going to go on a short hike.”

“Sounds good. Do you mind me coming along?” Andy looks over towards Aurora.

“Not at all. The more the merrier.” Aurora didn’t mind the company.

“I’m going to go ahead and prepare lunch for everyone, so don’t be gone too long.” Debbie had volunteered to be their cook on this trip.

“We won’t.” Aurora takes her canteen with her as she headed for one of the trails near them.

Andy watches as Aurora’s cute little butt wiggles as she walked. He’s never met anyone like her before.

“So, what subjects are you studying at college?” Andy didn’t know much about Aurora.

“Engineering, metallurgy, physics, and electrical engineering.” Aurora loved building things and tinkering with items.

“Why those fields?” Andy was curious as, why Aurora chose those fields of study.

“My father used to be a Marine and a lot of the battles he and his unit were sent into lacked the proper protection to protect them. Since I could never join the military because of a medical condition I have. I want to develop something to protect the soldiers who fight for my freedom. We lose too many soldiers to IEDs, bullets, and bombs.” Aurora remembers meeting four of her father’s former unit buddies who lost their legs and arms from an attack.

“Your father was a Marine?” Andy was surprised by that statement.

“Yep, twenty years in the service. He’s a police officer now in Georgia. My mom is a former Navy nurse. I think it was harder on her than my father. She got stuck with raising three children while in the service.” Aurora knew her mother loved being a nurse and having children.

“Sounds like you come from a good family.” Andy wishes his home life was a little better.

“I think so. My younger brothers are cool and fun to be around. My father is the most understanding man you could ask for. He doesn’t judge people and he’s fair. My mother, loves all of us and misses the military. She enjoyed being stationed overseas.” Aurora knew her mother misses being stationed in Naples.

“What does your mother do now?” Andy wanted to know more about Aurora’s mother.

“She’s head nurse at Arnold Medical Center. Because of her experience in the Navy and the fact she has some training as a doctor.”

“Why isn’t your mother a doctor?” Andy was curious about that.

“She had to drop out of her residence training in her last year of training. She became pregnant with my little brother, and it was a complicated birth. It was so complicated, that she almost died giving birth to him.” Aurora knew her mother wishes she had finished.

“Wow! Does your mother regret having children?” Andy knew his mother did. She never wanted children, but the only reason she did was because of his father.

“Nope, she doesn’t regret it. She hadn’t planned on having my brother, but she still loves being a mother and wouldn’t trade it.

“How about you? Are you planning on having children in your future?”

“I can’t have children. I wasn’t born with a uterus.” Aurora didn’t want to reveal the real reason she couldn’t have children.

“That’s too bad.” Andy had an aunt who couldn’t have children either.

For the rest of the hike, they walk in silence. Aurora was enjoying the trail and animals they spotted. The trail they were on took them in a circle back to where they started. She shared her canteen with Andy as well.

“Man, I think next time I should bring my canteen.” Andy looks at Aurora when they arrive back at the starting point.

“My father has always drilled in me to always be prepared for anything. You never know what is going to happen and being prepared will save you.”

“Sounds like a smart man.”

“He is.” Aurora smiles as she thinks about her father.

Andy and Aurora make it back to their campsite and Debbie was finishing up lunch. Aurora could smell the scent of the food she cooked when they arrived.

“Man! I have worked up an appetite.” Aurora walks over to the picnic table they set up.

“Good, I made a lot. So, help yourself to it.”

Aurora looks at the Chili Mac Debbie made for lunch. She loved beef chili mac and wonders what Debbie was going to make for dinner. She grabs a paper bowl and fills it up. She sits down in her yard chair and enjoys her meal.

“I brought some whiskey for us to enjoy.” Jack pulls out a tall bottle of Tennessee Whiskey from his gear.

“Does the campground mind us drinking alcohol?” Aurora didn’t want to get kicked out of the park they were at.

