Author's Note: I did this for my Chem class as a test on periodic trends. It's corny, half-bull-s#!&ed, and most definitely not my best work, but I kind of like it anyway, and my teacher called it "brilliant." So here it is.

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Elektra strode through the lab door purposefully, her long fingers drumming a nervous rhythm against the opposite arm. She hated being clueless about anything, and to ask for help was unheard of… yet there she stood, on the home field of the only person who could help her—and take full advantage of it.

Paul Ingwise stooped over a massive microscope, his blond arrogant head nearly swallowed up by the large viewing glass. Elektra cleared her throat politely, but apparently Paul’s mind was too taken by his work to hear her. She was standing right beside him when he finally looked up.

His smile was meant to be disarming, but she knew better. “Good morning, General Nue. I didn’t expect to see you until your physical next month,” he said smoothly, like he’d rehearsed it. Elektra shook the tingle from her spine; something about Paul always unnerved her.

“Dr. Ingwise, I didn’t come here for social graces. There’s a situation that requires your expertise.” She ground the last words out, wishing she could have sent someone else to do this. But no, Ingwise would just ignore anyone of lesser importance at the LIFE base; there was a certain chain of command.

LIFE stood for the Learning Institute of Futuristic Energies. Its name held a double-meaning. True, LIFE acted as a science and technology school for the more gifted minds of the world, but its real purpose was as a research facility and, hopefully, a future military base. The US government spent a lot of money to make sure this atomic research went well. If it did, there could be a whole new field opened up in the interest of battle tactics and techniques.

Battle… it was Elektra’s specialty. But no battle training came close to preparing her for what resided in the heart of the physical training department building. Nothing could have.

Paul seemed to sense the urgency. He always sensed those kinds of things. “You’re asking for help, General? Of course I’ll be of any service possible.”

“I need you to come with me to the PT Center. Immediately.”

“Absolutely. Let me just make sure…” He felt the pockets of his lab coat, as if searching for something. After he pressed a few buttons on the microscope, he turned and smiled eagerly. “Yep. I’m ready. Let’s head out.”

The pair crossed the campus quickly and silently—Elektra preferred to remain as detached as possible. A few students whispered as they passed…seeing Dr. Ingwise and General Nue together was a very rare occurrence.

Elektra led Paul down into the lower levels of the center, the ‘authorized personnel only’ levels. Finally, when Elektra had used her key-card twice, a thumb-print scanner once, and a retina scanner three times on as many doors, she slowed.

“The guys in Advancement Studies brought this to me two days ago,” she explained and motioned to a reinforced glass wall where they could see into a research room beyond. “I’ve done everything I could think of, but there’s just no way my team can learn anything more about it, and we’re stumped. You’re the best, Doctor; if you can’t figure out what it is, no one can.”

Paul stared through the glass, entranced. Inside the sterile white room stood a curved figure, vaguely resembling a woman. The creature had no face or mouth or any real feature to speak of except a glowing blue aura that hovered around its nearly-translucent body.

“How?” Paul asked quietly.

Elektra ran a palm over her face like she was getting a headache. “Some idiot tinkered with the machines and accidentally set something off. When the power came back on, it was standing in the middle of the room.” She paused, letting him take that in. He still stared at the creature quite avidly. “It looks almost like air, but it’s solid enough. In fact, the tissue sample was denser than anything documented in our files.” After another pause she asked, “Do you think you can figure it out?”

Paul nodded slowly, his first movement since he’d seen the anomaly. “Oh, yes,” he replied. “I can.”

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Three days later, Paul came to see Elektra. “I’ve finished my research,” he announced proudly. “I’d like to show you what I’ve found.”

Once again the couple descended into the PT labyrinth. The creature was still there. Paul stood gazing at it for a long moment, seemingly forgetting that Elektra was there.

“Ingwise?” she asked uncertainly.

He snapped back to reality. “Of course. My apologies. My first test got right to the heart of the matter; I used that rather large machine you first found me at to study the properties of Ginger’s atomic structure.”

Elektra raised her eyebrows. “Ginger?”

Oddly, Paul blushed. “Of course. I couldn’t keep calling her strange-but-beautiful-mutated-energy-thing, could I? Anyway, what I found is astonishing. Ginger’s basic atomic structure is actually very out of line with normal periodic trends.”

“Sorry, what?”

“Let me explain. The periodic table of elements is organized in such a way that the elements share certain traits and trends. The patterns are called periodic trends. Periodic trends are determined by how many electrons an atom has and how they are arranged in the energy levels around the nucleus. With Ginger, I found a number of different elements acting as her core makeup—yet, no carbon, making her an inorganic organism of all things—but one element stood out as a majority when compared to the others. This element shares absolutely no properties with any of the known periodic elements and, as I said, it breaks the periodic trends; atomic radius, ionization, and electronegativity specifically.” Paul removed from his pocket a small copy of the periodic table. “The atomic trends say that atomic radius increases as it travels down the table and decreases from left to right. Ionization energy and electronegativity increase traveling down and decrease going across.” He held the periodic table above his head. “If the known elements were here, Ginger’s central element, which I’ve come to call ‘malium,’” he gestured toward the floor, “would be somewhere down there.”

