The girls had lead Sarah to a large gymnasium adjoining the locker room then. She realized now why the building had appeared so large from the outside... its interior contained a standard 400-meter track, layered with that sort of black rubber that she'd heard was made of recycled tires. A tier of mostly empty black bleachers ran parallel to the track on each of its long sides. They took Sarah to the front row in a roped-off section marked "VIP."
"Will you be okay here, Sarah?" Laurie asked. "The only people allowed on the field are contestants and officials.
"I should be," Sarah said. "I can see the whole field from here. She took a seat on one of the black padded seats of the bleachers.
A loudspeaker from the back of the bleachers announced, "Mobility four-by-one-hundred relay in five minutes. If you're signed in, get to the field and take your places, ladies."
"That's our cue Sarah," said Laurie. "We'll be back before too long. I don't have any other events until later on, so I can answer some more questions for you in just a few minutes, okay?"
"Will do," said Sarah. "Good luck, girls," she said with a smile. A chorus of "thanks" and "thank you" issued from Laurie, Sandy, Lindsey and Amanda as they began to head towards the field. Sarah jumped in shock as all four of them deflated back to their normal size in preparation for the start of the event. She was struck this time by how much taller Sandy was than the other four, and thought that maybe that was one of the reasons why Sandy competed in the so called 'Volume' events. It made sense that a bigger girl could hold more than a smaller one.
Over the course of a few minutes, Sarah watched as the four companions made their way to the track and took their places on the track along with the other teams. Sandy stood at the starting line, while Laurie, Lindsey, and Amanda stood at hundred-meter increments around the track along with the other members of each team. One official with a starting pistol blew their whistle then. Any girls on the field still stretched out with helium released the gas out of their mouths, slimming before Sarah's eyes. The starting runners took their places beside Sandy at the starting line. Each reached to the helium tank before them and took the free end of the helium hose in their mouths, their free hand resting on the valve of their helium tanks.
The starter's pistol went off, and an amazing sight befell Sarah. Ten sets of helium tanks were opened, and the ten starting girls began to swell. Sarah could hear the hiss of the gas entering their bodies from all the way up in the stands. Every woman's inflation was slightly different in nature, but slowly but surely each one was expanding. Breasts swelled, bellies ballooned, thighs and buttocks expanded, and the stitches of the contestants athletic suits complained vigorously as the wearers inflated more and more.
Sarah noticed that Sandy, valve on her helium tank almost full-open, was rapidly eclipsing her peers at the starting line. Everyone had started empty, but with each passing moment Sandy's expanding girth increased the margin between their sizes, within seconds becoming twice the size of the rest, then three times, then four. Other girls at the starting line began to cast worried glances in her direction. Some of them opened the valves on their tanks further in a bid to decrease the gap between their respective sizes. Sandy smiled around the hose in her mouth and reached down to the faucet-valve on the helium tank before her. She quickly turned it counter-clockwise until it reached the end of its threading and came off in her hand. She tossed the useless valve over her shoulder and closed her eyes contentedly as the helium now rushed into her body at the maximum rate now unhindered by any restricting valve. She was doing what she did best and knew it. She rested her free hand on her ballooning stomach and swelled larger and rounder with each passing moment.
Seeing that catching up with Sandy's inflation was going to be a sheer impossibility, the other contestants one by one held as much helium as they felt necessary and took off running down the track to their waiting teammates. Their movement struck Sarah as being somewhat ungainly, but it was evidently rather hard to move quickly while so overly inflated. One by one, they slowly traversed the hundred meters to their first set of teammates and quickly began to transfer the helium held inside their bodies to the new runner for their team. Each runner locked lips with her teammate, and flicked open the valve inside their own mouths, allowing the helium contained within their inflated bodies to begin to inflate their partner. As had been explained to Sarah, half the helium flowed into the new runner, and half remained in the first woman's body once the pressure differential inside both women had equalized. The newly-inflated runners took off down the track towards waiting third-leg team members. Sarah noticed that Sandy still stood at the starting line, now enormous beyond anything she'd imagined...she was gigantic, breathtakingly big. The bottom curve of her belly nearly touched the ground, the entire sphere of it nearly as tall as she was. Her breasts nearly occluded her face from view, such was the distance that they rose upwards. She didn't appear to be paying much attention, still resting her hand on her side and smiling around the hose in her mouth.
From a hundred meters down the track, Laurie yelled "Come on, Sandy! We're starting to get too far behind!" One by one, the other runners slowly made their gassy 'handoffs' to their new partners, quickly sending the newly ballooned girls off on the third leg of the relay race. "Come on, Sandy!" Laurie shouted again.
Sandy lifted her free hand from her side, and merely raised her index finger slightly, signifying "wait."
