Brilliant Beryllium

Little Beryllium sat at her desk in the far right corner of the classroom. She had been attending The Radioactive School for Elements since 1797 when Nicholas Louis Vauquelin sought out her parents, Beryl and Emerald, and asked her to fill out an application - it was a very prestigious school. Little Beryllium was accepted easily. She was a genius and extremely smart.

As Little Beryllium sat at her seat, way in the back, she wished that she had never been discovered. All of the other Elements made fun of her. She was a nerdy, soft metal and though she was strong, she was very brittle. A group of popular, light metals always laughed at her because her melting point was "too high to be cool". Beryllium has the highest melting point (1560 K) of all the light metals.

Little Beryllium also, didn't fit in with the popular metals. They were all so beautiful and every guy seemed to be magnetized towards them. Little Beryllium, however, was nonmagnetic.

Little Beryllium didn't even fit in with the heat conductor Elements, though Beryllium had high thermal conductivity. No one liked her.

Suddenly, an urgent sounding announcement came on over the loudspeaker, waking Little Beryllium from her daze.

"CODE RED, CODE RED! Attention Elements, but there has been a reactive substance released into the school! It will cause oxidation! You will all rust! Everyone must evacu-" the announcement is cut off abruptly. Beryllium looks around. All of the Elements are screaming and running around frantically. She sees bursts of different colors flash across the classroom. Little Beryllium looks down at her own self; silverish-gray, another reason she was made fun of.

All of a sudden the room is quiet. A brownish-red fog begins seeping in from beneath the classroom door. The Elements stand still. Beryllium looks up. Very slowly, each and every Element starts changing colors, as the lethal fog passes by. Beryllium gasps. The brownish-red color slowly starts to spread across the bodies of the Elements, like a plague. Even the teacher is rusted. As Little Beryllium scans the room, she realizes everyone is frozen in time, except for her. Something deep down, inside of Beryllium, tells her that it is now up to her to save the Periodic Table World!

"HA, HA, HA!" an evil cackle erupts through the school. Little Beryllium ducks behind a desk as the door to the classroom swings open. "I oxidized you, and you, and you..." the voice continues evilly, as he enters the classroom.

Little Beryllium slowly nudges her head around a chair and peers through a gap to the front of the room. Oxygen stands there with an evil smile wrapped around his face.

Beryllium gasps. Oxygen was the biggest, most wicked, villain of all the Periodic Table. He was a sneaky, evil guy that could disappear right into thin air! His villain-sidekick was known as, Hydrogen, but he was nowhere in sight. Oxygen was capable of pretty much everything. So why wasn't Little Beryllium frozen too? Why wasn't she rusted for the rest of eternity?

"What was that?" Oxygen shouts nastily into the air. Beryllium curses as she slaps a hand over her mouth, knocking off her glasses instead. They clatter noisily to the hard tile floor. "I know you're in here. Come out, come out wherever you are." Oxygen sneers.

Beryllium steps out from behind the desk. She stands up slowly. Oxygen laughs. "Ha, it's you, little, nerdy, Beryllium. No one even likes you!" Little Beryllium doesn't waver, she doesn't cry. She may be brittle, but she is strong! Oxygen's smile soon fades as he mutters, "Wait, why aren't you rusted?" Suddenly he pulls out his well known oxidation gun, and fires it at her. The reddish gas appears out of the gun. Nothing happens.

You see, Beryllium had a little power she had never discovered yet, A power, she didn't even know existed. Until now.

As Little Beryllium stares back at Oxygen, she slowly starts to form a thin layer of a hard oxide called, BeO, that covers her body like a protective shield. Oxygen's oxidation rays bounce off Beryllium. Little Beryllium smiles.

"No! This can't be! How?" Oxygen mutters, completely shocked. "Hydrogen, get in here!"

At the abrupt summon, Hydrogen trudges in from outside the classroom. "Fire, on three!" They both pull out their oxidation guns. "One... two... THREE!" They rapidly fire and a rust colored smoke fills the classroom. Nothing happens. Beryllium's BeO shield leaves her protected from any attacks from water, or air. Beryllium laughs.

"You can't arrust me!" She says jokingly.

"Whatever, you're only Little Beryllium, what can you do?" Oxygen sneers. "Hydrogen, let's go," he adds, motioning to the door.

Oxygen and Hydrogen both turn to leave. Beryllium knows she has to do something or Oxygen will corrode the whole Periodic Table World! Something deep down, inside Beryllium overcomes her, and she knows what she must do.

You see, a BeO shield isn't the only power Beryllium has. When Beryllium was discovered, back in 1797, she was told she contained sweet, toxic, and carcinogenic salts that could cause death, if inhaled. Her parents always said that she needed to use it wisely. Up until now, she actually forgot she even had this power. But now, she knew. It was time.

Beryllium exhales her toxic compounds and releases it into the air. Oxygen and Hydrogen start coughing and then they fall on the floor. As soon as the villains hit the ground all of the Elements become unrusted, as killing Oxygen undid any of his evil chemical change spells.

"Beryllium, you saved us!!!" they all shout. "You are a hero, you are..."

Beryllium winces, ready for some sort of insult, but instead she hears the nicest thing she's ever heard.

"You are brilliant!"

The whole class begins chanting, "Brilliant Beryllium! Brilliant Beryllium!"

And since that day, Beryllium has become the Element's most well known hero. Oxygen and Hydrogen were never seen, or heard of, again. Some say they became slaves in the Human world, tortured by being inhaled by humans' gross mouths everyday. But no one really knows for sure. Beryllium was never bullied again.

The End
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