“What they don’t know, won’t hurt us.” Jack pours some whiskey into plastic red solo cups and hands everyone one.

“Beans and whiskey. That’s a bad combination.” Shawn takes a sip of his whiskey.

“At least we only have Jack sleeping with us.” Aurora had brought a three-person tent with her. Since there were two girls and one guy.

“If he farts one time during the night, he’s sleeping outside.” Debbie has shared a room with Jack and knew how bad his farts were.

“Hey! That’s not fair.” Jack looks at Debbie with anger look on his face.

“Remember what happened last time me and you shared a room?” Debbie raises one of her eyebrows while looking at Jack.

Jack’s face turned beet red from the memory. He shakes his head and goes back to eating his lunch.

“Do I want to know?” Keith looks at Debbie and Jack.

“Nope, unless you share a room with him.” Debbie goes to eat her lunch.

“You have some strange friends, Aurora.” Keith looks at Aurora when he says that.

“I know, but I love them anyway. That includes all of you.” A smile appears on Aurora’s face.

After lunch and once the mess is cleaned up. Aurora, Debbie, Shawn, Keith, Jack, and Andy go on another walk. They let the ribs Debbie prepared marinate while they are gone. She also brought several huge baked potatoes for them to roast in the coals of the firepit.

Before Debbie and Aurora turn in for the night. They stumble towards the restroom facilities and take a shower together. They do that, just in case another woman comes in and spots Aurora in the lady’s room. She had her carry paper with her, but some women still acted like she was a pervert. So, she and Debbie worked out a system.

After their shower, they managed to make it back to their tent. Aurora sleeps with Debbie. She was wearing a pair of silk boxer shorts and a t-shirt with a cat curled up on a cloud, sleeping.

The next three days, while they are camping, goes by fast. One night they were singing too loud and off key so badly. That their neighbors' several campsites down from them. Came over and told them to shut up.

By the time they had to return to work and school, they all felt relaxed and had enjoyed themselves. Before Aurora and her friends leave, after straightening their campsite up. She looks at them “we need to make this a continuous thing for us.”

“I agree. This was very fun.” Keith liked it.

“I agree as well, but next time someone else is doing all the cooking.” Debbie enjoyed it.

“Well, if you guys don’t mind being poisoned, I can cook some.” Aurora looks at her friends.

“We’ll see about that. Now, let's head home. I have work and school tomorrow.” Jack had some of the same classes Aurora had.

Aurora and Keith drive back home and drop everyone off at their homes. Aurora goes over to Keith's house and helps him unload all the gear. While she is helping him “are you performing tomorrow night?”

“Yep, but I don’t go on until ten. Are you going to be there?” Keith knew Aurora pulled some long hours at her job.

“I’ll be there.” Aurora hugs Keith and kisses him on the cheek.

Keith was surprised as he watches Aurora walk off. He continues to watch her until she gets in her car and heads home. She calls her parents and tells them how much fun she had with her friends. She also catches up with what her brothers were doing as well. Her second oldest brother was joining the military. He had been approached by two recruiters. One was from the Marines and the second one had been from the Army.

She goes to see Keith perform the next day as she promises. She loved watching the other drag queens that performed at the club. She has performed a few times, but she wasn’t as good as the other girls were.

A few weeks go by, and Aurora starts suspecting things aren’t right at work. At first, she couldn’t put her finger on it, but as the days go by. She starts spotting weird behavior from one of her coworkers.

They finally had a prototype they could test, and she noticed that someone had made copies of it. Now, that normally wouldn’t be a big deal under normal circumstances. However, this project was being sponsored by the defense department. The company was getting its funding from them.

One night after she had left to go home. Aurora realizes she left her cellphone back in the lab they had been working in. She goes back into the building, after checking in with security and heading upstairs to the lab. When she walks into the lab. She finds one of her coworkers helping two men she never has seen before copying classified files.

