The Legend of the Balloon Ninja-Girl
Kamiko was a girl without any family or friends to speak of. She had silky long black hair tied into a long elegant ponytail and had a slightly muscular yet busty build. She was taken into custody at birth by a rice farmer and raised as one of his own children. His name was Yoshiyuki. He was a kind man who was never married, but he always took in orphans not only to have them work on the fields and help him, but just to feel the joy of raising young people into great adults. He had at least seven young girls working for him, ranging from the ages of 11 to 22. Kamiko was the oldest one. All of them were given food, drink, and a place to sleep, and they all adored Yoshiyuki as a father. Unfortunately tragedy struck on day where Yoshiyuki fell ill and died. His girls tried to nurse him back to health, but the disease was too powerful, even for a strong hardworking man like Yoshiyuki. All the girls were saddened by his death, but they tried to keep the rice fields running. Unfortunately the weather was bad during the rice harvesting season and the crops did not grow as expected. The failure of the crops grew so bad that the girls had no choice but to sell the rice fields. They managed to get adequate money since the man who bought the fields from them felt he could do something with them of good value, so the girls split up the money and went their own ways to find opportunity.
Kamiko had always been interested in martial arts. She tried to learn from strangers walking on the roads near the fields, and even tried to join a few dojos. Unfortunately the work on the farm prevented her from pursuing any form of martial arts. She was saddened by the death of good old Yoshiyuki, but she also knew she had an opportunity to finally do what she wanted to. She tried many dojos for various martial arts, but unfortunately many of them turned her down, many on the basis of her being a girl. Some that did accept girls were just too full to accept any more students. Angered by the sexism and limited opportunities she started traveling towards Nara, through a bamboo forest.
While shifting through the long sturdy trunks of bamboo, she came across an old abandoned shrine. It looked livable, and she needed a bit of rest before she got to Nara.
“I heard that there were some dojos taking women students in. I could hurry, but I don’t to tire myself out. They might want me to do some exercises to prove myself to them and I don’t want to disappoint them.”, she thought.
She lay down on the hard dusty floor within the large hall of the shrine and wrapped the blanket around herself that she carried with her.
“Funny, this place looks somewhat well kept, despite being abandoned. Oh well, it must have been deserted recently.”, she observed.
Shortly thereafter she went to sleep.
When she woke up, she had quite a surprise waiting for her. A middle-aged woman was looking at her straight in the face as she woke up. She was wearing a white robe and red hakama. She sort of looked like a Shinto priestess, but her long jet black, long regally styled hair and somewhat fierce looks suggested otherwise.
“Wha, what!? Who are you?” Kamiko exclaimed.
The woman drew a katana out of a sheath within her robe and planted the tip neatly under her chin.
“Any wrong moves or words, and I’ll plunge this blade through you. What are you doing here?”
“I, I…” Kamiko stuttered. Frightened that the crazy woman ronin could kill her in a heart beat.
“Look, just answer my questions and I won’t hurt you…”
“Okay, I, I, I just came to rest for the night.”
“What are you doing around this dojo?”
“D, D, Dojo!? This is a dojo!?”
“Yes, unofficially you could say. But it is of no importance to you.”
“Actually, it, it is.”
“What?” The elegant lady exclaimed.
“I’m going to Nara to look for a dojo to train at. I want to learn how to fight.”
“Is that so? Pah! Good luck! You’ll never find any openings there!”
“But, I heard they were taking women there!”
“Hmph! They have a bunch of chauvinist swine there! Just like anywhere else! I imagine you have been turned down many times, just for having breasts and a curvy figure!”
“Yes.”
The woman drew back her sword.
“Well, you are not going to find many opportunities in Nara, if not anywhere else in the land. Maybe you should try your chances here.”
“Here? What do you teach?”
“I teach a special martial art. One that only I know and practice, and nobody else knows it.”
“R, really? How special is it?” Kamiko inquired.
“Oh it is a amazing art which I have devised. And it looks like I have found my first pupil.”
“Is that so? Nobody else has taken your offer?”
“Well, I actually have had young girls much like you come by, who were eager to learn. But unfortunately they were not up to it. They did not like what it involved.”
“Is it a tough art?”
“You could say that. But I have confidence that one you learn it and see its advantages, you can learn to like it and use its strengths to your advantage. Despite what it may do to you.”
“I am willing to take on this challenge.”
“Really? Hmmph! All the other girls said that, and they went back to their mommies, crying like babies.”
“Well, what could make them hate this art so much?”
“How about I show you. Here, let me get something for you to put on.”
The lady went into another room to fetch something. Kamiko just sat there on the hard wooden floor bewildered at what was going on. She was excited that this woman had an art to teach her, but she was unsure what it was.
The lady returned with a strange shiny blue garment. It looked rubbery and thin while dangling in her arms.
“Here, go into a room and put this on.”
“These are clothes? They look strange.”
“You need to wear them for what you’re about to learn. The power of my technique is something that ordinary clothes cannot endure.”
“Well, I might as well try it on. I hope they are not too embarrassing to wear.”
“Nobody said that you had to be a fashion queen in order to be a kunoichi”
“Kunoichi? You going to make me a lady ninja?” Perkily remarked Kamiko.
“Yes, a ‘type’ of kunoichi. Now go and change!”
Kamiko went into a room on the far end of the dojo to change. After a few minutes she came out. She was wearing a dark blue skin-tight bodysuit that covered her entire body except for her head. It had a slight shiny luster and looked rubbery.
“My this is a strange garment. It sort of feels like rubber, like balloon rubber.”
“Ah, that is the point! Now here comes the next step.”
The lady took out a small round spherical pill the size of a penny.
“Swallow this please.”
“You’re not trying to poison me, are you!?
“For goodness sake, no! Quit worrying and just swallow it. You are not going to get poisoned!”
“Okay.”
Kamiko looked at the pill with a suspicious look on her face, but she decided that it looked innocuous enough to eat so she popped it into her mouth and swallowed it whole.
“Very good”
A few moments passed, Kamiko did not feel any different.
“Is something supposed to happen?” She remarked
“It takes a minute, it should happen right around now.” Replied the lady.
Kamiko suddenly grunted and twitched a bit. She felt this strange feeling in her stomach.
“You, you did poison me!”
“No I didn’t! Those are the effects you should feel!”
“What, what is happening to me?” Cried the despaired Kamiko.
“Just relax.” Replied the woman.
She noticed that the feeling in her stomach felt like a growing pressure, as if something was building up inside her. Sort of like how she would get gas from eating too many sweet beans.
“I’m filling up with something inside me! Is this power? Strength, what?”
“No, just gas.”
“What!?”
Kamiko then noticed that her belly had started to distend, and the sound coming within was a slight hissing sound.
“I’m, blowing up like a balloon!”
“That is the point, yes.”
“But why?”
Kamiko’s stomach swelled to the size of a 7-month pregnant woman. Then the gas within started distributing to her arms and legs, causing them to swell up.
“Well, this is what my method of martial arts entails.”
“Being a balloon!? Please stop! I feel like I’m going to pop soon!”
“You will not! Do not worry!”
Kamiko’s body had already swelled to well-rounded proportions. Her arms and legs were about as thick as large logs and her midsection had already ballooned to the size of a large beach ball. Her breasts grew as well, being the size of basketballs perched upon her expanding belly, but they were beginning to be absorbed into her inflating body. Her hands and feet had puffed up too, and her cheeks started to look blown up as well.
“No! Noooo! I need help!”
Kamiko started to waddle around, her legs, arms, and butt-cheeks squeaking like taut latex balloons being rubbed together. She felt really embarrassed at her bloated appearance. Her appendages were being absorbed even further into her expanding girth, making it almost impossible to move. Even her bloated hands could hardly close normally.
“Quit panicking! The tight rubber suit you are wearing will keep you in one piece! It allows you to inflate like this!”
“But why!? Why must you inflate me like this?”
“This is the test! To see if you are ready for this!”
Kamiko then realized that no matter how horrific she might look being turned into a human balloon, she had to show this lady that she could handle it. She had not seen many opportunities with any of the major dojos she has visited, and this might be her only chance to learn something. No matter how weird it might be.
“I’ll show you! I can handle being a balloon!”
“Well, show me then!”
Finally, Kamiko’s expanding body finally absorbed her arms and legs to the point of them being totally useless. They were now just flipper-like appendages poking out from her sides, her feet did not even touch the ground anymore. Her mammoth round balloon of a bottom was the only thing that touched the ground. She could only slightly flap her bloated and squeaky arms up and down, with her puffy hands opened permanently. The lady admired how the once slim girl was taking her transmogrification into a large gaseous mass better than the other girls who stepped up to the challenge. Patches of pink blush appeared on poor Kamiko’s puffed-up cheeks.
“Mmmmmmph! Cambt! Sbaeek!”
“No need to my balloon girl. You’re doing fine for now.”
Finally the hissing sound slowly stopped and Kamiko was now fully inflated. She was at least twelve feet wide and tall. She looked just like a round blue shiny balloon with four stubby protrusions that were once her legs and arms. Each hand and foot looked like mini-balloons inflated to one foot in diameter with five little round plump fingers or toes. Her cheeks were blown-up to about four inches in diameter each, and her breasts were just two large domes sitting on top of her large spherical body in front of her face. On her back you could see a short, slight crevice, her butt-cheeks were mostly absorbed into her spherical body, but a bit of her cleavage was still intact. The morning sunlight in the room made her have a slight shiny luster like a big heavy latex balloon.
“Ahhh, looks like you are full now my dear.” The lady proudly confided.
Kamiko felt horrible, but she was willing to endure this humiliating treatment to reach her goal of being taught a fighting style.
“So, do you think you want to go on with this? And learn the mystical art of the Fuusenkunoichi?”
She thought a couple minutes, really wondering if she wanted to do this. Blow herself up like a child’s balloon for her profession. But she could tell by the seriousness in the lady’s eyes that there was some sort of strange fighting art in her method, and she was willing to find out.
“Mi shallbfb.” She muffled out.
“Ahhh, looks like I’ve finally found a girl adventurous enough to learn what I have to teach! And I thought all girls these days were sissies! Ah hah hahh hah hah!”
“So, how sfhall I defrabte myselb?”
“How shall you deflate yourself? Well, that comes with what I’m about to teach you! But first you’ll have to learn how use your inflated body to your advantage!
Kamiko felt a shroud of despair fall over her. This was not going to be easy.
The mid-morning sun shined brightly down upon the bamboo forest surrounding the abandoned temple. Nobody would suspect that something was going on within, unless the occupants decided to come out.
Suddenly the two large screen doors lazily open up, pushed open by the middle-aged lady who lived within. She looked outwards from the steps of the temple momentarily, admiring the serene environment around her.
“My, it’s a good thing I found you today Kamiko. I’ve never seen such a beautiful day today.
Kamiko did not say anything. She just laid there propped up like the big round blue balloon that she had become with the lady’s special pill. Still shocked by her pneumatic transformation, Kamiko did not want to bother with speaking, since her puffed-up cheeks muffled her speech.
“You seem a little shy. Don’t worry I understand. But you should come outside and enjoy this beautiful day with me.”
Kamiko still stayed put. “How can she expect me to move around as a balloon!?” She thought.
Oh, I know what you’re thinking. Since your inflated to the maximum, your legs and arms cannot even move, or touch the ground. Well, you’re not going to need them anyways.
“Not need them? Well, what will I use to move around then!?” Kamiko thought once more.
“Try to think about this my dear. How does a balloon move around?” Kamiko thought for a moment.
“If you are a balloon, then you will have to learn how to float as well.” The lady replied.
“Butb. Donbt I neeb do be lrighterb thnb airb?” muffled Kamiko.
“That is true, but you have that ability as well. You can make the air inside you disperse slightly and cause you to easily become lighter than the air around you, causing you to float.”
“Whab!?”
“However, it is the most important thing to need to control. You do not want to float away now, do you? You have to keep the air within you steady so that it allows you to float around, yet with you in control of your body.”
“So, I canb flymb?”
“Yes! You can fly freely through the skies! Unhindered by gravity. But unlike a balloon which cannot think and control itself, you can.”
“It’s amazinb!”
“With this ability, you can float around on your own, and if you are good enough, you cannot be heard. You can fly into the most highly guarded compound in Japan and back out, and even the most vigilant guards will never know you are there. This is probably the best and most effective form of ninjitsu I have ever devised. I call it Fusenninjitsu.”
Just listening to what the lady had to say made Kamiko’s confidence perk up. It might be a weird and unorthodox method, but maybe it did have some very helpful advantages.
“The reason why I only choose women is because our bodies naturally are more flexible and stretchable than any mere man. Why if you were a man my dear Kamiko, you would have popped long ago. A woman’s body can stretch during a pregnancy, so I came to the conclusion that a woman could stretch her body even more when conditioned to.”
“May Ib askb a qwebtionpb?
“A question? Why of course.”
“Whab shalb I useb thisb sacreb artb forb?”
“What shall you use it for? Well for one thing, it is an art of great responsibility just like any other. I expect you to use this power only for the well-being of people, not for harming them.”
“Oh and one other thing my dear girl, no more talking please.” The lady added.
“Hmm?” Kamiko replied.
“Listen to yourself! You sound like a squirrel with its cheeks full of nuts! You sound so silly!”
Kamiko furrowed her brow and blushed in embarrassment. She hardly noticed how her speech was coming out muffled due to her puffed up cheeks.
“And remember, any ninja must rely on stealth and silence! You are not exactly an effective ninja if you are carrying on a conversation while snooping around!”
Kamiko made a mental note to say nothing at all. She herself knew that ninjas needed to be silent, but she also worried about how she could make no noise with her inflated body.
“Speaking of silence, try moving yourself around girl.”
Obeying the woman’s request, Kamiko was able to only slightly flap her arms and feet, but when she did she noticed some dull creaking and squeaking sounds came from her.