"Hurry up!" Laurie called again. "You don't need any more, that's too much as it is!" Sandy didn't appear to hear, and continued to grow larger. She was so large now that she was virtually covering four lanes of the relay track. Her expanding belly pressed now against the upright helium tank of a long-departed contestant, tipping the tank over as her girth continued to distend prodigiously. Officials began to glance back and forth at one another, concerned.
"Ma'am, you know this is a RELAY, yes?" Sarah heard one venture cautiously.
"Mmm-hmmm," Sandy agreed throatily around the hose in her mouth. Sarah watched Sandy's free hand gently testing her side, pressing in gently to gauge the firmness. Sandy smiled to herself.
"Sandy, come ON!" Laurie yelled again from her position further down the track. Then, with a whispering sigh, the roar of the helium rushing out of Sandy's tank slowly fell silent. Sandy, looking slightly disappointed, spat the hose from her mouth.
"You guys need to fill these relay tanks to the top next time!" Sandy reproached.
"Uh... sorry, ma'am. We didn't really think anyone would use....that...much, for a relay..." the same official that had spoken before replied. Without another word, Sandy arched her back, thrusting her truly gigantic belly into the air, and began to walk carefully down the track. Meanwhile, the rest of the relay teams had all made their final handoff. Sarah noticed that the fourth members of most of the teams weren't very inflated at all, holding only an eighth of the air the original runners had been holding as she'd been told.
As Sandy slowly carried her unbelievable girth down the track, impeded by the size of her belly and overinflated thighs, the fourth relay runners crossed the finish line back where Sandy had just left. One by one, Sarah saw race officials hold a tiny device to the lips of each girl, and write down a number on a clipboard. After this, each woman allowed her body to deflate, then turned to watch Sandy waddle down the track with widened eyes. When the very last girl had crossed the finish line, Sandy finally had reached Laurie. Sarah had no idea how Sandy was going to get close enough to her to transfer her helium. Surely she was too inflated. Sandy said something to Laurie then, but Sarah couldn't make it out over the distance.
Sandy grinned broadly, and then pressed her enormous girth against the ground, her abdomen pressing into the track just below her popped-out navel. The impact produced a loud, drum-like "DUNN!" audible even from Sarah's position. Suddenly, Sandy forcefully pushed off the ground with both her feet. It was almost a jump, but she kept her belly pressed against the ground, having pushed off the ground on a vector tangent to the sphere of her own overinflated belly. Slowly, she began to roll on the sphere of her stomach. She slowly rolled up and over until she was lying on top the great swell of her abdomen, her face held up to a level even with Laurie's despite the fact that she was lying down on top of herself. Sarah gasped at that... even lying down upon it, the bulge of Sandy's belly was over five feet high. She threw her arms around Laurie's neck, and Laurie learned forward to meet her, mouth to mouth.
Sarah could hear it all the way up in the stands when Sandy flicked open the release valve inside her mouth. The roar of helium rushing into Laurie's body was unbelievable. Sandy's mouth was much larger in gauge than the small-diameter hose that Sandy had used to inflate herself with, so the helium contained within her swollen body wasted no time in flooding into Laurie. Laurie's hands flew to her belly as she began to fill, unprepared for the speed of it. Her waistline distended by inches, then feet, then yards. Her leotard grew tighter and tighter about her as her belly, breasts, thighs, and buttocks grew increasingly full and taught. Sandy, the source of Laurie's inflation, gradually began to decrease in size. Within moments, Laurie was now so large that she pressed her own belly to the ground and lay face to face with Sandy, one of them deflating, the other rapidly inflating. After only perhaps fifteen seconds each was approximately equal in size to the other, though the shorter Laurie's belly looked much fuller and tighter than Sandy did. Sandy used her inflated thighs to squeeze as much of the remaining helium in her body out into Laurie by squishing the great ball of her stomach between her legs. Laurie ballooned slightly larger. Sandy at last relaxed her hold on Laurie and rolled herself backwards, landing on the balls of her feet.
Not used to being so enormously inflated, Laurie flailed on top of the sphere of her abdomen, trying to generate the inertia needed to roll back onto her feet. Sandy stepped forward, pressing against Laurie's side with her own inflated belly, rolling the redhead backwards onto her feet. Staggering backwards, Laurie turned and began to run as best she could down the track towards Lindsey, cradling her immense form between her palms. Lindsey, seeing how large the hugely swollen form of Laurie was as she waddled closer, paled slightly. When Laurie arrived, red-faced from the pressure inside herself, Lindsey stepped backwards in awe of the size of her relay partner. She was usually placed behind Laurie in these races, Sarah recalled, but Lindsey's demeanor said that never before had the redhead been of such a gigantic size.
