"Hey!"

Zach heard the voice just a split second before he felt the powerful yank on his hair, nearly pulling him off his feet. His most recent hiss of pain became a startled yelp as he nearly tore that hair out of the back of his head with his own momentum.

"Did you really not hear the whistle? I said slow the heck down!"

Still jumping from foot to foot and hissing with each contact, Zach turned around to find himself staring straight into a sleek, sun-kissed neck with a lifeguard's whistle hanging around it. Below his eye level, a pair of breasts that would have really wowed him if he weren't so distracted by his burning feet swelled out beneath a maroon one piece. Above it, he finally managed to crane his head up against the hand clutching his hair to observe, was a mane of platinum blond hair and a very unamused face.

"S-sorry! Sand is hot, I gotta get off the sand!" Zach sputtered up at the veritable amazon holding him by the hair, still hoping from foot to foot.

The lifeguard scowled, and then let go of his hair and grabbed him under each armpit. Zach's eyes went wide as she bent the knees of her long, thick legs and hoisted him off the sand with just a minor grunt of effort. He was now eye level with the woman, and clutched securely in her strong, weathered hands as if he were a literal child. She didn't look much older than him - probably even younger than Brianna and Genie - which just made it even more embarrassing that she could pick him up like this!

"Alright," the lifeguard said with a strained smile as she kept Zach aloft, "are you more comfortable now?"

It took a moment for Zach to figure out how to respond to that. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the beachgoers under the parasol he'd nearly reached all staring his way. His face went redder than it had when Brianna needled him about the speedo she'd forced him into. The speedo which, incidentally, he was still wearing, and which was giving the audience a view that didn't make him look any more dignified to say the least.

"I..." he stared down at the hot yellow sand that had caused all this trouble "...well, physically, yes." Then, trying to save face with a little humour, he added "Thanks."

"You're welcome!" Her smile brightened for a moment, looking more genuine. Before Zach could decide if his sarcasm had actually gone over her head or if she was just making a good performance of ignoring it, she continued speaking. "Now that nobody's in danger, why don't you tell me why you ignored both the no running sign and the one warning you about the sand after ten AM?"

Her smile had cooled back to purely professional now, and her blue eyes were piercing straight into his skull. Those were both, Zach realized, entirely fair questions. Well, he did have a pretty compelling answer, at least.

"I forgot my sandals. My ride is someone already out on the beach. I needed to get to them to-"

"You couldn't have called them?" The statuesque blonde raised her eyebrows as she pulled him slightly closer, so he couldn't look away from her face without being both really obvious and really pathetic-looking.

Oh. Yeah. I could have done that, couldn't I have? He hadn't considered it. Probably because he would have been embarrassed to. Well, that didn't exactly work out in his favour, did it? He heard excited babbling from the parasol behind him. Speaking of phones, he was sure he had seen someone pulling theirs out before the lifeguard had pulled him closer.

"I...they're in the water. They wouldn't hear it." He whispered, hoping the lie wasn't as obvious as he felt like he was making it.

The lifeguard grimaced and adjusted her grip under his arms. She was starting to tire. That wasn't good. She kept him aloft for now, though. "You can get a pair of flip-flops on the boardwalk for, like, twelve bucks," she said, still keeping her eyes drilling into his, "why didn't you just do that?"

Oh. Yeah. I could have done that too, couldn't I have? Okay, really, why hadn't he done that? This question actually really bugged him now that he thought about it. He considered himself smart enough to have thought of that. What had gone wrong there?

"I'm..."

Her face was still hardly a foot from his. Her mouth now a grimace of effort as she kept him in the air, no longer able to even affect a professional smile.

"...sorry?"

The lifeguard let out a sigh, sending her curtain of white gold hair shifting behind one muscular shoulder after the other. "I believe you," she said, her arms starting to tremble, "but that doesn't change the rules. Sorry."

"Can you just bring me to the shawooooaah!"

Zach's last word turned into a muffled cry as the blonde ducked much lower and then threw Zach over her shoulder like a captured maiden in a pirate movie. His soft belly pressing its weight into her back as her arms clamped around his thighs, clutching them to her breast. He thrashed his head around, blinking sunlight out of his eyes, and saw that the peanut gallery was growing. People were wandering over from far across the beach toward the spectacle.

"It's okay! Really, I can get myself back to-"

"Before you go anywhere else," the lifeguard grunted through her exertion, spinning around and heaving him back the way she had come like a heavy backpack, "we're going back to the tower. And I'm not going to let you hurt your poor feet anymore."

He felt her fingers stroking the sole of his left foot, tickling him and forcing a reflexive kick. Laughter erupted from all around, rising above the rumble of the waves and the calls of the distant gulls.

"Thanks," Zach whispered, almost mewled, in a tiny, bitter voice as he hid his face in the fabric of her one piece, "You're a real hero."

"Ohhh, thank you! That's so sweet of you!"

Then, to Zach's abject humiliation, he felt her give his chubby bottom a firm pat through his too-tight speedos, undoubtedly making it wobble for all to see. More laughter came from the gathering throng, as well as a pair of wolf whistles, as she carried him toward the watch tower. Zach didn't know what she'd do with him there, but so far this had not been his lucky day.