She charges them and gets into a fight with one of the guys. She uses the training her father taught her and takes him down easily. She goes after the other guy and her coworker next. She grabs her coworker and knocks him down from the servers.

The other guy hits her from behind. He grabs her and tries slamming her against a light table. She stops him from slamming her against the light table. She bangs her head against his face, breaking his nose.

Just as he releases her from his grip, she gets hit in the face by her coworker. He hits her again sending her to the floor. She shakes her head to try to clear her head but instead gets knocked out.

Rodney looks at his partner “shoot me in the arm with the gun but use her to do it.”

“Gladly.” Juan puts his gun in Aurora’s hand and squeezes the trigger.

The bullet hits Rodney in the shoulder and does no damage. It goes clear through his body.

“Do it again. I want her to be charged with shooting me.” Rodney wants Aurora to take the fall for the stolen material.

Juan shoots Rodney again, but this time hits him in his right arm. Juan knew Rodney was going to need to go to the hospital after that one.

“God! That hurt.” Rodney goes over to a secret compartment in the lab and grabs a small baggy of cocaine.

He shoves the cocaine up Aurora’s nose and spills some on the front of her chest. He uses her fingers to put her prints on the baggy as he puts some lines on the light table. He grabs the portable drive with the information he downloaded and hands it to Juan “get out of here, while I call the cops.”

Juan takes the drive and leaves the lab. He hurries to get out before the cops show up. Now, he wasn’t going to have to kill Rodney.

Rodney looks at Aurora and smiles “I’m glad you showed back up, bitch. Now you can take the fall for the thief and for killing poor Chuck.” He shoots Chuck twice and wipes his prints off the gun. He puts the gun in Aurora’s hand.

He calls 911 and tells them there has been a shooting. That the person who shot him and his friend was unconscious. He hangs up afterward and waits for the police to arrive.

When Aurora starts coming around, she finds herself on a hospital bed and handcuff to it. She looks around and finds herself inside a hospital room. Her body felt weird, and her head still hurt. She yanks her arm and rattles the handcuff. She tries her other arm, but she was handcuffed on that one as well.

There was nothing she could do. She tries to recall the last thing that happened to her. She remembers fighting the two guys and knocking her coworker to the floor. Past that, she couldn’t remember anything.

A nurse comes in to check on her after a while. Nurse Keli looks at the young teenage girl as she laid handcuffs on the hospital bed.

“How are you feeling?” As Keli stands next to the bed.

“My head is hurting, and my body feels weird. What happened and why am I handcuffed to the handrail?” Aurora looks at the young nurse.

“You’ll have to talk to the detectives about that. As for why your body feels weird and your head is hurting. You were given a dexmedetomidine shot for the cocaine in your body.”

“I don’t use cocaine. I never have.” Aurora wonders how the cocaine got into her system.

“Well, you need to tell the detectives that.” Keli didn’t believe her patient as she leaves to inform the detectives.

Aurora lays there in bed trying to figure out how the cocaine got into her system and why she was handcuffed. She wanted to cry, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good. She just waits for the detectives to show up.

Detective Watson and Detective Penn are informed that their suspect was awake. The two older men get into their car and head towards the hospital. They check in with the nurse to make sure the girl they brought in was awake and still handcuffed to the bed.

Detective Watson doesn’t bother to knock on the door as he walks into the hospital room. They spot the young woman still handcuff to the hospital bed.

“How are you feeling, Mrs. Diesel?” Detective Penn looks at the young girl.

“Like this is a bad dream.” Aurora looks at both men.

One was dressed in a dark blue suit and instead of a tie, he was wearing a Texas lasso around his neck. He also looked to be about her father’s age. He had short dark black hair and looked like he spent a lot of time out in the sun. His partner was skinny and was wearing a business suit as well. He was a little bit more weathered and had salt and pepper hair. He seemed to be a little older than the other guy.

“Well, I can say this isn’t a bad dream.” Detective Watson looks at Aurora.