"Take... some... of... this... helium... now," Sarah heard Laurie grunt. Hesitantly, Lindsey stepped into Laurie's embrace, squishing against Laurie's swollen belly. They locked lips then, and Laurie opened her release valve inside her mouth. Lindsey's inflation was not as rapid as Laurie's had been, but it was much more dramatic. Every milliliter of helium that escaped from Laurie's lips flowed into Lindsey's swelling thighs and buttocks. They swelled larger and fuller, stretching her yellow leotard tighter and tighter across her expanding seat until finally....BANG! The rear seam of her leotard busted open, exposing the bronze tan of her overinflated backside. She tried to pull away, surprised, but Laurie held her fast in her grip as the pressure hadn't yet equalized between them. Sarah watched in amazement as Lindsey's bottom distended amazingly, reaching an unbelievable size. Finally, Laurie released her, her own belly finally significantly emptied into Lindsey.
"Go, run!" Laurie urged her. Lindsey needed no urging, and took off at a rapid pace, her waddling run looking almost comical with her inflated thighs and bottom.
"You owe me for new pants!" Lindsey called over her shoulder, holding the rent in the seat of her leotard shut as best she could in spite of the amazing distention of her buttocks. She reached Amanda in a few moments, and the two rapidly pressed mouth to mouth. Lindsey's bottom slowly shrunk down to a smaller, albeit still amazing size. Consequently, Amanda's breasts filled and swelled inside her top, straining the material to the maximum and squishing against Lindsey. When the two at last disengaged, Amanda turned to run for the finish line, only to find her bosom so grandly inflated with helium that her endowments instantly floated up into her face, obscuring her view with an extreme close-up of her own cleavage. Sarah watched as she compensated by turning around again and ran backwards, looking over her right shoulder. At last, she reached the finish line. Grinning, she held her buoyant bosom down against her torso so that the dumbfounded official could press the pressure gauge against her mouth. Blinking with disbelief at the number, she double-checked the value, and then recorded Amanda's pressure and the team's total time on her clipboard.
The official that had measured the pressure in Amanda's breasts calculated some figures on her clipboard, blinked once in surprise, and then walked off the field and made her way to the small room next to the bleachers.
At length, the loudspeaker at the top of the bleachers behind Sarah spoke up: "Four-by-one-hundred mobility relay. First place: Sandy Mason, Laurie Washington, Lindsey Hall, Amanda White." After that, the speaker continued to read off names that Sarah didn't recognize. Down on the field, the four friends grinned at each other, and smiled at the applause from the stands honoring their admittedly odd performance. Evidently, the fact that they had completed the race holding so much more helium than everyone else had more than made up for their much slower finishing time.
Finishing reading off the results, the loudspeaker completed its announcement by adding, "Next event, Maximum volume time retention. Currently registered: Samantha Cartwright, Sandy Mason, Cindy Brown. If you wish to compete in the Maximum volume time retention event and aren't on the list, please come to the announcement booth right away."
Sarah saw Lindsey run back to the locker room, presumably to get a new pair of pants. The other three girls, deflated for the moment, continued back towards the bleachers where Sarah was seated. They had just reached the stairwell that lead up the the VIP area of the bleachers, when a woman in a cranberry unitard with white leggings came out of the locker room nearby the three remaining girls. Most of the newcomer's inflation was in her belly, though she was quite swollen all around. Her hair had been gathered up in a scrunchie up top, and dyed a curious shade of reddish-purple. Her overstretched cranberry unitard had the words "Helium Queen" emblazoned on the belly, each white letter stretched to a huge size by her distended yard-and-a-half belly. Surprisingly, she was just as big as Sandy had been earlier when Sarah had first seen Sandy in the locker room. The newcomer noticed the three, turned, and reached up with one hand to lower her glasses from her eyes and peer at Sandy. The newcomer said something to Sandy then, but Sarah couldn't quite catch it.
Sandy turned towards the newcomer then, and Sarah heard her say, "Oh, hello, Samantha," in a tired voice.
"A mobility relay race Sandy? How... quaint." Samantha said, Sarah barely able to catch her words over the distance. "Don't expect the volume events later on to be quite so easy," she said, smirking. Samantha turned, and walked off down onto the field with a sashaying strut that swung her ballooned bottom back and forth.
Sandy flicked an irritated glance in Laurie's direction then. "All I want is to beat her once. That's all it'd take to get her to stop doing that," Sandy grumbled. Laurie nodded in agreement with her friend.
Sarah reflected on what she'd heard. Evidently, Sandy had a bit of a rivalry with this Samantha woman. That didn't make much sense though, in light of how big Sarah had seen her get at the beginning of the relay. Maybe Sandy had trained so hard for the past few months that this other girl simply had no idea how big Sandy could get now? But that didn't explain Sandy's discomfiture when Samantha had derided her while coming out of the locker room. She must really be able to get to a size comparable to Sandy, then.
As she watched the three companions make their way up the stairs, she reflected on the fact that she'd first thought this building was a little too big. But if there was anyone here that was able to beat Sandy at inflation, then maybe the building was too small after all!
These so-called 'volume' events were definitely going to be something to see...