Elektra shook her head, clearing it. “I’m not sure I understand what this means. Are you saying ‘Ginger’ is an alien?”

Paul’s smile seemed too knowing for Elektra’s taste, but she let it slide. “I wouldn’t go that far just yet. However, I can say that Ginger is like absolutely nothing man has seen yet. Would you like a demonstration?” Subconsciously, Paul began to stroke the glass separating him from Ginger. Elektra noticed this, pointedly ignored it, and nodded. Paul grinned widely. “Excellent. First is the ion. Ionization energy tells how easy it is for an atom to lose electrons and become an ion. It shows how easily one element will react with another. In this manner, malium is stable. It has a completed valence energy level, and does not react well with other elements. In fact… during experimentation, I found that malium refuses to bond at all.” The way he said ‘refuses’ made Elektra cringe—it sounded like the element could think. Paul continued, “Add to this the other strange properties of malium, and I discovered that it can actually detach itself from the rest of Ginger’s form. Watch.” He made a fist, rapping it against the hard glass once. Ginger’s feminine form turned toward the sound. After a moment, an appendage extended beyond the main mass of the body… and then in disconnected, floating lazily away to hover a few feet off the ground.

Elektra could barely take it in. “That’s only a step away from being in two places at once! And you…” She sent Paul a searching look. “You trained her?”

Paul shifted uncomfortably. “‘Train’ sounds so primitive. I’d like to believe I’m communicating.”

“And you did this in three days?”

“One and a half, actually. These finding came after I’d learned to extract a response.”

Dumbfounded, Elektra stared. “Amazing…”

He cleared his throat and rapped the glass. Ginger’s ‘arm’ returned to her main form. “Moving on,” Paul said briskly. “Electronegativity helps us understand what kind of bond an element will form. In this way, malium varies so greatly from any known element that at first I had no idea how to explain its effects. We know that malium does not bond. However, it does give electrons to other elements… in order to change their electronegativity.” Paul seemed intensely excited by this. “It actually segregates the other elements and forces them to bond in a way previously impossible. Its effect is this.” Once again, Paul tapped the glass, twice. This time, Ginger reacted quicker. The blue glow that surrounded her began to fade, and was replaced by a gentle, mauve hue. Her main body rippled and shifted, becoming more gaseous and shadowed. “The other elements bond in such a way that certain parts of her become completely different compounds. She changes—atomically.” Two raps on the glass, and Ginger shifted back to how Elektra first knew her.

“This is stranger than anything I’ve ever heard of. You’re telling me there’s more?”

Paul smiled so widely Elektra thought his lips may bleed. “Just wait. I saved the best for last.” He closed his eyes and prepared himself as if this news was so huge, it taxed him to tell it. “Atomic radius shows the distance from the nucleus to the outermost stable electron and, essentially, the size of the atom. You mentioned when you first showed me Ginger that she was very dense, and you were correct. This density, in itself, is merely interesting. When connected to atomic radius and atomic shielding—the attraction of electrons to the protons of an atom judging by their distance from the nucleus—it becomes…fascinating. You see, malium is large; it logically should be visible under an every-day microscope. However, because the attraction between the protons and electrons is so great, the atom remains only slightly larger than radium. This makes the atom very, very dense.”

“What does that mean, ability-wise, for Ginger?”

“Each atom of malium has approximately the nuclear energy of an atomic bomb. Used correctly… I’m almost afraid to explore exactly what she could do. For this demonstration, I’ll show you the most comprehensive.” He tapped lightly on the glass three times. Before Elektra’s eyes, Ginger transformed into a lithe, muscular cheetah. The cat sauntered to the glass and rose up on its hind paws, pressing against the glass as if to say hello. Paul placed his hand against the glass as well, and Elektra was alarmed to find love in his eyes. Softly, he explained. “Ginger can completely change her genetic makeup, aside from malium. It never leaves her system, but everything else is secondary.” Belatedly, Elektra saw the faint glow that seemed to radiate from the cheetah.

“This is ground-breaking. Paul, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

He chuckled, and when she turned to look at him, a familiar blue sheen surrounded his form. He gazed at her, flashing that too-knowing smile. Ginger reverted back to her base form and floated through the glass like it never existed. She floated beside Paul ethereally. Slowly, his hands began to take on the same pearly, near-transparent form as hers.

“I have.”