Alisa knew she had only herself to blame for her current predicament. She had had a difficult but rewarding life as an acrobat in her family's circus, and then an easy life when her parents won the jackpot in the state lottery. When she found that retirement didn't suit her, she ran away from home as a teenager, and joined a gang of bank and museum robbers. Her formidable talents made them and her a lot of money, but still she wasn't satisfied. Striking out on her own, she pulled off heist after incredible heist, until her fortune made her parents' pale in comparison -- all before the age of eighteen. Alisa could have retired comfortably years ago, but in her greed she planned just one more job. One ancient, legendary jewel, the "Eye of Helios", would complete her private collection, and then she'd end her career as the world's richest self-made teenage girl billionaire. So caught up in her own legend, she forgot one of the major rules of museum theft: always research her target.
She had plenty of time to reflect on her carelessness, as she floated hundreds of feet in the air.
Yes, the object of her final heist had turned out to be cursed. Everywhere it made contact with her bare skin, her flesh had blown up like a balloon. By the time Alisa realized what was happening, the gem had slipped from its holding place in her cleavage down to her groin, inflating everything it touched along the way. Her attempts to retrieve it from the depths of her catsuit had only gotten her hand wedged irretrievably between the engorged mounds of her chest. Somehow, she had made it outside, where at the break of dawn she discovered the true power of the curse: exposure to sunlight made her body lighter than air.
That had been about six hours ago. Six hours of drifting aimlessly through the sky, turning slowly end over end, watching the ground get farther away every time it came into view. Six hours of the sun beating down on her. It was the middle of summer, and blazing sunlight and black bodysuits didn't make a good combination. But even in her sun-baked upside-down misery, Alisa saw a glimmer of hope. She was sweating like a dog, and this lubrication was finally loosening her hand from the merciless grip of her cleavage.
Carefully, she slid it forward, towards the edge of the PVC. It was crucial that she not break free too soon. Her expansion had run her clothing out of slack, and her other arm and legs were held ramrod-straight. If her final limb joined them, she might never get out of this stupid catsuit. She curled her fingers around the top of the fabric and held on tight. Softened by the intense heat, it slowly began to distort.
All too quickly, her grip failed, and her arm snapped to attention at her side. For a few, agonizing seconds, Alisa held her breath. Just when she had resigned to being trapped forever in her personal plastic prison, the small tear she had managed to make began to lengthen. As it slowly worked its way down her belly, she shrugged her shoulders free, then extracted her arms as the entire suit began to disintegrate. When it tore in half across her crotch, the crystal rolled free across her inverted body, and she caught it her grasp as the shredded PVC fell away from her skin. Almost immediately, she realized her error, as her fingers bloated up like sausages. Before she could even decide to drop the gem, her hands uncurled of their own accord, and Alisa could only watch as the prize she'd gone through so much grief for plummeted away beneath her.
It soon became apparent that getting the Eye away from herself wasn't causing her to deflate; far from it, her body had only swelled larger once freed of its confinement, and between the loss of ballast and her newly-inflated hands, she was rising even faster now. As day turned into evening, a few hundred feet of height became a thousand, and there was absolutely nothing Alisa could do about it. She squeezed her naked body with all the strength she could muster. She called upon her gymnastic training, contorting into every position she could think of, as if the gas within would escape if only she could arrange an exit for it. But Alisa might as well have prayed to the Goodyear blimp.
As the setting sun began to dip below the horizon, she heard the soft sound of hissing. Tears of relief welled in her eyes as the sensation of rising gave way to gentle falling. But as the daylight faded, and her figure shrank, Alisa began to worry -- she was picking up speed, and the ground was still so far away. Faster and faster she descended, until the last rays of direct sunlight were gone. All at once, Alisa was back to normal -- normal other than being a hundred feet above the ground, that is.
--
She did realize she was lucky to be alive. Hitting every branch of that tree on the way down was the only thing that had saved her from a lethal impact with the dirt. Alisa only wished that it hadn't been an evergreen that broke her fall. Despite spending the entire day in the air, she hadn't been blown that far from home, and was able to find a road she knew. But to avoid exposure, she had to follow it from the cover of the woods, where needles and vines scratched at her naked body. Then a downpour had started, and Alisa had slippery mud to deal with on top of everything else. By the time she finally made her way home, just before dawn, she was scratched, bruised, caked with dirt, shivering from the cold, sleep-deprived, and so exhausted she barely had the energy to get in the shower.