“Whenever you rub a balloon, it squeaks. Correct?”
Kamiko could only nod her head in agreement.
“This is what makes disciplining yourself a challenge with my technique. Your body constantly makes noise when in its inflated state due to the tight and rubbery nature of you right now. The suit helps you inflate to this size, but the rubber also works against you with its noise. This is why all your moves must be slight and cautious! And you will have to do this in many different states of inflation!”
She had never been lectured like this before, but Kamiko absorbed every word in her mind.
“By the way, do not worry about using any mannerisms to show that you agree or disagree with me. I only expect you to do what I show you!”
“She is going to show me everything? How can I trust her?” Kamiko pondered.
“But before we move on to improving your stealth, the most important thing right now is to control the gas inside of you.”
After hearing this, Kamiko’s eyes immediately lit up with glee.
“I can see you are eager to deflate yourself, but you will not release all the air out of you in a flash. It takes time when you are a novice. First, enter a state of meditation by closing your eyes.”
Kamiko gently closed her eyes.
“Then concentrate, focus on imagining what the inside of your body is like. Imagine all the gas inside and think about it being a part of you since it is inside you.”
“Concentrate, concentrate.” Kamiko chanted within her head. She imagined her insides as a giant cavernous space, filled with gas.
“Now spread that control of the gas to the control of your body. Just as a balloon can have the air squeezed out by a pair of hands, pretend that your body can gain strength over the gas inside you and force it out!”
The meditation made Kamiko feel more confident over her inflated state. She kept trying to imagine her control over the gas and then her body. She at first just shifted from one control to the other, but finally she could evenly shift her willpower.
Suddenly she heard a slight hissing sound. She increased her concentration a bit more and the hissing sound got louder and heavier. Kamiko felt her body contracting, squeezing the gas out of her available orifices, particularly her behind.
“Good! Good my girl! Now of course you cannot make this much noise while deflating, but that is something you will work on later.
Still concentrating and deflating, Kamiko took these words from her mentor to heart, and tried to control the sound of the air escaping. She scrunched up her face and tried to control herself even more…
…But suddenly her control slipped. The gas in her body immediately started to gush out in larger quantities, and the calm hissing sound immediately became a loud and rude fart-like blat.
Kamiko rocketed off the ground and started looping and zooming around the space in the forest like an overfilled balloon that’s been punctured. She screamed in fright as she helplessly bounced off of bamboo stalks and looped like a cart wheeler in midair.
Finally the air supply inside of her ran out inside and she landed butt-first on the ground, tumbled in a straight line, and stopped right at her mentor’s feet.
The woman just calmly looked down at the dizzy and disoriented Kamiko and shook her head.
Kamiko could only groan in pain. She sat up and rubbed her aching head. Her body was back to what it looked like before she inflated.
“Like I said, you should not have tried to concentrate on deflating yourself silently, that takes a different type of concentration. Instead you tried focusing too much on trying to control the gas coming out of you, and in the process your body did not accept the sudden change in tension.”
“Ohhhhhh, o---kay.”
“When inflated, you must treat your body gently in order to control it! You are in a very vulnerable state! By the way, are you hurt?”
“I, I don’t think so.”
“Good, it does not look like you are, so let us continue to the next lesson. Now you have to inflate yourself again.”
“What?”
“Yes, but this time you will not need the pill that I gave you the first time. That was just a concoction I used, since you and the other girls do not know how to inflate naturally from the start.
“Oh, I see. But is inflating myself just like deflating myself?”
“Yes! But instead it is the opposite way! Plus you have to use more effort on your behalf to let the gas fill you up. Now lets begin!”
Kamiko closed her eyes and tried to concentrate again.
“I see you are ahead of me again. Please do not try to jump ahead of me too much! I do not want to see you kill yourself.”
“Yes sensei.” Kamiko said.
“Right. Now this meditation is different from when you deflated yourself. Try to imagine yourself as the balloon again, except you need air now. Balloons in a way need air as a young baby needs mother’s milk. Try to imagine yourself communicating with the air particles outside, beckon them to enter you.”
Kamiko slightly furrowed her brow and started slightly sucking air in through her mouth.
“Now, pick up the pace a little more. But in little tiny baby-steps.”
Kamiko complied and carefully sucked in more air.
“Remember to concentrate on distributing the air to all parts of your body! Make the air miss your lungs!”
Now Kamiko focused on redirecting the air within her to other areas in her body. She could feel the air traveling not only to her midsection, but also to her legs, arms, and other cavities within her. Now her body was beginning to bulge outwards. Her stomach began to distend, and her appendages began to plump themselves slightly in unison to her expanding stomach. It was like the first inflation, but now every part of her body was more neatly coordinated.
“Good! Good my girl! You are filling up well!”
As she felt the stretching and tightening sensation all over her body, Kamiko felt a lot differently about her ‘second’ inflation. She felt an erotic sensation tingle all over her steadily expanding body as the shiny blue rubber of the suit pulled and tightened to accommodate her taut skin.
She expanded further and further, her limbs continued to bulge into round soft shapes and her body kept transforming into an orb-like appearance. After about a minute of inflating, she looked like a twelve-foot sphere in diameter, and her limbs were now half-merged into her large body. Kamiko’s cheeks on her face were full of air, making them bulge out. It was harder to suck in the air since her cheeks were in the way of the airflow, but she did her best to keep the current of air consistent. Just as she began lose balance and tip over onto her backside, Kamiko instead began to lift off into the air. She now was slowly flying off into the sky like a child’s balloon at a carnival.
“Before for you fly off my dear, I’ll have to keep you tethered!”
The woman grabbed a long loop of rope from her robe and quickly tied it snugly around Kamiko’s right ankle.
“You can stop filling up now. Let’s concentrate on flying.”
Kamiko stopped sucking in the air and she immediately stopped growing. She was at least fifteen or sixteen feet in diameter, both her arms and legs were just puffed-up cones sticking out of her huge globe of a body, with little hands and feet poking out of the tips. Her round cheeks had a noticeable blush on them since Kamiko still felt a little funny about inflating herself, but still she felt in control of her body.
“I’m surprised how quickly you learned how to control yourself, despite that little mishap you had a little earlier. But since you’re the only student I have had in a while, there is not really any other people to compare you with.”
As the woman spoke, Kamiko could only just look down at her with her eyes. She couldn’t even see the woman over the huge shiny blue dome that formerly was her flat muscular stomach. All she could do was judge that she was at least ten feet from the ground.
“Now since you are lighter than air, try to imagine yourself floating forwards in a straight horizontal line. Your willpower will allow you to navigate the skies.”
Kamiko started to imagine herself floating forwards in controlled flight. Immediately she began to move face first towards the bamboo stalks at the end of the clearing.
“Perfect my girl! Now remember to stop before you get too close to the bamboo poles!”
The poles were rapidly approaching, and Kamiko imagined herself stopping. However, this was a little more difficult than speeding up. She could only decrease her speed slowly whereas her acceleration began promptly and quickly. Kamiko kept focusing on slowing down, and she managed to get down to at least snail’s pace, but she bumped softly headfirst into one of the bamboo stalks.
This bump caused her to tumble upwards and in the meantime the knot around her ankle broke loose. She was now slowly floating upwards without much control. The woman tried to grab Kamiko, but she could jump high enough to reach. Immediately, Kamiko began to mentally panic, and sweatdrops began to bead from of the pores of her forehead.
“Do not panic! You need to keep in control my girl!”
“That’s easy for you to say!” Kamiko thought. “But, I need to keep myself stabilized!”
She tried to keep herself cool and collected, but Kamiko was at least fifty feet from the ground, and she was heading over the bamboo stalks and out of the view of the woman on the ground.
“Come back! Control yourself! Imagine your body stabilizing back into a horizontal straight line!”
The hapless Kamiko had flown completely over the tall imposing stalks of the bamboo forest, and was now gone from the woman’s sight.
All the woman could do was close her eyes and sigh in disappointment.
“I cannot believe I failed. And now I have probably caused that poor girl to sail off into oblivion.”
“And I did not even know her name.”
The saddened woman hung her head low and headed back to the abandoned temple. She entered and slowly closed the door behind her. Immediately the lady walked to the middle of the temple, sat down on the floor, and cross her legs. All she could do was meditate and think about what she did wrong, and to the days when she felt like a more capable teacher.
After about five minutes of somber reflection, the light entering the cracks in the old rickety temple’s ceiling planks was suddenly blocked by a large object passing in front of the sun. The woman opened her eyes and took notice.
“Could it be? Did she make it?” She questioned. “Then again, It might be just a hawk.” The woman closed her eyes again.
A few moments later, she heard a knock on the temple’s door. She opened her eyes, quickly got up, and walked carefully but swiftly towards the door. Upon reaching the door, the lady grabbed its edge, slid it back, and saw Kamiko staring back at her. Kamiko was floating right near the entrance to the porch that lead up to the doors of the temple. She steadily hovered one foot off the ground and looked like she was in total control. After the lady opened the door, Kamiko began to float backwards, and the she stopped.
“It looks like I still have underestimated your ability to learn, my dear.”
Kamiko little pout lips, squeezed between her balloon-like cheeks, curled up into a little smile. The woman followed with a quick little confident grin herself, but then she asked Kamiko one question…
“By the way, what is your name?”
Kamiko rolled her round pneumatic body towards the right until her hand was pointed towards the ground. She stuck her finger out and began to write her name in kanji in the dirt below her. After she was done, Kamiko floated upwards a bit to allow the woman to read.
“Kamiko? What a fitting name.”
The woman stepped forwards, and began to speak.
“My name is Tomoko. I am the only keeper of the art of the Fuusenkunoichi. I have had few students, and now I am happy to have you as one of my pupils.”
After listening to Tomoko, Kamiko rolled to the right again and wrote a sentence into the dirt, and it read…
“Mata keiko kudasai?” (Can I learn more?)
Tomoko smiled and said, “Well then, we might as well.”
It had been a couple of weeks since Kamiko began her training with Tomoko-sensei. During this period, she refined her skills at a rapid and efficient rate that impressed Tomoko. By the end of the first week, Kamiko was able to not only inflate and deflate herself with hardly any mishaps, but she could do so in half the amount of time it took her on her first try. Tomoko-sensei would start off each day at six in the morning sharp. If Kamiko didn’t get up in time, Tomoko would just roll the groggy girl out of bed and have her quickly eat her plain breakfast of fried rice and miso soup.
The first part of Kamiko’s daily workout involved a thirty-minute stretching session where she contorted and stretched her limbs and body to warm it up. Then she slipped into the tight shiny rubber dark blue suit that covered her entire body, except for her head. Inflation and deflation exercises were the next step in Kamiko’s daily start-up. It was like stretching but in this case, Kamiko blew herself up larger with each puff of breath she took, and then she’d quickly deflate back to normal size. The larger she got each day; the quicker she would be able to attain that size. After the warm-up regimen was complete, Tomoko-sensei would take Kamiko outside to practice more flying and floating maneuvers. Kamiko learned how to fly stably and quickly as the days passed, and by the middle of the second week, Tomoko let Kamiko do more complex moves, such as diving, rocketing into the air, loops, and even barrel rolls. As Kamiko kept learning more about her newly-found and uncanny abilities, she enjoyed them much more than she used to.
It was a calm and clear summer Friday night at the old temple. Tomoko was staring up into the sky at a large floating shiny blue orb. This orb was a heavily inflated Kamiko whom had actually managed to inflate herself to a record twenty feet in diameter within less than forty-five seconds.
“My, I did not know they made young girls so elastic these days!” Tomoko joked.
The proud yet focused inflatable kunoichi above just grinned slightly at her sensei’s witty remark.
“Well I have to admit, you have come a long ways ever since that bumbling day I first met you! Thankfully you have the spirit and gusto that many girls lack! Anyways, deflate yourself and come back down to earth, its dinnertime.”
Kamiko’s eyes instantly perked up at the mention of supper, so she immediately let the air within her giant voluminous body exit her and a brisk yet steady rate. After about twenty seconds, all the air was out of her body. The newly thin and slender Kamiko stood before her teacher.
“Hmmm, you deflated quite well! But soon I will have you inflate to the size you just were in the amount of time it took you to let all that air out.”
“Yes sensei.” Kamiko replied.
“Now, come into the dojo, let us prepare a nice hearty meal. I went to town and bought some pork to put into our rice.”
“Really?! Pork? You are too kind sensei!” Kamiko beamed.
“Please do not make a big deal of it! It makes sense that since you have been such an able student for the past two weeks that I keep your morale up by rewarding your exploits.” The stately sensei lectured.
Both the red hakama-wearing woman and her blue rubber clad student entered the temple. Kamiko closed the door behind her.
A mile from the temple, a group of four disheveled bandits strolled among the towering bamboo stalks of the forest. One was a short grungy fellow with hairy legs and a brown robe that carried a large hammer over his right shoulder. He walked in front of the group, obviously acting as the leader. On both sides of him followed a pair of medium-sized lanky twins. The brother on the left of the gang leader wore grey clothes while the one on the right was in red. Walking at least six feet behind the threesome was a huge fat bald man in green cradling a stone club within his beefy tanned arms. They were a motley-looking group all right…
“We’ve been wandering around this damn forest for a couple of days! I want to get the hell out!” the twin in red groaned.
“I told you that the rock pile we saw a while back was the same one we saw before, and before, and before, and…” the twin in grey added.
“Shut up Yoshiro!” the diminutive leader snapped. “We don’t need you to make this mess sound even worse than it does now!”
“We haven’t seen that same rock in a while.” the elephantine behemoth in back grunted. “Looks like we’re going somewhere now.”
“You know Goro? I’ve always said that you’re smarter than what you look like.”
“Thanks.”
“But I’m still going to call you a fat dumb nitwit!”
“Oh, so I’m the one who everyone needs to be angry at?”
“Yes!”
“Say Mori.” the red twin interrupted. “Look to the left here, it looks like there’s a big pocket of light coming from that cluster of stalks over there.