“Why don’t you tell us your version of events that took place, Mrs. Diesel.” Detective Penn takes his notepad out to write down notes.

“I should have a lawyer here before I start telling you guys anything.” Aurora looks at both men and remembered what her father said to do if she is ever arrested.

“You don’t have any reason to have a lawyer present unless you have something to hide, Mrs. Diesel.” Detective Penn wanted to know what happened.

Aurora thinks about her situation and the words her father said to her keep coming back to haunt her. She looks at both men “sorry gentlemen, but my dad didn’t raise a dummy. So, until I have a lawyer present, I will not tell you anything.”

“Well until you do. Consider yourself under arrest.” Detective Watson smiles at Mrs. Diesel.

“On what charges?”

“Murder, thief of classified information, attempted murder, assault, possession of an illegal substance.” Detective Penn watches Mrs. Diesel’s expression.

Aurora was stunned as Mr. Penn read off the charges she was facing. All of them were bogus charges, but somehow she was being charged with them.

“I think you have the wrong person, detective.”

“Well, unless you talk. We will never know. Once you’re feeling better we are going to transport you to jail and book you.”

“You both can go to hell.” Aurora's temper gets the best of her.

“Have it your way.” Both men turn and leave the hospital room.

Once the detectives leave. Aurora starts crying. She didn’t do any of those things they were charging her with.

When the nurse comes in to deliver her food. She tells her to take it away and she wants to make a phone call. Nurse Keli checks with her boss to see if Aurora can make a phone call.

Aurora calls her father and tells him what is going on. Her father couldn’t believe what she told him and informed her not to say anything to the police without a lawyer present. They talk some more and after a while, she is forced to hang up.

The day Aurora is transferred to the police station. Her lawyer is there to meet her. She tells her lawyer everything that took place. They meet with the detectives and under her lawyer’s advice, she tells the detective everything that happened.

The detectives informed her that gun powder residue was found on her hands and clothing. That cocaine had been found in her system and under her nose. They also found several more dime-size bags in her pockets.

She is denied bail. Afterward, she goes before the judge and a trial date is set and she is to await her trial date in prison. As she is
She is also informed that Rodney had said that he had found her snorting cocaine when he arrived. Also, the murder weapon had her fingerprints all over it as well. That the bullets they recovered from Chuck had matched the ones in the gun and the rifling was the same.

Aurora just sat stunned with all the evidence that was stacked again her. Even the testimony from Rodney as well, saying he tried to stop her, but she had hit him. She goes off when he smiles at her.

“You fucking liar! This is all your doing, and you know it.” Aurora was hot.

“I have no idea what you are talking about, Aurora.” Rodney just smirks as he and his lawyer walks out of the interrogation room.

Aurora is taken before the magistrate judge and is denied bail. She is taken and is transported to prison to await her tail. She MacGyver’s her escape. Using a few items, she managed to smuggle them onto the transport bus. She manages to cause a fire, forcing the driver to pull over off the road they were on. During the confusion, she slips out of her restraints and uses the smoke to escape. She runs away from the guards and the other inmates.

She manages to find a house where no one was home and breaks into it. She was lucky that the person didn’t have any security system. She strips out of her prison clothes and puts on clothes that were a little big on her. Whoever the person was living in the house, they were well built. The shoes she had on would stick out like a sore thumb.

She takes an old pair of tennis shoes puts them on. From the smell and look of them. Whoever wore them, don’t anymore. She notices that the person had a change jar, and it had a couple of bills in it. She takes the bills and stuffs them in the pockets of the pants she was wearing.
She looks at herself and figures she’ll have to do something about her looks and hair. She makes sure, that she leaves the place as she found it. She pours bleach into a garbage bag to cover the scent of her old clothes. All those old crime novels she read were paying off.