As she washed the grime from her body, Alisa pondered on her situation. The museum she tried to rob had security cameras, and she had planned to erase their footage before she left. Of course, she had never gotten the chance to do so, and by now her face would be in every police station in the state, if not the paper and TV news. It was time for Alisa to disappear. Fortunately, she'd arranged a comfortable, anonymous retirement to a tropical paradise well in advance.
Meanwhile, miles away in the deep forest, the Eye of Helios lay exposed in a clearing. As the early light of dawn crested over the trees, it was answered with a glow from the center of the crystal. Golden light shone from every facet, until its brightness rivaled the sun itself.
This couldn't be happening, Alisa told herself. She'd dropped that stupid cursed gem almost a day ago. She didn't have it anymore. She didn't know where it was. She didn't WANT to know where it was, or have anything to do with it ever again. And yet, as she stood there in the shower, her body was inflating before her very eyes. It had started with a little bulge in her belly, which grew bigger and bigger as she gaped it at. As it was approaching third-trimester proportions, her swelling breasts began to obscure it from view. It took the sensation of her thighs touching to finally snap her out of her denial -- she he had to get out of the shower while she could still fit through the door!
As a trained acrobat, Alisa was familiar with her body in a way that most people weren't. Anyone can walk, run, stand up, sit down, and do other such mundane tasks without putting any conscious thought into them. But when your daily routine includes tightrope-walking, the trapeze, or laser-based security sensors, you need to know everything there is to know about your shape, your muscles, the range of your joints, and your center of gravity within less than a millimeter. Alisa had spent years memorizing the map of her body, and now it was being rewritten by the second. The upshot was that she currently had all the grace and balance of a pregnant cow walking on marbles. Lurching awkwardly out of the bathroom, she tried to steady herself, but with her hips constantly widening, her gait changed with literally every step she took. Every time she stumbled into a wall, her ballooning belly or butt bounced her back the other way, wreaking havoc on her sense of direction. As she rebounded like a pinball up and down the halls of her house, Alisa was helpless to direct her momentum as it grew and grew to uncontrollable levels. One unlucky ricochet, she feared, and she'd be launched from her home like a human cannonball, perhaps never to return.
Her chaotic path eventually led her to the living room. Alisa's ill-gotten wealth had bought her a huge, spacious mansion, and this was the biggest room in the house. The east wall was covered in windows, providing a splendid view of the sunrise, and it was in front of them that she finally collapsed to the ground. Gasping for breath, Alisa didn't notice the warmth spreading through her body. The sensation of rising in the air, however, was impossible to overlook. With the reflexes of a trained performer, she tried to grab the backrest of a nearby chair, but her swollen palms and sausage-like fingers denied her purchase, and she floated helplessly toward the ceiling.
As she drifted upwards, Alisa rose above the level of the windows, out of direct sunlight. Her body immediately cooled down, and she sighed with relief as she began to sink. But as soon as she fell back into the light, she warmed up and buoyed back again. It took only a few repetitions for Alisa to realize she was caught in an infinite loop: she couldn't get down far enough to touch the ground, nor did her upward trips give her enough momentum to reach the ceiling, and nowhere in her cycle did she get within ten feet of any solid object she could deflect off of.
For hours, Alisa could do nothing but bob up and down. At least being trapped in midair gave her time to think. It was obvious that even without touching the Eye of Helios, she was still caught in its curse. Helios... the Greek god of the sun, and namesake of "helium". So it was probably safe to surmise that she would inflate when the sun was up, and that direct sunlight on her body turned the air inside her into helium. If that was the case, unless she wanted to be nocturnal for the rest of her life, Alisa had to find some way to break the curse on her. That would probably be easier if she still actually possessed the freaking rock, but she had no idea where it had fallen while she was doing her floating act. She had only one lead: a certain antiques dealer who moonlighted as her fence. He was the one who had brought the Eye to her attention, and the only person she could trust with knowledge of her condition.
--
It was almost noon before the sun finally rose far enough above the windows for her to touch down. After arranging an appointment with the fence for tomorrow, she had spent the next few hours fruitlessly researching the Eye on the Internet. As the afternoon sun fell, she decided to try an experiment, coating her whole body in a thick layer of the most powerful sunscreen she owned, before stepping in front of the west windows. It was about as effective as a screen door on a submarine, and of course Alisa had neglected to make any arrangements to avoid falling into another yo-yo cycle. By the time the setting sun finally deflated her, it was too late to get anything else done. Having wasted an entire day, time was of the essence if she wanted to make good her escape before the authorities caught up to her.
