Alicia Li was taking the sun with her boyfriend on Avila Beach. They had come early to avoid the crowds, but there were a few people around already, even children. The sun was warm, not hot and the sea had been warm as well, not chilly as it always was in her native Canada. I’m glad we took this vacation, she thought, looking aside to see her boyfriend Quentin smiling back at her, her hands intertwined. She stretched her lithe, pale body lazily in the towel. Her mother back home had warned her against traveling to America because the cops were not exactly friendly there and she was only a petite Asian woman. But Alicia was not to be denied her vacation and traveled anyway. Then, a small commotion on the beach caught her attention. She rose on her elbows and looked around.

She noted with some alarm that a police vehicle had arrived and three officers, wearing dark shades against the sun, stepped out, looking around warily, trying not to call attention to themselves. Just what we needed… has there been a crime? Are they looking for a perp? But they looked mostly at the sea, expectantly, only sparing some glances at the people around them. She looked at Quentin, who only shrugged.

Nothing happened for a while, and Alicia lay back again, stretching a pale leg, possessively, on top of one of her boyfriend’s and was drifting to sleep in the nice warmth, when she heard someone gasp audibly behind her. She sat up and noticed people were looking to the sea. A dark shape was parting the waves mightily a few hundred meters from the shore.

Then Alicia’s mouth went slack as a giant figure rose from the churning waves. A tanned, statuesque figure stood up, throwing back her head, her wet hair whipping back with a mighty splash. A woman, the woman from the news, the giant alien, no doubt. Shapely, enormous arms rose and wrung the water from the shadowy locks, the towering body bending over a little. Enormous breasts swung with these movements, precariously held only by a lapis-colored bikini top with a matching bottom below. Below this, sculpted, athletic thighs, as olive as the rest of her, started to stride carefully towards the beach, water coming first just mid-thigh, then gradually, as the sea grew shallower with her every step, well-rounded calves became visible; finally the giantess came completely onto dry ground, the sand almost crackling under her toes and her gargantuan weight.

 Shading her eyes from the sun with one hand, the other on her waist, the giantess surveyed the beach calmly, a smile on her meter-wide lips, white teeth gleaming. She spotted the policemen. A small (to the giantess) dry bag in matching blue was hanging from her waist.

“G’day officers” the booming, husky and accented tones of the giantess startled Alicia even more. “Where can we sit?” Armed with a loudspeaker, the cops gave instructions to the giantess, who seemed satisfied and started to stride daintily towards Alicia on her massive tiptoes. She barely had time to stir in alarm, when the cops advised everyone to stay where they were until Zava had settled.

Her mouth grew even more agape as the monstrous legs were swung above her and she could only see colossal, jiggling breasts jutting like boulders, a giant chin, dark nostrils and of course the mammoth crotch covered with the blue cloth, disappearing between the crack of the giantess’ ass. This remembered Alicia she had a boyfriend, and her surprise subsided enough to spare a glance at Quentin, who was gaping even more and clearly gawking at the giant assets overhead. Alicia, lips thinning, punched him in the arm. He looked away sheepishly, not daring to utter a word. An argument would surely have ensued, if it weren’t because the giantess voice thundered again:

“Coming down!”

Zava settled about 20 meters to Alicia’s side, on the least occupied portion of the miles-long beach. The mighty behind descended and crashed on the sand, lovely buttocks flattening under the weight as the giantess sat cross-legged, Indian style, the bag set aside close to her hip.

It was then when Alicia saw there was a man, wearing black swimming shorts, on the giantess’ shoulder, clinging to her hair. The giantess hand deftly plucked him from there when she had settled, her arm behind her supporting her. As Zava’s back was turned to Alicia, she did not get to see where the man had been put aground.

After setting the bag with her and Mark’s lunch and other items beside her. At least I do not have to worry about anyone stealing our little lunch bag here, thought Zava, in a mischievous mood.

