The Impossible Girl

Jeopardy Night

"What is quantum entanglement?"
"That is correct," Alex nodded and the last square on the board blanked out.
Next to her Lisa could hear the other two contestants, their scores still at $0 grinding teeth and clenching fists.
"Congratulations Miss DeLuca, on your third win and once again you've actually gotten all the points," Alex waved at the board and indicated her opponent's failure to so much as press the buzzer, "This has actually been more one sided than the Watson exchange."
"Thank you, would you like to bring Watson back? I think I can take it on. I'm going to be rude, but it's been a bit dull for me so far," Lisa knew the others were angry, but it wasn't like she could help being what she was.
The filming came to an end, and Phil, the contestant in the middle turned to her, "I swear I've seen you somewhere."
"I'm a bit of a minor celebrity, it could have been a lot of places," Lisa shrugged.
"I think you were going out and about in your underwear or a swimsuit," Phil sounded condescending, probably angry he'd lost so badly to a model.
"That's very likely, I've been featured in 98 different publications. Health magazines, fitness, even things like Maxim and Playboy before I got into heavy weightlifting. I am exceptionally beautiful and people part with a lot of money to see most of me."
"You are one stuck up bitch, you know that?" Phil moved himself into her space and was going to jab her in the collar bone with an angry pointer finger but Lisa caught a hold of his wrist.
Lisa was careful as she pushed him back into her podium, she didn't want to hurt him, not yet anyway, but she did want to make a point. He quickly grew red and flustered and fear was evident in his eyes as he realized something about just how strong she was.
"Do you even lift? This is too easy, even easier than beating you in the game."
"God damn it! Alright, I give, I give..." Phil snorted as she released him and let him stand up, "But if you're so smart you can completely clean out three Jeopardy shows in a row, why aren't you doing something with your brain instead of just your body?"
"Whoever said I was? Have you seen my resume?" the question was rhetorical, Lisa knew he couldn't have if he thought she wasn't anything more than a model and weight trainer.
"Lisa DeLuca..." Alex cut in, having doubled back when it looked like their might be a physical altercation, "You're the girl that graduated from Yale, Harvard and MIT all in the same year, aren't you? There was that news clip showing all three of your walks."
"That's me," she made a point of smiling wide.
"How old are you? Sorry, if you don't mind me asking.
"I'm twenty one now."
"I knew you looked young, but you were fifteen when that happened? Didn't you get two degrees from each?"
"They left that part out in the news broadcasts I think, I kind of looked like a seventeen year old model at the time and most people thought it was a hoax of some sort anyway. Also, I got three from MIT, so I got seven degrees total."
Phil was even more wide-eyed than when she had physically overpowered him, "No way...you graduate when you were twelve or something? How many degrees do you have now?"
"Eleven actually, and currently 22, though I'm working on a last Ph.D currently."
"You're going on Jeopardy for money?"
"No, sorry Alex, but it was kind of just something to do," addressing Phil she said, "between quite a few patents, modeling money, and some personally designed stock market programs, I'm actually 'worth' about ten times as much as our host, so the money's likely just to go into pet projects."
"You're half way to being a billionaire?" Alex's eyebrows did a jump, "You don't seem to stop being impressive."
"Seriously, what are you?" Sandra, the other contestant who'd been on the far side from her spoke for the first time since the filming stopped.
"I hate that question. Tell me, if I took a knife and cut myself open and bled red on the set here, would that tell you I'm a person? Or would you still be skeptical?"
"Please don't get blood on my set."
"I'm just making a point..."
"Well Lisa, you're freakishly intelligent," Sandra continued talking, apparently oblivious to Lisa's hands clenching into fists, "you're strong as a monster and you look like a photoshopped magazine gal. Is there anything you're not good at?"
"Not a thing. I paint like a pro, I speak enough languages to talk to most of the earth's population, and I know about a half dozen martial arts," Lisa growled as she closed the distance between her and Sandra, anger had turned her vision partly red and she picked the other woman up with one hand by the neck, "Freakish? Monster? Maybe so, but it's stupid to say it to my face, don't you think?"
There wasn't a coherent reply, gurgles and gasps barely escaped the other woman's throat past Lisa's clenched hand. She felt some more weight on her arm as Phil grabbed her upraised arm and tried in vain to pull it down.
"Whoa, hey, security!"
Three guards advanced on her and it took her about a second to knock them all to the ground with her spare arm and feet. Phil was thrown off her arm in the frenzied whirl of activity. A fourth got behind her and tried to grab her a choke hold, but she inserted her arm in between his arm and her neck and he was powerless to close his hold. She started to force his arms open and could hear his heart quicken in fear as she overpowered him effortlessly. The throw was a little tricky to do as she was, but he bounced off the floor with a crack. She turned her attention back to Sandra and seeing the other woman's growing terror and changing color snapped her out of her rage. She dropped the woman and caught her by the sides to keep her from crashing to the floor.
"Damn it! Damn it! I'm sorry!" Lisa felt tears welling up in her eyes, "But why would you say things like that? Freak? Monster?"
Sandra coughed and sputtered a moment, but she regained her voice after a while, "Why are you so touchy about it? Unless you're worried I'm right about you."
Lisa felt a tear run down her cheek and she punched the other woman in the stomach, doubling her over and leaving her to slump on the floor, "I'm not coming back here! Ever!"
Lisa ran out forcing down sobs, of course Sandra was right, what could she be but some kind of monster? Lisa ran and ran, trying to escape her own doubts about herself. Two hours later she realized she'd gotten about fifty miles away... and her eyes were dry and her emotions in check. She wasn't tired, but running back would take another two hours. She decided it might be worth it to try to find another way back to her hotel. Jeopardy wasn't the first game show she'd cleaned up on, but she decided it would be her last. She knew she was smart and had a uniquely perfect memory, there was no sense in wasting so much of her time on these shows for token prize money...