Alisa woke an hour before dawn the next day, in preparation for the ordeal to come. The first thing to do was find something she could wear. Alisa wasn't exactly the girly-girl type; in fact, she didn't own a single dress. Her clothes tended toward tight shirts and jeans that accentuated her curvy figure, but when the sun came up she'd have far more curves than most of them could even begin to handle. And in addition to accommodating her ballooned body, whatever she wore would have to leave no skin exposed, or the other half of her curse would activate. But she couldn't just wrap herself from head to toe -- the police would be on the lookout for anyone obviously trying to conceal their identity.
Ultimately, Alisa was forced to improvise an ensemble from the components of other outfits. The first chosen item was a neon-green leotard-type top - sort of a cross between a turtleneck and a swimsuit. Its sleeves extended all the way to her wrists, the neck would cover hers without drawing attention to her face like a scarf would, and the closed bottom would ensure it didn't ride up over her belly. Due to the rather garish color, Alisa always layered it under other tops, but this time she'd just have to wear it straight. Below it went on a bright red pair of waist-high tights, a leftover from her acrobatics career. Owing to their origin, they were stretchy, yet thick and surprisingly sturdy, but that color didn't belong anywhere outside a circus. Still, anything that diverted the eye from her face would be a good thing, now that she was a wanted woman. A pair of long white gloves and a wide-brimmed sun hat completed the worst look she had ever worn -- seriously, she looked like a tube of toothpaste. With minutes to go before sunrise, she double-checked the curtains and blinds over her bedroom windows, stood in front of her full-length mirror, and waited for the show to begin.
Even though this was Alisa's third day of being cursed, it was her first chance to observe the changes in her body without any distractions. The first thing she noticed was a brief tingling in her belly. It quickly faded, giving way to a growing sensation of pressure deep within. As she watched, her flat abdomen puffed up into a gentle curve, distending outward as its upper edge rose up her chest. Her breasts, hanging loose under the fabric, morphed from teardrops into hemispheres, tenting her top as they swelled larger and larger. Turning around, Alisa craned her neck behind her to watch her hips flare out. Their relentless spreading gave her rear room to balloon high, wide, and round, jutting out behind her as her thighs thickened. And these incredible sights were accompanied by indescribable sounds: the stretching of skin and cloth, the gentle gurgling of her insides shifting, the occasional soft release of a little gas from one orifice or the other.
Something was wrong. She had either overestimated her outfit's elasticity, or underestimated the curse's power, or maybe both. The garments that were supposed to make room for her growing body were just squeezing her tighter and tighter. She had wisely forgone both bra and panties, but the intimate portions of her top were getting a little too intimate, and her bosom and belly were running out of room to expand. Meanwhile, that pair of tights, which Alisa once imagined could stretch enough to fit an elephant, was trying to strangle the life out of her butt and legs.
Just when she was wondering whether her outfit would burst before she did, her inflation trickled to a stop. With a sigh of relief, Alisa gave her back side a final appraisal. Now she looked less like a tube of toothpaste than a Christmas ornament, but both her body and her clothes were still in one piece. As she turned to get a look at her front, though, a glimpse of her side made her heart sink. Her waist-high tights were now barely hip-high, and her top's leg holes had distended upward to accommodate her bulging belly. Between them, enormous semicircles of bare flesh were exposed. She hitched up her pants until she heard stitches pop, but was still left with little slivers of skin unprotected from sunlight. None of her shirts could reach far enough to cover them, and wearing a jacket would be very suspicious in this hot climate. In desperation, Alisa grabbed a white scarf and tied it around her waist as a sort of belt/sash/sarong/random scrap of cloth thing. Finally, she was fully covered, at the cost of directing even more attention to her lower body. Everyone in a ten mile radius would be staring at her giant red hips and ass.
Alisa spent the next few hours learning how to walk all over again. This time, it wasn't just her unusual shape giving her trouble, but these constraining clothes restricting her range of motion. Even the tiniest stumble inevitably laid her out on the ground; trying to recover her balance was a losing battle against stiff, pressurized thighs stuffed like sausages into unyielding fabric. She could only walk at a bare mince: any faster, and her unmanageably broad hips set an exaggerated gait that inexorably tipped into an uncontrollable staggering run, leading ultimately to a forward dive and belly flop -- if she didn't hit a wall first, of course. And picking herself back up off the floor was an epic adventure long enough to fill an entire trilogy of novels... if they wrote novels about beached whales, that is.
