Man, my girlfriend was right. Those kids of the diplomats were such spoiled brats! Here came one now, zooming in the air from past the highway. Wearing one of those little crossover macrame string things that were of questionable decency even for adults, she flew over the hot dog stand and over the sand, to spoil the last day of summer for the rest of us.

On our beach towel, my girlfriend, who had been lying face down, rolled over to look at the commotion. My girlfriend was already annoyed. She knew that seeing one of these entitled diplo-brats meant trouble was about to follow. What would this little super brat do?

We got a good look as she touched down on the sand. Super-brat looked to be about 19. That probably made her old enough to be fully powered by now, but given their prolonged adolescence, way too young to be responsible. Glowing blue hair. Breasts too big for her age. Beauty too big for humanity. Adolescence too stupid to endure.

Not just me checking her out; everyone looked. If not for the diplomatic thing, the Vulcans running this colony world definitely would have never allowed someone like this to be out in public. To be such a harrassing nuisance to everyone else’s last chance at a summer vacation this year. Disturbing The Peace is a really big deal to the Vulcans, y’know.

About half a mile out from the beach, the ocean was extremely choppy. Must be a buried reef or rocks or something out there, definitely not where you’d want to be stuck in a boat. A Coast Guard flying saucer hovered twenty feet above the waves, one of those new thirty-footers. The hatch was open and a crewman carefully aimed a tractor beam gun down towards the water. Below them were four people in a little rubber raft, obviously in need of rescue. The crewman waited for the right moment of timing, between the cresting big waves, to fire and pull up the first of the people to be saved today.

Oblivious to all that, super-brat ran a few steps down the beach then took an enormous leap. I will have to say that I never tire of seeing the big jumps those folks can do. This leap was graceful as always, but the worst aimed I’ve ever seen. She arced out over the beach and the close-in ten foot breakers and the still part of the water and then to the rough part of the water. Half a mile to the right of the the saucer and rubber boat, she pulled up her feet and did a giant cannonball into the water.

The brat's impact shockwave hit the fragile little rubber boat and flipped it over, putting the four people into the water. Two other crew members rushed to the door of the saucer, also with tractor beam guns. They quickly got all four people on board as the little rubber boat sank.

Super-brat flew straight up out of the ocean to about two hundred feet up, obviously pleased with her big splash.

The saucer made an announcement loud enough for us to clearly hear it at the beach. “Return to the beach! This is a Coast Guard rescue training drill in a restricted ocean zone! Your reckless actions put our training crew into hypothermia! You must go back to the sand zone, or your beach access will be canceled for the remainder of the day, diplomatically protected family or not!”

Super-brat sighed loudly. She floated towards the shoreline, then down to just above the ten foot breakers rolling in. She stepped on top of a wave and rode it in. Where the wave was headed to the shore, a group of about a dozen people had several complicated science gadgets and cameras, to examine something just offshore. They looked up and hollered at super-brat to stop surfing. Her wave came in and there was a crunch, then a burst of fat blubber and blood shot up into the air a few feet and splashed back into the ocean.

“You idiot!” the researchers yelled at her. “We’re studying the last sea lion left on the planet! Feeling so smart about wiping out an endangered species, huh? That’s why the surfing zone is five miles away from here!”

Super-brat morosely floated up and over the heads of the scientists. She parked herself in the air over a ridge of sand dunes.

Some parents walked along the top of a sand dune, along with their little children. The cute little tykes had colorful little buckets in their hands. Every now and then, one of them leaned down to scoop up something from the sand and toss it into their bucket.

Super-brat was on the other side of the dune. She fired her heat vision, melting the sand on the shady side of the dune into pellets of glass. The little children burst out crying. The parents screamed at her. “You brat! These dunes are an ecologically protected zone! There’s no other place on the planet for children to pick up mini sandworms for a fresh snack! Get out of here, you troublemaker!”

Not paying attention to where she was going, super-brat arced back out towards the ocean, past the harbor. Looking the wrong way, she tightly banked too close to a tall-masted sailing ship. Her shock wave shredded the sails and knocked over the forward mast. There were enormous cries of dismay. “How dare you, you brat! That was the last historical vessel of our naval history before the discovery of dilithium based travel! It’s a priceless artifact!”

Super-brat apparently figured it would be better to be back over the sand again. She came back slowly and carefully this time. She trudged unhappily through the air over the sand, a hundred feet up, her face downcast. She floated over a long, wide, deep trench in the wet sand. Suddenly enormous flames shot out of the entire length of the trench. She opened her mouth wide and blasted cold wind straight down. A layer of icicles now lay at the surface of the trench, even with the beach.