Once she leaves the place, she moves carefully and at night sometimes. She does manage to hitch a ride on a car carrier without the driver knowing about it. She spends the next few days getting as far as she can. She was going to get revenge on Rodney for what he did to her.

The next few weeks she makes her way to the coast of Texas and boards a ship that is heading towards South America. There were a couple of close calls with police spotting her, but she managed to avoid them. All the training her father taught her was coming in handy.

She never thought she would have to use it. She lets her folks know she is okay, by sending them emails from an anonymous email address. She learns how to hack people’s Wi-Fi signals from watching a few YouTube videos.

The next few years, she reinvents herself down in South America. She joins a few gangs and learns the skills she needs to survive from a kind old man that lived in the jungle. One of the things she does while she is down there. She builds her custom body armor in secret. She didn’t want any of the gangs or Cartel gangs she has encounters with, to learn what she was up to.

She steals a narco-submarine from a cartel gang and retrofits it. She uses her engineering skills to fix it and make it so she doesn’t need to surface for air. For navigation charts and such, she manages to acquire what she needs from several cargo ships she manages to sneak aboard and steal the information from.

By the time she leaves South America after two years of hiding down there. She has acquired a small collection of weapons she has either built herself or stolen from military and police companies. She had almost three million in money she stole from a drug gang and forward what other money he had into a secret bank account in a bank in the Cayman Islands. She knew that was going to put a bounty on her head, but she was going to need the funds.

She also learned most of his drug routes and entry points he uses to smuggle people and drugs into the United States. Along with that information, she learned the identity of several corrupted DEA and CIA agents working with the Cartels in the area. She managed to get as much information on them as possible.

She became known down in South America as the Ghost. She had the habit of escaping from whatever traps they set for her. Plus, she always left them little surprises as well. No one ever saw her enter a location or leave. Any surveillance equipment they had or were using, she managed to avoid and circumvent them.

Aurora makes her way back to Texas in the submarine she stole. It took her a while because she was avoiding the Navy, Coast Guard, and using some of the big supertankers to hide under to avoid detection. Some of the tricks she used, she learned from watching movies or from stories her father and mother use to tell her when she was younger.

She goes as far she can in the sub and invest in a struggling shrimp business. The place was in Galveston, TX. The place was family-owned and they didn’t mind her investing in their business. They also didn’t mind her adding a place where she could store the boats she bought.
She sets up a safe house there, to operate out of as she tracks down the guy who framed her. She wanted revenge for being blamed for the murder and being accused of stealing the classified information they were working on. She learned from her father, that if a person was smart, they would steal cars that police confiscated from drug dealers and such. A lot of times, those cars were used for undercover work and for plain cars that police use for police work.

She locates where the police store their confiscated cars and forge paperwork to acquire one. She disables the GPS tracking devices the police use to track the cars. She used to be an honest person, but thanks to what Rodney did framing her for murder and stealing government documents. She has become a crook to try to clear her name.

She does keep in touch with her parents. She knows it's dangerous to do that, but she didn’t want them to worry about her. She loved and owed them for their support. She always sends messages to them in a secret code her father developed for them if they were ever in any trouble.

Using the car, she acquired from the police. Aurora heads back to College Station, Texas to see if she can locate Rodney. He’s had two years to move on with his life, while she was in South America.

She tracks down leads she acquires from her old job and breaks into the social security administration. She always makes sure to cover her tracks, so no one knows what she is after. Since she has access to a police computer, she acquired it when she stole the car. She uses that in her search as well.

She gets a job as a bartender/waitress in some of the worst neighborhoods and uses that cover to learn about the local gangs. She uses that cover to learn what they dealt with. She also builds a network of snitches she can go to for information. She keeps her search on Rodney quiet.

A few times, she has to step in and put an end to territorial disputes and stop a few gangs from selling drugs to kids in school or anywhere near a school. She makes sure the message she sends is well received. She leaves the people alive, but she embarrasses them so badly, that their gang members won’t take them back.