She took Mark from her hair, where he was clinging ever since she carefully went into the sea in the rocky cliffs near their home to swim the few miles to this beach and deposited him between her crossed legs. She smiled down at him, her crotch already tingling hungrily as he stood just in front of the flimsy triangle of cloth, hidden from view from the other people in the beach by her encircling legs. Before she had time to utter a word, he deflty slid his wet, hard body between her skin and the bikini bottom. She gasped as she felt his body slither across her pubes and come on the other side of the triangle. After Looking around, face flushed, she locked eyes with a very pale, Asian woman standing with a man beside her a little distance to Zava’s left, who was looking at Zava with wide eyes and wide mouth and looked away, flustered.  You little devil! Mark looked up at her sweetly before slipping under one of her knees, partly lifted from the ground. She did not let him escape and plucked him unceremoniously with three fingers and let him go on top of her thigh. He crawled to her hip and lay back with his back against it. Zava sat there, arms propped behind her and looked at the sea with Mark. She was uncomfortably aware that everything she said would be overheard by most little people at the beach. All the troubles of the last month finally seemed behind them. She looked around at the little people in the beach, who were keeping their distance for now.

“Mark?”  

“Yes, Zav?”

“How long do you think we have?   Until something happens again”

“I don’t know Zav. That is why we should try to live life to the fullest, one day at a time; after what we have been through, anything can happen. But we will live it out, together, never fear. never forget I love you…”.

“I love you, too”. She could not shake a vague sense of unease, but she attributed it to the fact that everyone at the beach was staring at her and that she was almost naked, but rationalizing that she had nothing to fear from the tiny beings, she tried to shrug it off.

******

A few hundred meters to the east, on a rocky, scrubby hill, major Mackenzie Adams was looking through the scope of her rifle, already sweating under her Ghillie suit. She had been laying there all night, as she had been informed of the giantess plan to come to the beach and was already in position to get a shot at the alien with her 30mm sniper rifle, loaded with depleted uranium rounds. She had been briefed only a few days ago, and she was explicitly told she was chosen because she had been one of the best shooters in the army and because she was a woman. They had told her that three other attempts with male officers had failed as for some reason, the snipers had balked at the last second and refused to shoot, losing their nerve and fleeing. Adams was determined not to draw back. It was a matter of national security, they had said. To her, it was a matter of pride.

What Adams did not know was that the team that col. McAllister’s had secretly and personally assigned to protect Zava with hand-picked airmen, had caught each one of the snipers as they tried to flee the area. Right now, they were looking for Adams frenziedly, as they were informed there was another, the last one one in the mission.

Despite the more than a half mile to the target, the shot was easy, thought Adams, with the giant alien’s enormous noggin being an excellent target. She could see the monstrous woman’s temple through her computerized scope, and the bullet was also equipped with a self-directing head that could correct for wind and other factors as long as Adams kept the laser on her target. Adams breathed deeply a few times, and feeling a strange hesitation starting to come upon her, let the air slowly out of her lungs as she softly and resolutely squeezed the trigger. She was startled as in this exact same instant the giantess head turned and seemed to look directly at her, but the bullet had flown. Unsilenced, the shot rang as a thunderclap across the ravines below, well after the supersonic projectile reached its victim. Then everything went black.

“Owww!” Zava cried, her hand flying to her eye. A sharp pain had stung her just behind her right eyebrow. She rubbed the painful spot, frowning in annoyance. She had turned her head as she saw something from the corner of her right eye. A hornet?  She thought before remembering that she was no longer in Lur and she would not be even able to see, much less feel, a hornet from these parts.

“What happened?” Said Mark, startled, as thunder out of the blue could be heard seconds later. Mark looked up quizzically, frowning as there was not a single cloud in the desert sky.

“Something pricked me near my eye!” Zava said “I think it came from there!” Zava’s slender arm pointed to some scrubby knolls well to the east. A thin column of smoke was rising from there.