“Eh?”
Little Mori looked over his left shoulder and noticed the light his companion pointed out.
“Well dammit! Looks like we’re finally getting somewhere Toshiro!” Mori gleamed.
The group of belligerent banditos waltzed right towards the light. It began to look more and more like an exit and finally they stepped out into the clearing.
“Hey! This is just a clearing!” the disappointed Goro said.
“Hmph! And just to think we were actually getting somewhere!” noted Toshiro.
“Hey boss! You think that old temple there might have something?” Yoshiro pointed out the old temple at the far end of the clearing.
“Eh, most of the time temples don’t have nothing.” Mori rebutted.
“What about a gold Buddhist statue Mori?” Goro asked.
“Um, this is a Shinto joint here you lummox.”
“Hey, we might as well stay there Mori. Its getting dark and we could spend rummage around a bit and see if there’s anything worth swiping.” Yoshiro said.
“Eh, we don’t have any choice. Plus if there’s a bum living in there we can beat the daylights out of him just to let off some frustration.”
“Hee hee, I haven’t had the luxury of doing that for a while!” laughed Goro.
“Well, let’s go in!” Mori commanded.
Inside the temple, Kamiko and Tomoko sat at the small dinner mat facing each other. Both of them had a bowl that was filled to the brim with fried rice and pork bits.
“You should enjoy this Kamiko-chan. It’s a simple yet treasured recipe passed down by my family.”
“I can tell! It smells so good sensei! It reminds me of the food Yoshi-san used to serve me.”
“He was the man you took you in, correct?”
“Yes! He was so kind. I can’t believe he passed away. Me and the girls were all heartbroken to tears for almost half a year.”
“That is understandable. He seemed to be a very good man. Someone I wish I could have met in person.”
“Yeah, anyways, let’s not dwell on the past so much, I’m starving!”
Kamiko and Tomoko began their meal. Kamiko was inhaling the bowl of rice and pork in front of her at a rapid pace.
“Slow down my girl! You keep eating like that and you’ll become a blimp!” Tomoko scolded.
“But I already do that everyday!” Kamiko replied.
“Oh yes, you do. But anyways, you shouldn’t eat like such a slob! Did Yoshi ever teach you proper eating etiquette?”
“Eh, we did grow up on a farm. It wasn’t a big deal for us.”
“Ah, go figure.”
“Sensei, are you still a member of a samurai family?”
“In essence, yes. But unfortunately my master and superiors have all passed away. It was tragic, and even more so since I did not have any other houses to turn to. So I guess you could call me a wandering woman warrior.”
“A female ronin?”
“Yes, but like you said, we should not dwell on the past right now. I will tell you more as time passes and you become better with your skills as a fuusenkunoichi!”
The elegant Tomoko and rubber suited Kamiko kept on eating, oblivious to Mori’s gang looming a few feet away from the walls of the temple.
“Food! I smell food!” Goro whispered.
“And good food too!” Toshiro added. “I can pick up traces of pork!”
“Ah meat, how I miss thee!” lamented Yoshiro. “Let’s run in there, bump off whoever’s inside, and have a feast!”
“Now hold on you two!” cautioned Goro. “Before we carry out this plan, we need to think it out. Toshiro! Yoshiro! Put your ears up to the wall and try to determine who’s in there!”
The twins both went up to the wall of the temple and placed their ears flat upon the hard wooden surface. After about thirty seconds of careful listening, they knew what was going on inside.
“Okay, there’s a pair of women in there, and I’d say they are probably in the middle of the room.” said Yoshiro.
“You know how big the main area is within these temples boss.” Toshiro added, “We should probably have one guy on each side of this building and get in through the window, that way we can overwhelm the two gals inside.”
“Peh, a pair of women in this part of the woods!? They must be insane! We can take them out, rob them, and of course have our way with them!” Mori chided. “We don’t even need that plan, but it will make things more fun!”
“By the way boss.” Goro spoke up. “The windows are boarded up, but we could probably break them down easily.”
“Hey, you’re the big muscle around here Goro. Besides, when the two waifs in there see your big blubbery mug, they’ll be frozen with fright too!”
“That’s mean boss. Girls like me for my robust looks.”
“You’re about as robust as a overfed pig, that’s the problem fatty.” Mori sneered. “Well gang, let’s get this plan going! Goro takes the opposite side, and you two can take any of the remaining two! I’ll just take the grand entrance here.”
The thugs ran off to their respective sides and started their break-in.
Kamiko and Tomoko just finished up their meal and were now cleaning up their dining mat. They both walked towards one of the rooms in the back if the temple when suddenly Tomoko stopped dead in her tracks and turned her head to the left.
“Sensei? What is wrong?” Kamiko asked.
“Kamiko, when we get to the closet, put the dining set away and hide there! Do not come out!” Tomoko ordered.
“Is someone outside?” asked the frightened Kamiko.
“Just go!” Tomoko commanded.
Both Kamiko and Tomoko ran briskly towards the closet in the back of the temple, Tomoko threw the mat she was carrying into it and then ran off into a room next to the closet. Kamiko heeded her teacher’s words and hid within the closet. She closed the door, but left it slightly ajar so she could observe what was happening in the main hall. Thumping sounds emitted from the room next to the one Kamiko was in. It sounded like Tomoko was changing her clothes.
“Why on earth would Tomoko-sensei be changing her clothes at a time like this?” Kamiko thought.
Kamiko also heard what sounded like rubber being stretched. This puzzled her even more.
Finally, the wooden front doors exploded in a shower of splinters and dust. Mori then steadied the huge hammer he just swung with and ran into the middle of the room yelling like a madman. Shortly thereafter, Yoshiro broke in through the boarded up window on the east side of the temple while his brother Toshiro followed suit on the west side. They both used their powerful fists to punch through the rotting wood that weakly kept the windows shut up. They walked to the middle of the room to meet with Mori.
“Hey boss, where did the girls go?” said the puzzled Toshiro.
“You got me! I guess the little slags knew we were coming!” fumed Mori.
“Maybe Goro’s wonderful ‘stealth’ abilities alerted them.” Yoshiro snarled.
“It figures, that Goro would make even a Taiko drum seem low-key.”
Suddenly, the ceiling above the trio suddenly burst into a rainfall of wood and tile, and Goro fell belly first onto the floor, with his enormous club still grasped within his right hand.
“I thought we told you to take the back end you dip!” yelled Mori.
“I couldn’t find a window back there boss, so I just decided to do the roof.” coughed Goro.
“Well thanks to your wonderful dance on the rooftop there, the ladies we could have so easily subdued in here have flown the coop.”
“Not quite!” yelled a voice from the front of the temple.
“Who’s there!?” yelled Mori.
The thugs immediately turned towards the now doorless front entrance of the temple to find Tomoko standing there. She was not in her traditional robe and hakama ensemble, but instead she was dressed up in a full body crimson red rubber suit, just like Kamiko’s. This suit however covered Tomoko’s mouth, nose, and back of her head. She grasped what looked like a short katana in her right and also had some sort of grappling arrow device attached around her left wrist.
Kamiko was still watching everything behind the small crack in the door. She knew that her mentor was about to demonstrate the art of the fuusenkunoichi in full force.
“Heh it looks like we’ve got a kunoichi challenging us Mori!” said Yoshiro.
“Wow, that thing she has on looks really tight.” remarked Toshiro.
“All right woman…” announced Mori. “Just to let you know, we’ve decided to crash by here for a bit. We’ve had a tough day of wandering around this damned forest.”
“Somehow I do not think shattering the doors open is an appropriate way to invite yourselves.” Tomoko snarled.
“Hey, it gets doors open for us. The owners don’t usually appreciate it, but they are usually either beaten into submission or killed. You don’t tend to notice those details when that happens to you.” Mori said.
“Well, tonight we are going to have a bit of poetic justice. You will now assume the roles of your victims.”
“Look lady, four guys against one weak woman in a very erotic, yet bizarre red outfit does not sound like good odds, is that right boys?”
Mori’s cronies cheered him on in support.
Suddenly, Tomoko started sucking in air. Her body began to plump and round out rapidly. Kamiko and the thugs could only stare in awe as Tomoko inflated herself to a large fully round orb within a period of three seconds. As Kamiko witnessed Tomoko’s ultra-fast expansion, she could not believe that she too would have to match her sensei’s feat.
“B… b… boss! That woman just blew herself up like a balloon!” stuttered Goro.
“How the hell did she…” gawked Yoshiro.
“Um, that is quite bizarre.” Mori replied.
Tomoko’s huge red and shiny blimp-like body began to move backwards and outside. She creaked a slight grin through her puffed-up cheeks clad in red rubber and shot off straight up into the sky.
The band of thugs ran out the door, stopped, and looked up into the spot in the sky where Tomoko had just flown off into. They could not see her anywhere.
“Well that was a waste of our time.” Toshiro remarked.
“Heh, a woman that can blow herself up like a pufferfish and fly around… That’ll get you somewhere.” giggled Goro.
“Eh, she probably flew off to leave us alone.” Yoshiro added.
“Uh, guys? She was talking about fighting us…”
Mori’s words were suddenly cut short when a sharp whizzing sound pierced the air and a arrow attached by a string wrapped around Mori’s neck. Just as Mori gagged and tried to grab his snagged throat, he dropped his huge hammer and was towed up into the air. Right above the roof of the temple was Tomoko. She had floated there unnoticed and fired her grappling arrow at Mori.
“Boss! Boss!” yelled Goro.
All Mori could do was heave and wretch uncontrollably. He was getting choked by the string wrapped around his neck as Tomoko reeled him in like a fish. After a moment, Mori was now dangling and wiggling a few feet below the spherical floating Tomoko. She began to spin herself around, flinging the hapless Mori alongside her. Faster and faster she spun like a magical flying top, swinging Mori like a tetherball until she finally strained her thumb over to a button on the grappling device on her wrist and pressed it. The arrow and string instantly unraveled, and Mori careened off into the distant forest screaming. He flew faster and faster into the distance until he disappeared into the orange glow of the setting sun.
Goro, Yoshiro, and Toshiro could only stare with their jaws on the floor at what just happened to their boss.
Goro however bellowed out a war cry and began to wind up for a swing at the out-of-reach Tomoko.
“You will pay for this you bloated witch!”
Tomoko fired her grappling arrow device at Goro’s stone club and firmly snared it. Goro stopped his swing and just muttered, “Huh?”
Immediately Tomoko began to inflate herself again. She quickly stretched her body out to about an unbelievable diameter of almost forty feet. Now she looked like a giant globe in the sky, with just tiny hands and feet sticking out of their respective sides. Her cheeks were puffed up enough to effectively obscure half of her face. This increase of lifting gas gave Tomoko enough leverage to lift the corpulent Goro and his great stone club into the sky. All the oafish Goro could do was dangle at the end of his club. He was too shocked and dumb to do the smart thing and let go of his prized club. Tomoko just kept lifting him higher and higher into the sky until he was at least fifty feet off the ground.
“P… p… pleeeeeeease! Quit it! I’m afraid of heights!”
Goro’s plea fell on deaf ears, as Tomoko began to spin around again, swinging the bald giant around just like she did to Mori beforehand. She had to spin around a little longer to allow the proper force to propel Goro into the same flightpath that Mori traveled. Finally, Tomoko let her grappling arrow loose and Goro flew off hollering into the golden sunset.
After sending Goro on a one-way ticket to oblivion, she turned towards Yoshiro and Toshiro on the ground. She deflated herself to a diameter of fifteen feet within a matter of seconds. She unsheathed the small katana around her right wrist and began to charge towards the frightened twins on the ground.
“You know brother; I really don’t feel like flying today.” Yoshiro said.
“Me neither. Let’s just run instead.” Toshiro answered.
The two twins turned their backs to the mistress balloon ninja and ran as fast as they could into the bamboo forest. Tomoko stopped her advance and stared at the area where the duo ran off into.
“Cowards” She thought.
Tomoko then heard a voice call out “Sensei?” behind her and she turned around to find Kamiko standing at the gaping hole that used to be the front door.
The rotund ninja-lady in red looked at Kamiko briefly before she began to slowly deflate herself back to her normal self. After she touched down back onto solid ground she walked towards Kamiko.
“Now you know how the art of the balloon ninja can be used. It is a great power that not only takes time to master, but the wits to use in a dangerous situation.”
“I was terrified back there. But I was in awe of your skill sensei. Please teach me to have more courage whenever I have to fight like that.” Kamiko pleaded.
“Well, we still have plenty of time to learn my pupil. That is all you need to have in order to reach your new expectations.”
“A little more to the left Kamiko!” Tomoko yelled.
“How much?” Kamiko replied.
“When I tap you, that is when you stop!”
Kamiko was inflated to at least forty feet in diameter. She was able to stretch her body to this size in about thirty seconds. She still was not as fast as the masterful Tomoko, but it was still a noticeable improvement. Tomoko hung precariously onto the rope wrapped around the ballooned Kamiko as it tugged on the roof cover that both she and Kamiko had built after they finished the replacement door. Her hawk-like slanted brown eyes judged the position of the hovering cover over the gaping hole in the roof. She poked Kamiko’s firm and shiny blue rubber body.
“Now! Stop now!”
“Do you want me to start descending?”
“Hold on, let me double-check… Yes! Now you can drop down, but carefully! You were a little too harsh when we put the door in place!”
Steadily, Kamiko began to hover downwards. She struggled to keep her balance so that the cargo she was carrying would drop exactly onto the spot her mentor wanted it to. Fifteen seconds later and ten feet lower, the new patch finally touched down and settled snugly onto the roof. Almost immediately, Tomoko drew her knife and cut the rope over her head. She dropped down and landed right on her feet upon the cover.
“Good job my girl! You can go back down to the ground and deflate while I nail the cover into place!”