The only time she goes to the extreme is when they don’t heed her message. That’s when she goes to the extreme and destroys everything, they value most. She does learn that some cops, politicians, judges, businessmen, and government agents are on the take. She keeps a database with their names and all the evidence she collects.

As for Rodney, she learns that a year after she escaped from the prison transport. He was killed by the person he sold the information to.
According to the information she gathers and checks out for herself. According to the police report she managed to get her hands on. He was found in his house dead from an apparent break-in.

She knew she was fucked now because the only person who could clear her name was dead. She didn’t know who the other guy was. She had stretched his picture out and ran it through a facial recognition program she had access to.

She steals another vehicle from the police and disables the GPS tracking device in it and goes back home to see her parents. She missed them and she knew it was a risk to herself and them. She parks the car she stole a couple of blocks away she could get to and sneaked to her parents’ house.

She enters from the backyard and enters the house. Just as she makes it inside the house, she hears the sound of the shotgun her father kept in the house chamber a round.

“Dad, it’s me.” Aurora turns around slowly with her hands up.

George looks at his daughter and couldn’t believe how much she has changed. Her skin was darker, from what he could see, and her hair was shorter. She was wearing some sort of body-hugging bodysuit.

“Aurora, is that you?” George lowers his shotgun and looks at his oldest.

“Yes, daddy it is.” She walks over and hugs him. She was so happy to see her father again.

A few minutes later, her mother joins them, and she hugs her. They sit and talk about her time in South America and what she has been up to since her return to the United States. She reassures her mother and father that she hasn’t taken anybody’s life but embarrassed them so badly that they will never outlive it. She shows them pictures of some of the people she has taken down.

Her father informs her about what he had found out about her case. How he was forced to stop pursuing it, because of threats to her mother and brothers. Also, he was told by the superintendent of the police department to drop it as well.

Aurora tells her father what she found out and shows him the picture of the other guy that had been there that night. She also informs him that she couldn’t find anything out about him. She watches as her father gets up and head towards his office and comes back with a thumb drive.

Mary just held Aurora’s hand and was so glad she was safe. She was so worried about her baby girl. She just wants her daughter to stay but knew she couldn’t until she cleared her name.

George walks back into the den and hands the thumb drive to his daughter. “Everything you need to know about him is on this drive along with some more information to help you.”

Aurora hugs her father. “Thank you, daddy.”

She hugs her mother and didn’t want to leave the safety of her loving arms. It was nearly five in the morning when she leaves her parent's house and drives back to Texas. The last known address her father had of her mysterious person was in Texas.

In the following weeks, she chases down leads about him. Every once in a while, she encounters gang members terrorizing businesses and neighborhoods. She terrorizes those gangs and their businesses. Sometimes, it brings the attention of the police that is protecting them.

She gets into a firefight with a few gang members and some undercover DEA agents that had gone over the wall. Thanks to her suit, she wasn’t hurt. However, she couldn’t say the same for the people who attacked her. She doesn’t kill them but does hurt them so badly that they will be disabled for the rest of their lives.

She learns about a drug dealer importing some new type of drug. She intercepts the shipment, but during the confrontation with the drug dealer, he stabs her with a syringe with some strange type of drug. She wasn’t wearing her body armor and the needle penetrated her bodysuit and went into her body. After she defeated the bastard, she started feeling exhausted and very sleepy. She managed to make it back to her safe house and pass out.

It was eight hours later when she woke up that she discovered her body had changed. Everything about her had changed and she didn’t know why. She still had some of the drugs that she had been stabbed and injected with.

She took a sample of her blood and sent it to her mother, hoping she could figure it out. She also sent along with a vial of the drug and informed her mother what it did to her. She sent a picture of her new looks as well, so her parents knew what she looked like.

A week later is when she receives a phone call from her friend Stephanie, asking for her help.

Story Continues in Blue Lace Chap. 2