It was almost noon by the time Alisa felt confident that she could walk down the street without falling on her face or ass. Midday would be a critical time for her, as her hat would only fully shade her face when the sun was directly overhead. Driving was out of the question; her hands lacked the dexterity to even turn the ignition. Fortunately, it wasn't a long walk into town. Unfortunately, she wasn't the only pedestrian, and the stares she drew were, if anything, even worse than she imagined. From the front, she could at least pass as a heavily-pregnant woman who couldn't afford a maternity wardrobe, but the back was a whole other story. Whenever she glanced behind her, every gaze, male and female, was fixated on her cursed booty as it gyrated obscenely. Little children pointed at her and asked if that lady was sick. Men were tripping over their own feet, and she was certain she had caused at least one traffic accident -- and probably several pants accidents as well.
Finally she reached the antiques store, and not a moment too soon. Somewhere along the way she had got a couple of plainclothes cops on her ass... on her tail... following her. Alisa quickly ducked inside, signaling her fence to distract them as she headed up the stairs to the roof. Once at the top, she locked the door behind her and considered her options. The plainclothes detectives couldn't follow her without blowing their cover, but it wouldn't take long for them to call in uniformed officers. A week ago, she could have easily jumped across to the next roof; today, she wasn't sure she could jump over a crack in the sidewalk.
A mosquito buzzed around her cheek. Trying to swat it away, Alisa misjudged her swollen hands and knocked her sun hat clean off her head. Dread filled her as the sun on her exposed face triggered the curse. She tried to pick it up, but her downward squat was checked halfway when her clothes ran out of slack. Trying to force her body farther down was a fight against insurmountable resistance -- her too-tight tights obstinately refused to yield another inch, and her leotard top bit deeper into her crack and crotch. In her struggle, Alisa lost her balance, and just barely managed to grab her hat as she toppled forward. Hugging it to the back of her neck, she was relieved to feel herself cool down and the roof reassert its pressure against her.
For the second time in three days, Alisa found herself stranded on a rooftop, trapped in her outfit, waiting to be arrested. This time, though, she welcomed the opportunity to be thrown in jail. Touching the Eye of Helios had dragged her into a living hell. Every morning for the rest of her life, her body would betray her. Daybreak would transform her from the pinnacle of gymnastic perfection to a pathetic creature who couldn't even touch her toes. She'd have to live as a vampire, because the slightest bit of sunlight could send her into the stratosphere. Forget the beach house in the Carribean; her new retirement home would have to be a cave in Alaska. Better to just let herself be locked up, where she could be sure of a roof over her head, even when she couldn't count on the floor under her feet.
Alisa was so wrapped up in her own misery that she didn't notice an ominous new development. Her squatting had put too much stress on those circus tights, and a major structural failure was imminent. Broken threads begat more broken threads, until the seat of her pants ripped wide open. Alisa gasped in horror as she felt her bubble butt break through to daylight. She brought her sun hat down to cover her ass, but it was like swapping a handkerchief for a tablecloth. With what little flexibility she could muster, she flipped herself over, draping it over her face. This brought her relief for a few seconds, until the crotch of her top snapped. Like a windowshade rolling up, it exposed her entire bloated belly, and no matter how she stretched, tugged, or pleaded, covering herself proved to be an impossible task.
Alisa was only about thirty feet high when the cops busted down the roof door. None of them thought to look up, and for her part she saw no need to make any such suggestion. They couldn't reach her -- nobody could reach her. Her clothes continued to disintegrate, and in less than a minute her outfit was reduced to gloves and shoes. A gentle breeze built up to a stiff wind, and Alisa soon found herself floating over unknown territory. This was no time to feel sorry for herself, she realized. She was a self-made woman, and her current situation was just another obstacle to overcome. She'd get back down to the ground eventually. She'd work around the schedule enforced on her. She'd find ways to use her condition to her advantage, like her recent escape from certain capture. She'd practice, and practice, until being inflated was as natural to her as breathing. She'd scour the world for every scrap of information on the Eye of Helios. And one day, Alisa would break this curse on her and take her body and her life back!