Tomoko drew a hammer and box of nails from her hakama and kneeled over to begin hammering. Kamiko slowly floated over to the ledge of the house and began to let out air with a slight hiss. She dropped out of sight.
After about ten minutes, Tomoko hammered in the last nail for the cover.
“Good thing it did not rain today! It would have ruined the floor finish!”
“Sensei!” Kamiko cried out.
“Yes, I’m done Kamiko! Come to the ledge!”
The deflated Kamiko ran towards the house as Tomoko-sensei walked to the edge of the roof, jumped off, and landed perfectly on her feet.
“You were a good help today my girl. But now I have a new task for you.”
“What is that sensei?”
“I am going to teach you the ‘Fuusen no Kata’ Kamiko.”
“A kata?”
“Yes.”
“What is a kata?”
“A kata is a combination of all the moves that you have learned in a martial art my girl. You already know the moves, now you have to use them in a sequence that will blend them all together.”
“Is this some sort of test?”
“In a way yes. It tests not only your skill of each move, but how you can use them in a combat situation. Obviously you are not actually fighting any opponents, but you have to imagine yourself doing so. And when you have to use the moves in real life, you can do it skillfully.”
“Yes sensei.”
“Now, come inside, let us get started.”
It took Kamiko two months to master the kata that Tomoko taught her. Even though it was tough to connect each and every move, she finally managed to master it to the point that she felt ready to formally demonstrate ‘Fuusen no Kata’ in front of her teacher.
The naked Kamiko stood in the dark closet as she started slipping into the new blue rubber suit that Tomoko sensei had given her. She could smell the incensed oil that lubricated the inside surface of the suit. It smelled like the beach would during a musky fog. It was a peculiar smell but Tomoko said that it would not only help Kamiko stretch better, but would soothe her nerves during the ritual demonstration. She eased her legs into the rubbery mass and pulled the suit over her hips and waist. It stretched and conformed to her curvy and firm figure, the back end of the suit squeezed into her butt cleavage, keeping its skin tight nature. Deep down, Kamiko got a very erotic feeling from the soothing feel of the feel of the rubber kissing the surface of her skin, but she pushed it aside since she needed maximum concentration.
She kept cocooning herself with the shiny smooth rubber and finally eased her arms into their respective positions. This suit was much like the previous one Kamiko used, but now it had a mask molded into it. As Kamiko pulled the neck of the suit, she began to cover her mouth with the mask attached. It covered not only her mouth and the bottom half of her nose, but also the back of her head, Kamiko then grabbed a black wooden bandanna on the floor next to her and placed it onto her head. On the front part of the bandanna were two red kanji symbols that spelled out ‘fuu-sen.’ She pulled it down to the same level as her mid-forehead and slid the rubber on the back of her head underneath the bandanna’s back. She adjusted it to make sure everything was neat and level. Just to ensure that no air was trapped under her suit, Kamiko patted her entire body with her hands to make sure. Then she leaned over, grabbed a medium-sized blue rubber strip, and tied her silky jet-black hair into a ponytail with it. Everything looked perfect.
The final touches to her prep were the grappling arrow device and the mini-katana. Kamiko wrapped the leather straps of the grappling device over her left wrist and slid them into the metal buckles attached to the other ends of the straps. She adjusted them only slightly, she did not want to make them tight at all. The loop of the straps hung at least an inch below her slim wrist; Kamiko did not want them to cut into her arm when she would inflate. She picked up the sheathed mini-katana and attached it similarly to her right wrist. She stood upright for a second, breathed deeply, and then exhaled slowly.
“Good luck.” Kamiko thought to herself.
Kamiko slowly slid open the door to the dressing closet, stepped outside, and closed it behind her. While walking out into the large open hall, she noticed her teacher Tomoko sitting with her back against middle of the east wall of the temple. Tomoko’s eyes were fixed onto the shiny blue girl, but Kamiko immediately looked straight ahead.
“Please come forward.” Tomoko said.
Upon hearing Tomoko’s command, Kamiko stoically walked towards the middle of the room. When Tomoko got there she kneeled down, and then bowed her head to the ground.
“Onegai shimasu!” asked Kamiko.
“Hai doozo.” Tomoko replied.
Upon hearing Tomoko’s approval to begin the kata, Kamiko broke out of her kneel, stood up, back straight, buttocks tightened, chest in the air, and with both feet together.
“Fuusen no kata!” yelled Kamiko.
Immediately but slowly, Kamiko spread her arms and legs far apart, still looking straight ahead. She took six quick breaths, paused, and then began the kata.
Suddenly, Kamiko began to suck in a huge amount of air. Her developed lungs suctioned the air around her and diffused it to the many parts of her body. Her slim figure began to quickly plump up and bloat outwards. The rubber surrounding her skin began to creak and squeak rapidly, just like a balloon would when it is filled up via the nozzle of a helium tank. Faster and faster Kamiko’s body inflated outwards, her bulbous legs and arms absorbed themselves into her rounding out midsection. Finally after only five seconds of rapid inflation Kamiko stopped. She was now a round blue balloon at least fifteen feet in diameter. She floated two feet straight up into the air, turned onto her stomach, and quickly floated forward.
Her right hand reached onto the handle of her mini-katana and briskly unsheathed it. As she drew her primary weapon, she swung her orb-like body to the left and swung the sword within her hand. Then her diminutive head rotated to the floor while she prepped the grappling arrow in her left hand. When the left hand was leveled straight, she discharged the arrow and shot outwards towards the empty air. Quickly Kamiko’s left thumb reached over and pressed down on a button to reel the rope and arrow back into its original place. After this had occurred, the rotating balloon-girl leveled her head again relative to the straight plane of the floor, and she rapidly deflated herself to a diameter of ten feet. Suddenly she shifted towards the right, then the left, and then forwards. When she charged forwards, Kamiko let off a loud “Kiai!”
Immediately, Kamiko drew back five feet, inhaled, and inflated herself back to fifteen feet in diameter. She floated upwards to the ceiling and turned her head towards the ceiling. Then she swiftly dove backwards, butt-first, at an angle of forty-five degrees, and shot towards the wall on the opposite end of the observant Tomoko. Kamiko stopped just one foot away from the wall, turned onto her back, and charged forward at a level angle of forty-five degrees. After about ten feet, Kamiko stopped in mid air, and then traveled to the left at forty-five degrees. Ten feet later she stopped, rolled back onto her front, did a backwards barrel roll, flipped forwards, drew her sword, and swooped downwards, slicing her sword through the air. Right after this impressive aerobatic attack, Kamiko swiveled horizontally slightly to the left, and discharged her grappling arrow. She left the arrow discharged, but began to spin around on her belly like a top. Kamiko spun around faster and faster, until her head began to look liked a black blurred line on the middle of her orb-like body. The grappling arrow swung around like a gondola on a Ferris wheel. As she increased to maximum speed, she floated upwards until she was barely touching the ceiling, and then began to slow down. After a few seconds she came to a stop, her head faced towards Tomoko again.
Kamiko still kept herself cool, collected, and mentally aware. She floated back to the middle of the room and closed her eyes. Suddenly, she flew sideways to the right at breakneck speed. When she reached the end of the room she stopped on a dime. Then Kamiko quickly rocketed to the left, all the way to the other end of the room where she stopped. Immediately, the nimble balloon-ninja flew to the left again and stopped right back at the middle of the room. Right after her stop, Kamiko quickly flew backwards to the wall behind her and stopped. Next she swooshed to the front of the room and stopped right in front of Tomoko. Kamiko’s chin was only a mere inch away from Tomoko’s forehead. Slowly, Kamiko settled backwards into the middle of the room, right where she started, and she opened her eyes.
The second to last part of the kata was about to begin. Quickly, Kamiko deflated herself with a quick hiss and was back to her slim stature. She stood straight up with her legs together and spread both her arms outwards. Suddenly Kamiko sucked in some air, but instead of inflating her body, her stomach distended outwards. Kamiko looked like she was nine months pregnant with twins. Her face scrunched up slightly as she shifted the air inside of her and displaced it within her chest. Now she had gigantic beach ball-like breasts and a flat tummy. Again Kamiko grimaced a bit and the air within her breasts moved outwards into her arms. Both of them looked like giant shiny blue sausages with plumped up hands at the ends of them. Wasting no time, Kamiko again strained and put the air into her neck area. She now had a huge blue inner-tube for a neck. Next the air flew into Kamiko’s cheeks, making her look like a chipmunk with coconuts instead of nuts stowed away into the cheek pouches. Right after pumping up her cheeks, Kamiko shifted air within her to her back; her back bulged outwards like her belly previously did. Immediately the air shifted downwards into her buttocks, giving her a gigantic pair of squeaky blue butt-cheeks. Now Kamiko proceeded to slide the air into her thighs, bulging them out to comical proportions, then to her calves, and finally to her feet. Kamiko’s feet would make even the most extreme of circus clowns green with envy as her petite size sevens bloated into twenty-nines. Quickly she wiggled her round little squeaky toes and then shifted the air upwards again, passing her legs, hips, stomach, neck, and finally dispelled it out of her mouth.
Now it was time to perform the final part of the kata. For five seconds, Kamiko just stared ahead, but then she closed her eyes again. She breathed in more air and expanded to twenty feet. Immediately after she exhaled and shrunk back to fifteen feet. Kamiko inhaled again and expanded to a larger thirty feet in the same amount of time it took her to grow to twenty. Then she exhaled again and was fifteen feet once more. Right after that she inhaled an even bigger amount of air and inflated to a gigantic forty feet. Quickly she let the air out and became fifteen feet. Finally she gulped up a tremendous pocket of air and ballooned into a massive seventy feet. The ceiling of the temple was only fifty feet, and Kamiko’s top and bottom were squished along the ceiling and floor of the structure. Kamiko’s volume covered about three-quarters of the huge room. The front of Tomoko’s body and face was smothered by the wall of soft shiny blue rubber that was Kamiko’s body. For about ten seconds, Kamiko strained to keep the mass of air within her body steady and contained. At last she let out all the air in a huge gust of wind that burst fourth from her mouth and she managed to totally deflate within five seconds. Kamiko stood back on her two slim legs in the middle of the room, sheathed her sword, put her hands and feet together, and bowed to Tomoko.
Tomoko kept sitting down with her legs crossed. After a few seconds, she quietly and steadily lifted herself up, stood upright and began to clap her hands in applause.
“Well done my girl. I fully believe now that you are no longer a novice, but an expert.”
Kamiko lifted herself out of the bow and looked at Tomoko.
“Thank you sensei.” Kamiko thanked.
“Now that you are at a higher level of quality and skill, it is time to move on to bigger aims.”
“What would that be sensei?” Kamiko replied.
“It is time to finally use your skills in the real world. You are now a Fuusenkunoichi!”
The sun began to ease below the bamboo-studded horizon of the forest, gradually staining the sky a darker shade of purple. Everything looked quiet around temple that housed Tomoko and Kamiko. It was a gorgeous sunset; both Kamiko and her stately mentor came out of the large sliding doors of the temple to walk outside. Kamiko however was dressed up in her special outfit, the skin-tight blue rubber body suit which covered almost her entire body, except for the top half of her head. She had both her grappling arrow and her sheathed katana strapped onto their respective wrists. Her shiny jet-black ponytail dangled and waved with each step she took, reflecting the purple luster of the sky.
Tomoko followed Kamiko’s footsteps; she felt both confidence and anxiety over the mission that her newly-trained apprentice would embark on. It was not supposed to be a tough mission, but there were guards and other possible environmental threats that Kamiko would face. Despite these concerns, Tomoko felt that she explained the situation to Kamiko in full and understandable detail, and hopefully her plucky pupil had absorbed the info and taken it to heart.
Now Kamiko was near the edge of the clearing. First she stared towards the towering bamboo stalks in front of her, and then she gazed towards the purple dusk sky. A single drop of sweat creeped downwards across her temple, and trailed right into the edge of her mask. Before she began her pneumatic transformation, she took three deep breaths, and on the third one she expanded her slender athletic body into a large sphere, fifteen feet across. She quickly flew into the calm darkening sky and floated beyond the bamboo tips, out of Tomoko’s sight.
“Please do your best Kamiko…” pleaded Tomoko.
As Kamiko flew above the vast bamboo forest, she kept looking ahead, searching for its end. She thought of Tomoko’s directions…
“Keep following the path of the rising moon, and there you will find the end of the forest.”
Quickly, Kamiko turned herself to the right horizontally until her eyes found the dim visage of the half-moon hovering above the dark earth. She stopped and kept flying towards it, like a fish attracted towards a worm on a hook. Currently Kamiko was flying at a speed comparable to thirty-five knots. If the wind blew behind her, she could increase her speed at least ten knots more.
After about five minutes of brisk air travel, Kamiko spotted the edge of the forest. Now she thought about the other set of directions Tomoko-sensei gave her…
“When you reach the end of the forest, you will eventually run into a small lake, turn to the east once you are over it, and then you will keep traveling straight until you finally reach the coast. When you arrive over the beach, look around and spot the single solitary island near the tip of the point; that island will be Aoi-Jima.”
Her keen eyes caught the silver glare of the moon that shone off of the small lake. It was still a ways in the distance, but Kamiko could reach it within three minutes.
One she glided over the lake, she quickly brought her mid-air glide to a halt. Immediately she swiveled her bulbous body ninety degrees to the right, halted herself, and then continued her journey.
Any attempts to scale Aoi-Jima’s treacherous rocky cliffs and the walls of the fortress would be considered suicide. This was the reason why the fortress had relatively few guards on duty, a grand total of ten kept watch over the entire compound and island itself. Naturally the sentries themselves felt confident about their competence, despite their meager numbers. Hiroshi strolled quietly along the edge of the cliff’s edge, looking over the pristine and calm moon hovering far above the ocean.
“Another quiet night, what a surprise.” Hiroshi thought.
“Maybe we should invite some bandits over to attempt a break in, just to give us practice.”