People nearby started screaming. “You nitwit! You little jerk! That was the community barbeque dinner flash cooking the summer's end luau! You just ruined it for everyone!”

A cop skimmed a few feet over the sand, standing on her ridiculous hover-scooter. The cop was one of those angry red skinned scaly types, a female. She stopped her scooter right underneath super-brat and tapped at the scooter’s control panel, between the handlebars.

Energy cuffs appeared and shackled the brat’s ankles and wrists. The brat was powerful enough that she couldn’t be brought all the way back down to the sand, but she was forced down to only about thirty feet up.

Angry Red Cop tapped angrily at her control panel some more as she said, “Young lady! Your mother has been informed of your activities!”

With a swirling glow of rainbow colors, a woman appeared in the air, in front of the brat. A woman who was excessively gorgeous. About forty, perfect breasts, perfect glowing blue hair, perfect awe-inspiring flawless green skin, perfect everything. Wearing a perfectly stern and strict looking business suit and “I’ll dictate terms to you” work heels. A woman who was obviously related to the brat; you could see it in the chin, despite the different skin colors. A woman with a frown as upset as she was beautiful.

The woman grabbed the arm of the girl. The woman said, “I’m sorry you had to tell me this bad news, officer. If you’ll release her to my custody, I’ll make sure my daughter's beach time ends now and she won’t leave the station for weeks.”

The officer said, “Very well, Ambassador.” The cop tapped at the controls and the energy cuffs disappeared.

Yanking her daughter along by the elbow, the Ambassador flew up over the hot dog stand, past the highway and was soon too distant to be seen. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t be heard. At least, the brat. We couldn’t help but hear her continue to whine and holler annoyingly as her mother took her away. “Mo-o-o-om!” she cried out in her painfully loud and screechy super-voice. “We don’t get to do ANYTHING fun on this stupid planet!” Her mother just accelerated out of the atmosphere and on up to the space station.

Angry red cop sped off again, towards the far end of the beach.

My girlfriend said, “Finally she’s gone! Hooray! Let’s have some fun, honey!” She untied her bikini top and set it down on the blanket. Then she floated up about fifty feet, and started slowly moseying forward through the air over the sand towards the water.

She looked over her shoulder at me with that sweet dimple and the mischevious little cute smile that always gets me.

I pointed at her back and fired a ray out my finger at her. There was the usual spark and fizz across her bare back. I pointed a little lower, bringing my ray down to her bikini bottom. I pulled a little bit and started sliding the cloth lower down her hips.

My girlfriend really, really digs my finger beam. Not to boast too much, okay I’m boasting a little bit, that’s really what enticed her into my bed in the first place. And yes, from one side of the bed to the other, the finger beam’s as good for her as she ever hoped.

Suddenly a cop on one of their ridiculously stupid looking flying scooters came up and parked, hovering, next to my beach towel. Out of politeness, with a bystander nearby, I stopped projecting my finger beam. The cop looked to be about seventy. Stern scowl underneath the bowl-cut black hair and the pointy ears. Fully zipped up uniform despite the hot day.

The cop said, “Do you have a license for that finger ray, son?”

I said, “What do you mean, officer?”

He said, “All finger-deployed weapons must be registered upon arrival.”

I said, “That’s ridiculous. I saw that sign at the spaceport, but I’m not weaponing. I’m not harming anyone. We’re just having some fun at the beach.”

The cop said, “So then, it’s not negligence. After that business with the Mitchells and that Evans kid, we have zero tolerance around here for unregistered finger-deployed powers. You just confessed to wilful violation of an unlicensed import embargo. I’m taking you in.”

I felt the tightness around my wrists as the energy cuffs solidified. No more beam firing for me for a while.

My girlfriend had turned around in the air to watch all of this. She said, “Come on, man, he’s not making any trouble!”

The cop turned and looked up at her. “Oh, a conspirator!” he said.

She said, “The beach is just the place to play and have fun!”

Energy cuffs solidified around her wrists and ankles too. They forced her slowly back down to the ground. The cop said, “Not around here, it isn’t. Fun is illogical. You shouldn’t have come to Vulcan territory if you didn’t want to obey reasonable rules for public safety and convenience. I'm taking you both in.”

They made us stay in a cell overnight, then released us the next day. But summer was over. It was pouring down rain, and that rain was cold. We didn’t have an umbrella, of course. Who needs an umbrella when you have finger rays? But after the worst, most patronizing lecture from a cop shop I’ve ever had in my life, I didn’t even get to poke a finger at the rain around us to warm us up.

“Sorry, babe,” I had to say as we took the walk of shame back to our hotel. “You were right. Next summer, we’re leaving this dump behind for a vacation on Risa.”