Mark pulled out his phone and send McAllister a quick message and a waypoint of the hills. Given what had happened in the last days with people being caught not so far from their home, apparently hired spies, it was a good idea to err on the side of caution. “Let me see” Said Mark. Zava picked him up and got him close to the spot, eyes closed so she did not get cross-eyed looking at Mark so closely. Pain had already faded. Her lovely skin was unmarked. “I don’t see….” But then his blood froze. There was something shiny on her eyebrow. “Get me closer!” Zava complied until she felt Mark’s hands just below her right eyebrow, close to her nose bridge.

Mark carefully pinched what looked like a fingernail-sized, shiny metal piece of shrapnel, tangled in Zava’s thick eyebrow hair. It was surprisingly heavy. Where the hell did this come from?

“What is it?” Said Zava as she felt Mark’s ticklish little fingers pushing apart her eyebrow’s hairs to get at something.

“Er… no idea… looks like a piece of metal…” he tossed it away. Zava put mark down on the sand.

“Hello… lady?” a voice piped from the side.

Zava turned her head and saw a group of teenagers in bathing suits, boys and girls, standing in a line a few meters (to them) to her left.

“Oh! Hello!” Said Zava, smiling shyly. The police officers who had appeared earlier started to approach, menacingly, but Mark waved them away.

“You live close to Avila?” Said one of the group, a dark-skinned young lady with a very abundant mop of curly hair.

“Yes, up in the hills” Zava said.

“So, we’ll see you around often”.

“Most likely! This is a nice spot, and the water is warm and very nice!” Said Zava.  “What about you guys? I’m Zava, by the way”

“I’m Trisha, and these are Bobby, Santy, Yahaira, Cat and Piv”. They all waved, wide eyed, noted Zava, looking closely at her reactions. “We’re all from around here! We saw you in the news!”

“Hey, is that a football?” Said Zava, pointing at a yellow ball one of the guys, Santy, was carrying under his arm”. The young people all laughed.

“It’s a ball, all right”, said Trisha, clearly the bolder of the group. “A Volley-ball” …

“Oh! I’m sorry… never heard of if…” said Zava. “what do you do with it?””

Suddenly Trisha’s face lit with inspiration.

“Whaddaya say if we showed you? Wanna play?”

Zava beamed.

McAllister was in his office, frowning at this new, disquieting report. A female sniper, pointing towards the giantess, had been found on a hill near the beach where Zava was with Mark. Her smoldering, dead body (the sharpshooter turned to be a woman) was horribly mangled by an anti-armor, depleted uranium round just like the ones loaded into what remained of her rifle. According to his people on the scene, the bullet had seemingly entered through the rifle’s barrel all the way back to the chamber, destroying the weapon and then it sliced through the skull and torso of the prone female shooter, the incendiary round igniting her clothes, besides. The anti-materiel heavy caliber had wrought havoc on the dead woman, making facial recognition impossible. With the three other people, in this case men who had been captured near Zava’s living quarters, quite likely ex-militaries working for CIA or the like, their biometric and DNA data did not yield any results in any database, which had of course been erased by whoever had hired them. McAllister suspected this would be the case with the dead woman…

The colonel shuddered at the callousness of the people who ordered the hit with the deadly and toxic ammunition on American soil… there was but little doubt who had pulled the strings… but who counterattacked and how? His people confirmed there were no other suitable points for shooting for miles and the female shooter had managed to shoot one round first, judging by the empty cartridge case besides the corpse.

“Very eerie, colonel”, had said captain Singh of Zava’s the protective detail in the video call. “It would seem as if immediately after she made the shot, someone shot back and the projectile entered the way the other came out directly into the barrel of the gun, in exactly the same trajectory that the exiting shot, and of course it went through the rifle and then the shooter’s body, which was behind the rifle, killing her instantly. A shot in a million!  No human could have done this, it had to be done by an automated system responding to the shot being made, but I cannot think where from or how they did it!! Perfect retribution!”

Indeed… thought McAllister, shaken to his core… divine retribution.