Unbeknownst to Hiroshi, a bandit was calmly hovering below the vertical cliff’s edge. Kamiko kept flying straight and steady along the cliff’s wall, keep at least a distance of six inches between her side and the rocks. As she meandered around she took more of Tomoko’s instructions to heart.
“At midnight, the guards will run inside briefly to take a rest and report to the keeper. They tend to spend at least ten minutes inside the compound, talking to their boss in the main hall. At the top of the main tower in the middle of the walled enclosure is where the documents are stored. Once you are certain the guards are gone make your move.”
Kamiko looked momentarily towards the sky to catch a glance at the moon, it was situated almost at the top of the dark starry sky, midnight was almost here.
As Hiroshi strolled towards the side of the cliff that faced the main gate, he spotted another guard, Kaede.
“Oe! Kaede! How goes it?”
“Absolutely nothing, you?”
“Same here.”
“The moon’s in the middle of the sky, think we should go in now?”
“That’d be nice, I have a sore leg today. I need to give it some rest.”
When Hiroshi met Kaede, they both turned to face the gates and strolled casually towards them. Once they reached the entrance, one of the guards on top spotted them and quickly opened the two large red doors up.
Kamiko looked over the edge of the cliff and spotted the two guards as they disappeared into the closing gate doors. She waited until the guard on top went out of sight and she made her move. Her ball-like body arose into the air, and flew towards the gates, keeping her body low to the ground. When she reached the large walls of the fortress, she hovered upwards and rotated herself to allow her head to peek over the edge. She saw four guards chatting casually in the main courtyard. They were talking about weird stories, just to liven themselves up after the dull and uneventful patrol they just did.
Drops of sweat seeped out of Kamiko’s forehead. “Go in! Go in! Damn you!” She impatiently thought. Finally, one of the guards appeared at the main doorway to the building and waved his arm, signaling them to quickly come in. They heeded his command, scurried into the doorway and vanished inside. Kamiko perked up and hoisted herself over the fortress wall. She crept forwards slowly, reached the other end of the wall, and looked downwards. Quickly she swiveled herself, left and right, trying to catch a glance of any more guards lingering around the area. She saw none. Finally she flew towards the tower’s roof. Again she brought up Tomoko’s instruction within her memory…
“Once the guards leave, fly towards the tower of the roof and you will spot a door. This is sometimes used by the inhabitants of the fortress to keep a watch on ships that travel near the island. Obviously you will not to fit yourself inside while you are inflated, so let all the air out of yourself when you land, and quietly! No hissing! Then sneak inside via the door and into the storage room.”
Kamiko heeded Tomoko’s sage advice word by word. She gradually increased altitude, moved right over the tip of the roof, and swiveled her bottom towards the ground. As she allowed herself to descend, she slowly let the air stuffed inside her tight and round body to leak out of her mouth. Thankfully she was able to control the speed of the air flowing out of her body enough to make no sound. Slowly her blimp-esque figure transformed into a more humanoid appearance, legs and arms started to form back into long puffed-out rods, and her round tummy kept shrinking and eventually flattening out. After about ten seconds of deflating, Kamiko was now totally deflated. Just to make sure her balance was good she swiveled her arms around in slow circles and squatted down on her knees. She grabbed the edge of the door in front of her and steadily lifted it up, trying her best not to make it creak. Carefully she swung her slender and firm legs over the edge and into the opening. With swift dexterity she grabbed the edge, and slipped her entire body downwards, hung on for a brief moment to rim of the hatch, and gently alighted upon the floor of the chamber.
After Kamiko entered, she remembered the last part of the instructions Tomoko gave her…
“Inside the library, you will see three walls with cabinets lining them. Within them all are the scrolls. The ones you are looking for are located on the wall in the middle. Look for a nook in the right which has a label that says ‘Hoshino.” There should be at least five scrolls within it, take all of them.”
Kamiko walked towards the middle wall, which was right in front of her. She quickly looked around for an opening that had the “Hoshino” label on it. Finally she found it, and all five scrolls inside of it. Quickly Kamiko slid the five scrolls out of their place and grasped both of them within her arms.
“Now to bundle them up and get out.” She thought.
Kamiko raised her left hand and reached her right hand over to grab the arrow on her grappling device. She tugged and stretched it out until it had six feet of string dangling behind it. After unraveling the rope, she wrapped it around the scrolls, making sure it tightly kept them all grouped together. Then she tied the strings up, let the scrolls dangle under her wrist, and shook them around a couple of times. The string would hold during her trip back to the temple.
Just as Kamiko hoisted herself back onto the roof and closed the door behind her, she heard some noises coming from the hall on the bottom floor. The guards inside were about to come outside. Kamiko knew she wouldn’t be able to fly right off the tip of the tower; the guards would probably spot her. She ran over to the side of the roof that faced the back of the fortress, away from the main entrance and gate. Deep inside herself, Kamiko knew the move she was about to do was a big risk, and if she choked up, it would be the end of her. As she balanced herself over the edge of the roof, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, exhaled, and then jumped. As she fell towards the ground, she took in a huge gulp of air and inflated herself quickly to fifteen feet within a matter of two seconds. While she fell and inflated, she kept her concentration focused and managed to stop her fall. Immediately she opened her eyes and looked in front of her. The ground was a mere ten feet away from where she floated. Wasting no time, Kamiko rocketed into the sky, flew over the gate, and over the cliff’s edge.
As the guards walked outside of the main building, one stopped in his tracks.
“Hey, did any of you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Kaede said.
“There was this windy whooshing sound. Think there’s someone on the island?”
All of the guards looked around, keeping a sharp eye for anything suspicious. They could not find anything.
“Otomo, it must be your imagination. There’s nothing here on this damned island.” Spoke Hiroshi.
“Maybe a big wave just banged onto one of the cliffs.” Added Kaede.
The platoon of guards just kept on moving towards the main gates. They opened up the mammoth doors to expose the placid moon shining across the sea.
Tomoko sat quietly to herself in the middle of the candle-lit main hall of the temple. She was more in a state of meditation, and most of her worries about Kamiko were still in the back of her head. It had been an hour and a half since Kamiko embarked on her mission.
Suddenly the temple doors slid open; Kamiko stood at the opening with the stolen scrolls grasped firmly between both her arms. Tomoko stood up and approached her.
“Well done my student. Was the mission hard?”
“I had some close calls, but nobody saw me.”
“Excellent. My directions came in handy then?” Tomoko stopped in front of Kamiko. The blue ninja girl extended her arms forward and let her sensei take the scrolls from her hands. “Besides, that fortress was fairly easy to penetrate. It would be almost impossible to enter if you could not fly, the guards there are actually very well trained.”
“Even if they were not, I didn’t feel like fighting them off.”
“Good, you would have been unpleasantly surprised.”
Both Tomoko and Kamiko walked back to the center of the room. Tomoko went to a lantern on the wall and sat underneath it. She put the scrolls down and unfurled a couple of them. Studiously Tomoko read them, while Kamiko sat down beside her, anxious to answer some questions.”
“Sensei…” Tomoko pulled her mask down and revealed her mouth and chin.
“Hold on please, I’m looking for something. Make yourself comfortable.”
Kamiko just shrugged her shoulders and took Tomoko’s advice to heart. She crossed her legs and took in a quick gulp of air and instantly plumped her entire body outwards a bit. Her tummy distended a foot outwards and her limbs billowed out slightly like marshmallows in a microwave. Ballooned and softened up, Kamiko then fell slowly backwards onto her backside and laid down, staring at the ceiling. She stiffly wiggled her arms and legs, making squeaky sounds in the process.
“Shhh! Quit moving so much! I need concentration!” Ordered Tomoko.
Not wanting to disturb her teacher, Kamiko stopped her wriggling about. It was hard to imagine that she felt so uncomfortable when she first learned how to inflate her body. Now Kamiko could expand herself without any qualms, and she enjoyed the benefits that came with her new uncanny ability. First of all, she was able to enter and exit the fortress unseen, a feat that would be extremely difficult for even the most seasoned traditional ninja veteran.
Also Kamiko enjoyed the way her body looked and felt when it inflated. She would feel her soft shiny round sides and press down, feeling the billowy and taught skin depress and stretch outwards. The rubber suit that she wore also gave her an erotic jolt whenever she would feel her pneumatically enhanced body. Tomoko said it would not only give her flexibility, but would also keep her body from rupturing and exploding when she had greater amounts of air pressure inside her. Kamiko got a great sensual feeling when the rubber stretched to its limits and rubbed itself across her own tightening skin. Still staring at the ceiling, Kamiko laid contently on her pillowy backside, enjoying the calm comfort that her inflated body offered to her.
“Hmmmm, the memories are much clearer now.” Tomoko spoke up. She stood up and walked towards the ballooned-up Kamiko. She bent over and looked into her pupil’s eyes.
“Back when I was a noblewoman, I worked for a great lord. His name was Satsuma Hideyoshi, a kind and wise man by all accounts. When he ruled the domain I was in, he always made sure the people had enough to eat, had high morale, and were loyal as well. However, he always was a bit more independent than most other people, not only did he expect his subjects to be enlightened, but the populace he governed over as well. He was always radical in his thinking. This is probably why he had a woman like me as an advisor.”
Kamiko listened carefully to her teacher’s words. She had never been in the presence of a noblewoman before.
“I was never his fiancée; in fact he had a devout wife at his side. But sometimes he did tend to trust my judgments more than Lady Minako’s. He even encouraged my martial arts pursuits, despite the strange nature of Fuusen no Ninjitsu.”
“A few years passed and things went well in the realm, but soon Hideyoshi-san became very ill. It was a terrible kind of illness that let him linger on but in a great amount of pain. I and his advisors tried to help make decisions for him, despite his suffering. One of his friends however took advantage of his illness much more than he should have: that man was Taro Kitami. I always knew he had his own agenda buried underneath his seemingly blind devotion to Hideyoshi, but when Hideyoshi’s illness began his personal aims became even more apparent. He would pass all sorts of strange laws, curtailing rice production and setting up import taxes. He argued they would help make the production cycle move more steadily, but I and many others disagreed.”
Kamiko couldn’t help but be engrossed by Tomoko’s story. She thought that all this talk of corruption between the daimyo and the shogun were just wild tales, but they might be true.
“Finally poor Hideyoshi-san himself fell even deeper and deeper into his illness, people were starting to lose hope in his recovery. Finally on that warm noon day in autumn he finally passed away. It was a sad day for the people of the realm, but even sadder things would come soon after that. For a week Hideyoshi’s wife ruled the people, trying to keep things going the way they were. Without any warning, a small army of samurai warriors and soldiers came and surrounded the castle. That rat Taro had organized his own private army to take the domain over with threat of force. He even managed to give the shogun his reasons for doing so. From these scrolls done by my old friend Hoshino, I am trying to figure out the details and hopefully unleash the truth back onto the people who are still under his reign.”
“What happened to Minako, and you?” Kamiko asked.
“Well, Taro just offered his demands to her. He would take over the domain, but if she married him, she would still be able to have some influence. I warned Minako that Taro would never let her have any share of the power; he just wanted to take everything over for himself. Since I was more headstrong back then, I tried to take on Taro’s army with my Fuusen no Ninjitsu skills. The fighting was fierce, and Taro’s samurai were about to completely overwhelm me. That is when I flew away, and exiled myself to this secluded temple in the middle of the bamboo forest.”
“But why out here sensei?” Kamiko questioned.
“Why? Because I knew I had to find more support for my cause. I came here to meditate and focus, as well as hone my skills as a Fuusenkunoichi. I need to have my own army to fight off Taro’s manpower, and I heard that many young women came through this forest, looking for opportunities when they traveled away from home. I found many, but none of them were willing to dedicate themselves to becoming fighters.”
“And then you found me sensei.” Kamiko answered.
“That’s right my girl. You are truly the unique one of the bunch. But considering my troubles in trying to find more people to help me, you will need to aid my pursuits.”
“You’ll need ideas from me?”
“Yes my pupil. That mission I just sent you one was just the first step in my plan. But the other steps I have that lead up to the goal still need to be created, and I just need to know, are you willing to help me build them?”
All Kamiko could do was continue to stare into the dark brown eyes of Tomoko. She could tell that behind the stern and aggressive demeanor of her teacher was a woman and a domain in need of help. Kamiko thought about the time when Yoshi died and how the family of orphaned children he had created could only survive by breaking apart to find new opportunities. As she pondered, Kamiko felt that not only could she help these people Tomoko spoke of, but also maybe find a way to help her siblings.
“I’ll do it.” Kamiko said to Tomoko.
Tomoko just smiled at the shiny and puffy girl on the floor below her.
Yamagawa-jo Castle was not exactly an impressive castle, especially in terms of size. It had four towers with a medium-sized pagoda in the middle; it was a pretty average in terms of construction and architecture. However what it lacked in style it made up for with airtight security. Guards guarded practically every square inch of the compound, not even a flea would be able to waltz on by unnoticed. Lady Komoda, the owner of the fortress kept various precious items stored and protected for her lord. He chose her because not only he enjoyed her company and fine looks, but she also was an absolute control freak when it can to planning security measures.
It was a cloudy night, and nothing much was going on. However two guards heard a knock at the front gate. One of them walked up to the door and opened up a little circular viewing port to see who was there. Upon opening it he spotted what looked like a young woman covered in a hooded grey robe.
“Who are you, and why have you stopped here?” ordered the guard.
“I have been sent for the entertainment of the guards of Yamagawa-jo.” She meekly replied.
“Entertainment? I haven’t heard of any entertainment being planned for us.”
“It is per the orders of Lady Komoda, as a reward for the guards and soldiers who valiantly guard the castle.”
“A reward? Well, I’m flattered by this. But do you have official approval? Lady Komoda always requires official paperwork to confirm and approve the passage of any person or item through these gates.”
Upon hearing the guard’s request, the girl reached into the folds of her robe to take out a roll of paper. She handed it to the guard who immediately snatched it from her hands. He opened it up and read it.
“Looks good to me, it even has Lady Komoda’s seal on it. Open the doors boys, we have some entertainment!”
“What kind of entertainment?” asked the guard behind him.
“Female entertainment!” he slyly replied.
The main gates of the castle slowly creaked ajar to allow the robed girl to enter. All fifty of the guards around the compound began to gather towards the main walkway to the premises to catch a glimpse of the girl. Since Lady Komoda kept a tight lid on the fortress, the guards hardly got out often to socialize in the outside world often, so the idea of a courtesan or a geisha entering to entertain the troops would immediately snare their attention.
“Please guide me to a room where I can perform for you lonesome men.” asked the girl.
“Why of course my dear! We have a main hall that can easily double as an auditorium!” The guard led the girl towards the main doors of the central pagoda and all the troops behind the two started squeezing through the entrance. Within a minute the room was totally packed with musky grungy guards, waiting to catch a glimpse of the young girl before their eyes. The girl went to the middle of the room and asked for the men to give her a small space to perform. They were yelling out lewd phrases at her to do something erotic, but most of them asked questions.
“Are you going to do a lovely dance in the nude for us?” asked a particularly ugly fellow in the back.
“Please calm down mister, I’ve got a very special performance that will be sure to knock you all flat on your backs!”
The girl grabbed the back of her robe and pulled her hood off. The girl had a blue shiny mask on that covered the bottom-half of her head.
“Ooo! I told you she’s an erotic dancer!” One of the guards grunted out.
“Ah, how introspective of you!” replied Kamiko. “I do have a special dance planned for all of you deserving young guys on this cold cloudy night!”
All their horny wild eyes lit up in anticipation of what Kamiko was about to do.
“Now, before I dance, I’ll need to test the intelligence of the audience around me. I need one of you to guess what type of animal I shall impersonate!” Kamiko spread her arms out above her head as she asked her audience the question.
“An animal eh?” cried out a guard.
“Ooh, she’s going to be feisty for us!” screamed another.
“The animal that I will so passionately be for you brawny handsome men is one that has one of the most extraordinary traits. This animal can make itself grow to proportions that make it appear much larger and menacing than it usually does! Can anyone tell me what it is?
Within the audience of grungy men, contemplative murmurs and hums began to erupt out. Many scratched their chins while digging back into their cranial depths to grab the word of the animal their temptress was talking about.
“Is it a cat? Cats stand on their feet and make themselves look bigger when they are scared!” yelled one of the men.
“Good choice! But alas, it is not the animal I am talking about!” Kamiko replied.
“How about a dog? Their fur stands on end when they get mad and bark!” another guard guessed.
“Please! Do you think I am lowly enough to be just a dog!? I am not THAT kind of girl, especially not a prostitute!” Kamiko scolded.
“Roosters puff out their feathers when they want to make themselves look big!” yelled another clueless buffoon.
“Oh please, you are nowhere close! Here, let me give you boys a hint: This animal lives in the sea.” Kamiko hoped once of the dense guards would finally solve her riddle.
The room full of soldiers once again quieted down to contemplate Kamiko’s hint. One of them in the middle of the crowd raised his arm up and jumped around, eager to catch the girl’s attention.
“Ah! Ah! I know! A pufferfish!”
“Give the man a hand everyone! He hit the nail on the head!” Kamiko began clapping her hands to applaud the man’s correct answer. Everyone else in the room erupted in laughter and joy, the guards around the lucky guesser started patting him on the back and his head to congratulate him.
“Wait a minute, a pufferfish!?” questioned one of the guards in the front. “Are you telling us that you can blow yourself up like a balloon of some sort?”
“Oh ho ho ho ho! What a wild imagination you have there my friend! Why don’t I help you fuel it some more?” After talking back to the guard, Kamiko grabbed the back of her robe and flung it over her shoulders and off her body, revealing her sporty and voluptuous body clad from head to nose with air-tight shiny blue rubber. The eyes of one of the guards in front began to bug out in surprise as he suddenly realized the truth about Kamiko…
“Hold on a moment g… guys! She’s a n… n… ninja!”
“Correct again monkey man!” Kamiko mocked as she suddenly began to suck in air and expand her body at a frightening pace. All the men in the room could do was stand and stare at the spectacle of the ballooning girl in front of them. Within a couple of seconds her body transformed more and more into a gigantic orb as the top of her head perched upon the top of her round exterior touched the ceiling. As this happened the men near her began to stumble backwards, trying to avoid the approach of the wall of blue rubber-clad flesh distending towards them. Their efforts were in vain as they began to disappear under the blue squeaky mass in groups. Within ten seconds the blimped-up Kamiko had filled the entire room with herself and smothered almost all fifty of the guards in there. She felt one single man trying to struggle past a gap that her huge body had left near the door. This man was still going to make it out the door, but with his colleagues as well.
Suddenly Kamiko let all the air compressed inside her fly out her mouth at sonic speed, causing parts of the walls around her to break outwards, creating large holes. All the half-suffocated men that she had trapped flew out the new openings in the once-pristine white walls and through the now doorless front entrance. Hardly any of them made a single sound; they were too deprived of oxygen to scream as they flew hundreds of meters out of the castle and over the walls of the compound. At least half of them struck the main walls themselves and got knocked out cold.
Just before Kamiko shrunk back to normal size, she allowed herself to propel out one of the exits and just as she ran out of air she backflipped and landed perfectly on her feet just a meter away from the north wall of the fortress. She stood for just a few moments as the entire pagoda began to creak and rumble. The bottom part had been weakened so much by Kamiko controlled air explosion that there was no chance it would be able to support the top part of the building. Finally the top part of the tower came crashing down, splintering the demolished remains of the bottom floor and causing the remaining three stories to telescope into each other.
After waiting a few moments for the dust to clear, Kamiko walked towards the almost-totaled yet intact front floor that remained of the pagoda. The unconscious bodies of the guards scattered the ground like seeds on the ground. Just as she got near the wreckage, she saw a shadow move around from within one of the square windows. Slowly the figure emerged from the crumpled frame; it was a stately woman in her mid-20’s with a colorful light green silk kimono with blue diamonds embossed all over it. She struggled to stand upon her legs, trying to recover from the shock she received when the building collapsed. She coldly looked Kamiko in the eyes.
“Did you destroy my proud and beautiful fortress?” She demanded.
“It wasn’t much of a fortress then, and it still isn’t much now.” Kamiko replied.
“How, how dare you, you destructive bitch!” Yelled the enraged Lady Komoda. “You will pay for ruining my life’s work!”
The enraged villainess quickly bent down and grabbed a long sharp pole from the wreckage. She then pushed it out in front of her and began running towards Kamiko at breakneck speed, screaming like a ghost back from the dead.
Kamiko just stood there, waiting for the furious woman to come nearer. Just as the makeshift spear came near her chest, Kamiko briskly stepped aside to the right, allowing Lady Komoda to run right into her. Quickly, Kamiko grabbed the red-faced wild woman in a tight bear hug, and began to take a deep breath. As Kamiko did this she expanded her belly outwards one foot, pulled the mask on her suit off her mouth, and blew right into the mouth of the flabbergasted Lady Komoda. Immediately, Kamiko’s bulbous stomach disappeared, and reappeared on Komoda’s midsection. All the horrified woman could do was fall onto her backside and stare at her bloated belly. She screamed out in fright.
“Now, listen to me carefully Komoda. I can blow a lot more air into you and make you even bigger. You can be a nice human balloon for the children to play around with. All I need to know is how many men does Lord Taro command? Also, what kind of weapons, armor, and other implements of destruction do they carry?”
“I’ll never tell you, devilgirl!” Fumed the bloated Komoda.
Angered by the woman’s refusal, Kamiko grabbed Komoda by the collar of her kimono, wrapped her lips once again over her mouth, took another deep breath, and blew into the hapless Lady Komoda. Now the woman’s belly stretched out so much that not only the obi wrapped around her kimono snapped off, but her limbs plumped out a bit. Kamiko allowed her to stand, but all the inflated Komoda could do was waddle around comically, hardly able to move her swollen and tight body.
“Now, I’ll ask you one more time before I fill you with enough air to pop you. Tell me what Lord Taro has.”
“Okay, okay! Don’t kill me! I… I… I heard he now has an army that is at least a thousand strong, maybe even two-thousand. He has spears, the best katanas crafted in the land, and last I heard even some guns and cannons. Some are even imported from the Dutch who in return got them from other powerful western nations!”
“Is this true?” Kamiko asked.
“Yes, yes! It’s all true, and if you need even more proof, I have a bunch of scrolls there in my room that record the inventory of all I have given to him! It even has names of, er, I can’t tell!” Lady Komoda bit her tongue to withhold the last bit of info.
“Well, I can probably find it anyways, there’s no need to halt your words. You can go fly away now.” Kamiko went back up to Lady Komoda, grabbed her head, and started puffing more air down her gullet. All the helpless woman could do was grunt and cry muffled screams as Kamiko inflated her bigger and bigger like a child happily blowing into a rubber balloon. Lady Komoda’s cheeks began to bulge out and obscure half of her once slim and pretty blushed face. Her blimped-out midsection began to absorb her rapidly bulging limbs. Her kimono wasn’t able to take this massive stress, so it ripped into little ribbons and gently floated off as she grew bigger and bigger with each puff Kamiko took.
Finally after about twenty seconds of hard puffing, Lady Komoda was about as big as Kamiko herself would normally be when she floated about in the sky. The once-slim and voluptuous beauty now resembled a human blimp with a large round midsection and two round bulges perched upon it with pinkish-red saucer-sized nipples in the middle of them. Her limbs were equally bloated and gorged with air; they stuck out from her body, immobile and useless. Both hands and feet at the tips of each respective cone of inflated taut flesh were also plumped up and unmovable. Kamiko looked up at the naked and ballooned Lady Komoda as she floated upwards. The moonlight shone off her tight pale skin, making her look like a white glowing extraterrestrial object in the sky. Higher and higher the hopeless and once-proud owner of the now decimated fortress floated towards the overcast clouds, emitting muffled screams through her bulging cheeks as she disappeared into the hovering sea of grey.
“Please watch out for sharp objects during your flight Miss Komoda.” Kamiko mockingly yelled towards the helpless balloon-woman.
Tomoko-sensei sat down in the middle of the temple, gleefully letting her eyes spot and absorb every word they discovered on the scrolls Kamiko found at Yamagawa-jo.
“Ah, I knew you would find a treasure-trove of information at that castle. I’m surprised you were able to find so many scrolls Kamiko-chan! Especially considering how that spiteful wench Komoda keeps everything wrapped up tightly.”
Kamiko laid on her back a meter away from Tomoko. She had plumped up her body with air to help her soothe her nerves rest her body.
“She was a bit uncooperative Sensei. But I think I loosened her up a bit.” Kamiko said.
“Ah, she must be enjoying her little trip in the sky, no?”
Both Tomoko and Kamiko giggled a bit at the little wisecrack.
“So Sensei, what are you going to do now that you have this important info about Lord Taro?”
“I have to admit, these scrolls you brought me contain much. But I still need to find out more about who is allied to whom. We need to not only find the strings but also know where they connect.”
“I see sensei. So does this mean that I’ll be spying from now on?”
“Yes Kamiko, you won’t have to risk yourself by stealing things for a while. You are going to be using your skills and your ears for the next few weeks. Plus I will be doing some spy work as well.”
“You too sensei?”
“This project will take a lot of work, so it will be best if two people are working at the same time.”
Kamiko laid further back onto her cushiony backside. She kept reflecting back to the mission she had just accomplished, thinking about how she felt like a different person while tricking both the guards and Lady Komoda into giving her the scrolls.
“Sensei?” Kamiko spoke.
“Yes dear?”
“I’m changing so much as I move on to bigger and bigger things as I take on harder challenges.”
“That trip to the castle did require some brainpower and strength.”
“I know sensei, but I also felt my inner personality changing into something almost foreign, totally unrecognizable to what I was like as not only a student, but when I still worked for Yoshi on the farm.”
“You are in a different world my girl.” Tomoko got up, stretched, and started pacing slowly around Kamiko. “You yourself said you could not believe the stories I told you about how Lord Taro took over my lord’s domain with support from the shogun. There are always people more powerful than both you and me. They are always controlling all those underneath themselves who do not have wealth and power. Those on the bottom are just merely puppets to be controlled to make food and materials that benefit the men on top. To keep themselves in power, rulers have their own group of warriors and lords that submit to their whims so that they may also reap the benefits of their tyranny.”
“But what about Lord Hideyoshi, sensei? What made him different?” Kamiko replied.
Tomoko just stood for a few moments, staring blankly out into space, thinking backwards in time.
“He was a man, whom despite his status as a daimyo, did not want to have things that way. He wanted to put more power in the hands of the people; that is why he had them all have a say in decisions of his government.
“That sounds so different sensei, ordinary people sharing power with the leaders.”
“Yes it does Kamiko. And it’s something I think Taro knew about. Maybe he had a hand in Lord Hideyoshi’s death so that he could keep all the power for himself.”
Kamiko’s eyes began to glitter with light as they moistened up with tears. She wondered what it would be like to have a stronger voice in the world. She was a girl who had already learned how to become strong physically, but how could she become mentally stronger. Then she reflected back upon her mission, how she tricked all those men, inflated herself, and blew them out of the castle like feathers in the wind. They were all helpless before her power, despite their own raw and physical male strength. Kamiko had more power than even the once-mighty Lady Komoda, whom she had blown up into a balloon and allowed to float aimlessly into the skies.
“Sensei…” Kamiko whispered. “It looks like we’re going to change everything.”
“I would not really say that is true Kamiko.” Tomoko said. “Well, not now. We will have to work a lot more in order to make a difference.”
Kamiko looked towards the ceiling a few moments more, thinking about her teacher’s sage words, and then she finally closed her sleepy eyes. She had done a lot of work, and had to rest up for what the future challenges that would come to her.
Kamiko’s eyelids gradually creaked open, allowing enough of the morning light to hit her eyeballs so that her waking retinas could adjust comfortably. Her serene and beautiful brown eyes stared up at the dusty red ceiling that sheltered her and Tomoko. Most of the time, Tomoko-sensei would walk right up to the slumbering Kamiko and clap her hands repeatedly to wake her, but this time she would not have to bother wasting energy.
Before she got up, Kamiko stretched and yawned, slightly contorting and splaying her shiny blue body across the tatami mat that she slept on. It might seem strange to an outside visitor that Kamiko wore her skintight blue rubber suit almost all the time, but the temple got cold, and the suit helped keep her adequately warm. Plus she felt sort of attached to her strange garb, like she had developed some sort of slight rubber fetish, but she still would not mind wearing a good comfy kimono once in a while. Tomoko slid open the screen door of Kamiko’s small room, it made a loud scratching noise. Kamiko looked towards her teacher.
“Well, you are up early again Kamiko!” Tomoko happily exclaimed.
“Yeah, I think I’m getting used to the early-morning routine now.” Kamiko stood up and scratched her back.
“You used to be a farm girl, I would expect you to already get up a little early, right?”
“Yeah, but being a fuusenkunoichi is a lot different from being a farmer.”
“That’s true. Anyways, I have breakfast ready my dear, would you kindly join me?”
“Of course Tomoko-sensei. I have nowhere to go but here.” giggled Kamiko.
“Hmmm, maybe I should have rephrased that question, since you thought it was a nice little joke.” bluntly replied Tomoko.
“Sorry Tomoko-sensei. It’s just that you talk so formally, like a court lady would.”
“Yes, you are right. I should really lighten up my language.”
“Oh no! I wasn’t suggesting anything…”
“Do not worry Kamiko. You are not the only one learning around here.” confided the ex-noble-woman.
Tomoko and Kamiko sat down near the front door of the Temple to eat breakfast. It was a beautiful day outside so both the girls decided to eat outside to enjoy it, rather than inside. There was a white wooden container between them both.
“Wow, It’s so clear outside, and bright!” gleamed Kamiko.
“Yes, that was a good idea there Kamiko. We need to get out more often to enjoy the outdoors when we have leisure time.”
Kamiko paused a moments and took a couple whiffs of herself. She scrunched up her face a bit.
“Oof, I really need to clean myself! I’ve been getting so tinky and sweaty under this rubber suit!”
“You do know why you wear that suit, right Kamiko?”
“Er, it keeps my body together when my body stretches?”
“Well, yes. But it also keeps your body very warm. When you have a warm body, it helps heat up the air that’s strapped inside your body. The ki that your body harnesses and utilizes heats up the air, and in return the tight rubber of the suit helps keep all that air in. You could say you are sort of a, hot air balloon of some kind.”
“Wow, I never thought of it that way.”
“Well, everything needs a reason for how they function.
“There is a stream near here, about north. Do you want to clean yourself up there?” Tomoko asked.
“Yes please. I’m really stinky right now.”
“Heh heh, you are a ripe young girl. And I suppose you need some good food to keep yourself fresh.” Tomoko opened the lid to the container, it was filled almost to the brim with a red pasty mass. Kamiko eyes lit up with glee.
“Wow! Red Bean Paste! Is it sweet?”
“The merchant I bought it from said it was reasonably so. Sweet enough, but not extremely so.”
“Good enough for me!”
Tomoko only had about a third of the paste, she was not extremely hungry so she let Kamiko have the rest. Kamiko wanted to wolf it all down, but she didn’t want to make a rude scene in front of Tomoko-sensei so she ate it gracefully, leaving none left after five minutes of eating.
Kamiko laid on her back, rubbing her belly with content.
“That is the best red bean I have eaten sensei.” she complimented.
“Thank you my dear. The man I got it from is a good friend of mine.”
“He’s a good cook too!”
“Also he puts extra fiber into the paste, just to make it healthy as well as tasty.” added Tomoko.
Just as Tomoko finished that sentence, Kamiko let out a slight “Oop!” and started rubbing her stomach.
“Sensei, I feel like I’m blowing up, but I’m not sucking in air!” noted the startled Kamiko.
“Uh oh. Maybe he put a bit too much fiber in this batch.” Replied Tomoko.
Kamiko’s stomach began to slowly and gradually bulge outwards. After about a minute she looked like she was a few months pregnant.
“Ummm, I’m used to inflating, but I’m not controlling this sensei!”
“No worries dear. You just seem to have a bad case of gas here. You will not get very big.”
“Uggghh, I shouldn’t have eaten it so quickly.” groaned Kamiko. Her belly now looked like it was at full term and still growing, her limbs too were beginning to bulge slightly.
“Um, sensei, am I going to float?”
“No, like I said, you will not get big enough.”
Kamiko’s body continued to stretch and balloon, her arms and hands plumped into soft squeaky masses. Her cheeks also began to slightly bulge in unison with her body and limbs. After a couple more minutes, Kamiko’s accidental little expansion finally stopped. She stood up straight, but she was comically bloated like someone had stuck an air pump into her and inflated her like a life raft. Tomoko stood up and walked behind the bulgy Kamiko. She took a good look at her backside and noticed the large globular nature of her bulbous butt-cheeks, all blue and shiny, glistening in the calm morning sun.
“My, you are a little more curvy here especially!” joked the amused Tomoko.”
“You’re mean sensei!” pouted the blushing balloon girl.
“Oh let me have fun my sweet little pufferfish! You look cute!” giggled Tomoko. Kamiko continued to blush with both embarrassment and amusement. “Well Kamiko, the only way you can deflate yourself is by letting all that gas. However, let me tell you, I do not want you stinking up my temple so go out to that stream and do your business there!” Tomoko pointed towards the north part of the clearing where the bamboo forest stood.
“Fine sensei. It’ll take me a while to get there since I don’t really feel like inflating myself any more right now.”
“It is your choice dear.”
Kamiko began to walk, but with a funny waddling motion that a penguin would make. As she moved her puffy arms rubbed against her tight rubbery body and her bloated thighs grazed each other, creating a barrage of dull squeaky balloon noises. Her butt-cheeks in particular made a nice loud squeak each time they squeezed together with each step.
“Do not forget to disguise yourself Kamiko-chan!” Shouted Tomoko as Kamiko began to near the edge of the clearing. Upon hearing her mentor’s command she pulled the rubbery mask molded onto her suit’s neck, hiked it up, and slipped it over her mouth.
After about forty-five minutes of squeaky waddling, Kamiko finally spotted a small clearing. Within was a pristine and clear meter-wide creek that flowed through the dark ground. She moved out into the clearing and stared at the calm mini-river in front of her, it looked good enough to bathe in a bit. The sound it emitted soothed Kamiko’s nerves, since they had been tested from forty-five minutes of nonstop squeaking.
“Finally, I can give myself a good washing, but I need to get all this gas out of me. That bean paste really bloated me good.” Kamiko pondered. “I just hope nobody is going to hear the huge farts that I am about to let off. They’d probably even wake Amaterasu since she’s slumbering now.”
Kamiko looked around her, just to check if anyone was around; there was nothing. She squatted down slightly and bent over as much as she could. Her face scrunched up as she strained her bowls and then the next thing she heard was an earth-shattering…
“FLUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRBBBBBBBPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPT!”
As the humongous blast of flatulence burst forth from Kamiko’s ballooned and vibrating butt. It slightly expanded her suit a bit, flew upwards, and exited out of the opening of her mask. She caught a slight whiff of her own expelled gas and furrowed her brow in disgust. Kamiko let out a little “Poo!” and reached her hand up to her nose and pinched it. Quickly, Kamiko pulled down her mask and stretched it open a bit in order to allow the second round of gas to escape more efficiently. Also she looked down and noticed that she was half the size that she used to be, and she could probably get herself back to her normal physical form with another big fart. She clenched her right forefinger and thumb even firmer over her nostrils, grunted, and then let loose with a big fat…
“POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOFFFFFFFFFFFFFSSSSSSSsssssssst!”
Her black shiny ponytail flew upwards like a wolf’s tail in a hurricane as the second burst of gas flew from her bowels. Kamiko’s once bulged-up body had quickly shrunken back into her normal athletic and slim build. Just as she stood up straight again, still reeling after the blast, Kamiko let a tiny little squeak of excess gas slip through her buttocks. “Excuse me.” she meekly and jokingly whispered.
A kilometer away, Tomoko sat contently on the steps of the temple as she stared towards the north, trying to picture the spectacle that just happened with Kamiko.
“Like I said before, she is a ripe little girl.” she confidently wisecracked to herself.
Kamiko stood hip-deep in the water that passed through the middle of the stream. She had slipped off her stinky rubber suit and began to wash it out. In order to give it a good rinse, Kamiko stretched the opening of the suit up and allowed the creek’s current to fill it up with water. After giving it a reasonable fill, Kamiko closed up the neck, and sloshed the water inside around for a good five minutes, and then she dumped it all out with a sploosh. She repeated this process a couple of times and then let the suit sit on a wet rock nearby to dry. After cleansing her suit, Kamiko began to splash water all over herself and rub her shiny tanned nude body. First she rubbed her breasts with a couple quick circular motions, jiggling them about, then she rubbed her thighs, belly, buttocks, and other crevices on her beautiful and slightly muscled body. She felt really refreshed and cleansed, especially after all the work that she had done during the past week. After fifteen minutes of vigorous bathing and rinsing, Kamiko finished up by washing her hair. She undid the blue rubber band that held her ponytail and allowed her hair to droop straight down. Then Kamiko squatted down into the crisp water and let her hair hang down into the stream, put her hands to her head, and rinsed her hair out good for a minute. Finally she stood straight up and headed back to dry land. She shook her entire body by swishing her hips and chest around to allow all the excess water droplets that clung to her smooth skin to fly off. Kamiko then grabbed hold of her hair and wrung it out, allowing streams of water to trickle from its silky strands and onto the ground below. “Ooohhhh, that felt great.” Kamiko thought to herself.
Just before Kamiko reached down to pick up her special rubber suit, she stopped and swiveled her head slowly around, left and right, checking to see if anyone might be watching her. The last thing she wanted was somebody watching her dress. Tomoko wanted Kamiko to keep a very low profile and this meant having limited contact with people of the outside world. After looking around for a few seconds Kamiko saw nothing. She grabbed her slinky blue suit and walked over to a group of trees to hide behind and change.
Homare walked with his trademark swagger through the damp and cool bamboo forest. He liked to swivel his shoulders towards the left and right as he strode confidently along his own path. The young man lifted his right arm and brushed his scraggly black hair as he contemplated his current location within the forest. Like many others that walked through, Homare felt a bit lost and confused.
“Hmmph, that’s the last time I listen to Benten for possible shortcuts. This place is hopeless to get out of!” he stewed to himself.
“Lessee, I walked straight into the forest and just continued straight into it, but then there was that time I tripped on the rock and… Ah hell! I got up and went the wrong direction! Crap!” The frustrated Homare spied a little rock on the ground and kicked it in anger. He then put both his hands under his belt and kept walking straight ahead with a gloomy look on his face. After a few minutes of solemn strolling, Homare’s ears perked up to the sound of a trickling creek. “Hey, there’s some flowing water near here, maybe it can guide me out of this damn forest!”
He lifted his feet to jog towards the sound, and a half a minute later he came across the stream. It simmered with silver light reflected off of the early afternoon sun rays peeking through the stalks of the bamboo high above.
“All right! I can finally get somewhere now!”
Immediately he began to follow the stream in the direction that the current flowed. He did this for a minute or two until he began to feel a bit tired. He stopped and knelt down beside the shore of the creek.
“I need some water before I go on. I haven’t had a drink all day.” he thought.
Homare cupped his hands and dipped them into the frigid water. He brought the water in his palms closer to his lip, but he stopped short and listened. He heard what sounded like the rustling of a group of small bamboo stalks. Looking back up in front of him, he saw a group of bamboo stalks in front of him rustling around a bit, somebody was behind them.
Quickly, Homare stood up and stared at the animated stalks and let the cool water drop out of his hands. He put his fists in front of him and took a fighting stance. Steadily he stood perched in a state of alertness, waiting for the hidden person or animal to emerge. A lone drop of sweat trickled down from Homare’s forehead and across his right cheek. Finally after almost a minute of tense waiting, the figure emerged from the bamboo. It was a somewhat tall girl, five foot five in height and with an athletic build. She wore a sleek and shiny skintight dark blue bodysuit with molded-in feet, gloves, and a mask that hid her petite jaw from view. A black bandanna with kanji in the middle of it adorned her forehead; Homare could not read them from this distance. Kamiko’s face looked at the ground and lifted her arms above her head, tying her shiny black hair into a ponytail with a thick blue rubber band. After she fastened it into place she looked up and jumped back in shock, gasping at the young man crouched into a fighting stance on the other side of the creek. He slowly stood out of the stance, but kept his hands balled up into fists straight out in front of his face.
“Who are you!?” Kamiko yelled.
“What are you?” Homare sneered.
“I, I, I’m just getting dressed” Kamiko muttered.
“Well, I’m lost.” Homare unclenched his fists and put his arms at his sides. He looked silently at Kamiko and lifted an eyebrow her strange ninja attire. She blushed at his analytical gaze.
“I have to admit, that’s a strange yet very sexy outfit you’ve got there girl.” grinned Homare.
“Please! I’m not an object to look at!”
“Sorry, but I’ve never seen a girl wear that strange thing before. What are you, a traveling performer?” asked Homare.
“Er, well, I guess you could say that.” Kamiko blushed even more and scratched her head.
“You look a little lost too girl.”
“Actually, I know my way around here…” Kamiko did not want to reveal that she lived around the forest. Tomoko forbade her to make any mention of where she lived.
“Really? Well would you mind lending me a hand? I’m pulling my hair out by the roots figuring out how to get out if this place.”
Kamiko stood quiet for a second, wondering if she should really help this stranger out, but he seemed pretty trustworthy.
“Are you a thief or a bandit of any sort?” Kamiko asked.
“Er, well, if I have done any thieving or banditry, I’ve been pretty lousy at it. Hah hah!” Homare giggled at his little joke. Kamiko gave a few faint giggles herself.
“Hmmm, I see no harm in helping you out but all I ask for you in return is that you mention to no one that you saw me here.”
“Sounds like a good trade off. Especially since it doesn’t involve me paying you something, or, er, ‘doing’ something.”
“Okay, in that case here is what I want you to do. Lay down on the ground belly-first and grab my ankles.”
“What!?” Gasped Homare “What are you going to do, fly like a birdie and have me hang onto your talons?” he joked.
“Pretty much.” Kamiko replied.
“Er, seriously, you can fly? I’m not in the mood of playing your strange circus pranks.” Homare started feeling suspicious about Kamiko.
“If you want to get out of here, just follow what I saw, no questions asked.”
“All right, fine.” Homare ran towards the stream, jumped across it, and ran towards Kamiko. He stopped, laid down on his stomach, and grabbed her ankles.
“My they’re dainty.” he complemented.
“They won’t be for long.” smiled Kamiko.
After speaking, Kamiko began to breath in and out a few times, taking deep breaths with each heave of her lungs. Homare just looked straight ahead and waited. Finally Kamiko began to inhale a huge quantity of air. Her body began to expand and round out like it would under a typical inflation. Homare looked up and his eyes almost jumped out of his sockets in surprise.
“Ahhhhh! What the hell are you doing to yourself!?”
“Don’t let go! Just keep grasping my dainty little ankles!”
“You sure aren’t looking too dainty yourself right now!”
“Kamiko keep expanding her shiny and smooth blue body, growing larger and rounder with each second. Homare kept grasping her ankles as hard as he could. They began to plump and fill with air, Homare could feel the air pushing his fingers further and further away from each other, but yet he still managed to dig them into the ballooning rubber surface and keep a good hold.
“You’re not going to explode on me, are you girl?”
“I’ve done this so many times, just keep holding on!”
Kamiko was now reaching twenty feet in diameter. Homare did not see a slim and athletic girl anymore but instead a large round blue blimp that obscured his vision. He felt her taut body suddenly warm up and that is when she began to lift into the air.
“Yaahhhhhhgh! You really are flying!” screamed the shocked Homare.
Kamiko began to lift further and further into the air. Homare’s hung down vertically, still hanging on to the ballooning girl’s ankles as his own left the ground. He kicked his legs around slightly as he took off into flight with Kamiko.
“Don’t kick around! I need stability!”
“Sorry!” By this time Kamiko had stopped inflating and both she and the frightened Homare began to reach the surface of the bamboo forest canopy. Just a brief moment later they had both ascended at least twenty feet above the canopy and Kamiko stopped her vertical climb. Then she turned her huge body a full one-hundred and eighty degrees around and started to fly forwards.
“Since you seem to be trying to get northeast I can take you that direction and drop you off and the other side. Next time, please don’t go through the forest, its way too easy to get lost.” shouted Kamiko.
“Uh, I’m not going to fall, r-right?” stuttered the uneasy Homare.
“Just don’t let your grip get quaky and everything should be fine.” hollered Kamiko. It was tough to let her voice be heard to Homare on the other side of her huge round body, so she did the best she could to project it towards him at maximum volume.
Homare calmed his nerves down and tried to enjoy the smooth ride.
“Wow, I’ll bet not many people have seen a sight like this.” he observed.
“Well, I see everything from this height practically everyday. It gets dull after a while.”
“I can’t imagine, really!”
Homare kept rotating his head slowly, looking at the panoramic view of the world that he had, almost one-hundred feet from the ground. In the distance ahead was a huge mountain with a snow-capped peak and at its base was a few cluttered groups of rice paddies. Behind him he could almost see the slight glimmer of the sunlight bouncing off the ocean waves. They were both lucky to have caught such magnificent view on such a clear and bright day.
“We sort of had an informal meeting there, what’s your name?” asked Homare.
Kamiko didn’t say anything back for a few seconds. Tomoko told her not to give away her identity in any way. Quickly Kamiko tried to come up with a fake name in her mind.
“Can you hear me?” cried Homare.
“It’s, er, Minako! I’m Minako!” replied Kamiko.
“Minako eh? Cute name. Despite the fact that most of the Minakos I’ve met aren’t! You’re the prettiest one of the bunch I have met!”
“You’re not trying to flatter me, aren’t you?”
“No serious, you have to see the gals to believe me.”
“Well, I’m certain they’re a lot skinnier than me.”
“Hey, you look like a fit gal, well, before you blow yourself up.”
“Yeah, my ability doesn’t really do wonders to my figure.”
“By the way, my name is Homare. I’m the wiseguy of my group.”
“Your group?”
“Er, of friends, yeah.”
Kamiko could tell that Homare himself had a few secrets to hide from that last comment. She began to feel a little more comfortable in regards to how she perceived him since she had to put on his act.
“So Minako.” Homare spoke up. “I imagine you have some sort of wacky teacher who teaches you how to turn into a balloon and all.”
“Er, yeah, you could say that. But he’s gone unfortunately. He passed away a few months ago.”
“Sorry to hear about that.”
“He was a great teacher; he made sure I put on the best show available for the people to see.”
“You know, that’s funny, because I don’t ever remember anybody talking about a show where a guy or girl could inflate themselves.”
“We tend to play in a very limited area.”
“Ah, I see.”
Suddenly Homare felt himself and Kamiko drop downwards a bit. She was starting to descend. Homare looked ahead and instead of a massive sea of bamboo underneath him was now a dry golden field of grass.
“So this is the end of the ride?”
“Yup. Keep your feet down and hold on, it might be a bumpy landing.”
Homare tried to position himself in a good landing position as Kamiko approached the ground. Just as his feet were about to touch the ground he let go of Kamiko’s feet, fell forwards onto his stomach, and then quickly got back up. He dusted himself off with his hands and looked up to see Kamiko flying upwards again. She turned around back towards the direction from which she and Homare had come and began to fly back over the forest.
“Hey thanks Minako! Hope to see your act sometime!”
“You’re welcome!”
Kamiko then strained her face a bit to accelerate herself, and flew over the towering bamboo stalks and disappeared.
“The guys are right; you do meet some weird folks in the forest.” Homare rubbed his head and then walked away.
As the sun began to set over Hanagawa castle, the servants and guards within began to make preparations for the soon-to-come festivities. Chefs prepared the delicious foods and appetizers, barrels of sake were being rolled around, decorations were being put up, and guards were being put up on alert around the castle. Two guards were standing guard near the gate, their purpose was to not only guard the entrance but greet the invited guests.
“I must have angered Lord Hanzo pretty badly when I stumbled in on his reading time. I don’t wanna’ do this crap.” stewed the tall and burly guard.
“I didn’t really do anything myself, but I still got put out here.” said the smaller and thinner guard next to the big guy.
“Well even if we did screw up or not, the last thing I want to do tonight is have anything to do with that lil’ spoiled brat’s birthday.”
“Yeah, Kazuko is a bit like that, she looks pretty good though.”
“Don’t let looks fool you man. I’ve quickly learned that you just can’t trust any women with pretty faces.”
Suddenly both the guards caught view of an old man and a huge round blue floating orb coming out of the woods in the distance. The old fellow walked with a somewhat limping gait, and was hunched a bit over in his posture, but he looked cheery and upbeat. The large shiny blue orb he held, tethered by a thin rope grasped by his hand made the mouths of the guards drop. It was at least fifteen feet in diameter, and what shocked the guards even more was that it wasn’t making the little frail man float away.
“Good lord old man! That balloon is huge!”
“Indeed it is! This is Hanagawa castle I presume?”
“Yes, and what is your business here?”
“I am Mori. This balloon is for the little girl’s party today, what is her name? I forgot.”
“Lord Hanzo’s daughter, Kazuko.” corrected the tall guard.
“Oh yes. May I please enter and deliver this balloon?”
“Only if you can show us proper documentation.” ordered the smaller guard.
“Oh, oh yes. That’s what the paper in my jacket is.” Mori reached his wrinkled and delicate hand into his robe flap, shifted it around a bit, and then brought it out grabbing a folded-up piece of paper. He then gave it to the small guard who unfolded it, took a look at it, and nodded his head approvingly.
“Okay, you can come in.”
“Thank you.” Mori slightly bowed to the guards with gratitude and then shuffled through the entrance of the gate. The huge balloon’s top brushed against the top of the gate’s arch and a faint dull groan could be heard.
“Hey, what was that?” said the tall guard. The old man stopped and turned his head towards him slightly.
“Oh it’s just the rubber on the balloon. It’s so tight and stretched; the rubber makes those funny sounds all the time.” explained the old man.
“Okay, sorry to stop you. Carry on.”
The old man nodded and continued on his way. He walked towards the large open doors of the main hall of the castle to deposit the balloon inside.
“See what I told you? That girl is spoiled rotten as hell. Look at the gifts Lord Hanzo gives her!” grumbled the tall guard.
“I’ll be she pops the thing too once she gets a hold of it.”
“Heh, I wouldn’t want to be around that thing if it goes off!”
Mori waddled through the doors of the main hall, still towing the immense balloon along. He looked around and observed all the servants setting up the party decorations along the walls. In front there was a stage where a troupe of famed dancers was practicing their routine for when the party starts. Mori wondered where he could stick the balloon out of sight until it was time for it to get presented to Kazuko so he walked up to a servant adjusting a banner on the wall near him.
“Excuse me kind sir. I have a balloon here as a present for Lord Hanzo’s daughter. Where can I put it?”
The servant lifted his arm and pointed his finger to the front of the room where a tall sliding screen was.
“That’s the room where we’re storing all the presents. You should be able to fit that huge thing in there, just let it float up to the ceiling.”
“Thank you, I will.” Mori walked towards the screen and slid it open. He looked up at the dark ceiling to make sure there were no sharp objects pointing out that could rupture the delicate balloon. His eyes didn’t find anything hazardous so he just reached his hand out and let the large balloon float gently up to the ceiling. He then quietly closed the screen door and walked towards the exit.
Inside the immense dark closet the smooth and shiny blue balloon just quietly and serenely floated carelessly along the top of the ceiling. A closer look at the surface of the balloon revealed that there were some small and unobtrusive dimples. There were five of them in total, two on the bottom, and three on the top. From within of the bottom dimples the string dangled out. Everything was quiet, but suddenly the large balloon began to creak and shake. At first it was subtle, but the shaking grew greater and the balloon made louder rubbery sounds. Suddenly from the dimple where the string was; what looked like a puffy little foot with the string tied around it emerged from the little tiny depression. It wiggled and shook around a bit as the other foot shot from the dimple next to it.
Now there were two comical little feet wiggling around on the bottom of the immense rubber gas-filled orb. Then from one of the dimples on the top of the orb emerged a little hand. Almost immediately after the hand came out of the dimple, the other dimple on the other side of the balloon’s top sprung out. Finally at the very top of the vaguely humanoid-looking sphere, a little tuft of healthy and shiny jet-black hair emerged, sprouted a bit, and quickly the head of Kamiko shot out. Her cheeks were all puffed up from the pressure and her brow was literally drenched with sweat from having to bury her head within her warm inflated body. She slowly opened her eyes, blinked a few times, and began to silently gasp for breath.
“Oh God, I’m so glad I don’t have to hide my limbs anymore! I was boiling alive in there.” The exhausted Kamiko thought. For the past week she had learned from Tomoko how to pull her head and limbs into her fully-inflated body and hide them from view. It was probably the hardest thing for her to learn yet as a Fuusenkunoichi, but it was worth it. She had sneaked into the heavily-guarded fortress without anyone noticing.
“I can’t believe I could hold my breath that long.” Kamiko marveled in thought at her astonishing achievement. “Someone might come by soon, so I should deflate and find Kazuko.”
Kamiko closed her eyes, concentrated, and began to let the air out of her. It hissed out with barely a sound at an astonishing rate. Within five seconds all the gas was out of her and she was back to her normal stature. She stretched her arms and legs quickly and then went up to the sliding door. She looked through the small crack between the door and the frame to see if anyone was outside. In the main hall the servants will still preparing the decorations for the big party.
“Damn! I can’t go out there! Yet I can’t stay around here. Maybe there’s another way out. Kamiko looked around the closet, eyeing all the extravagant gifts which were lying around.
“Geez, this girl’s father is filthy rich.”
As she examined the gifts, she looked upwards and immediately spotted what looked like a hatch in the ceiling.
“Aha! I can get out through there! I wish I had my grappling arrow and sword. I couldn’t bring with me because I would have popped if I tried to absorb those things into my body, along with my hands.” Kamiko stewed silently, trying to think of a way to get up to the door in the ceiling. Her eyes lit up as the idea came into her mind.
“Well, looks like I’m going to blow myself up again.”
Kamiko spread her arms and legs out and she began to suck in air slowly. Her body gradually ballooned out, bulging and slightly creaking. Suddenly she began to shift the air from her belly into her buttocks. Both butt cheeks began to expand slowly and surely, looking like two lumps of dough rising at a rapid rate. After a few seconds her butt was approximately the size of a pair of bean bag chairs squished together. She placed her hands upon her gargantuan butt and grinned under her tight rubbery face mask.
“Hee hee, how funny.”
Kamiko’s grin then disappeared as she sprung her attention back to the issue at hand. She tilted her head up again and eyed the door on the ceiling right above her. She then jumped up into the air, lifted her knees up, and landed right on her inflated hindquarters. They squished against the ground and immediately Kamiko was propelled upwards towards the ceiling. She flew at least halfway up until she slowed down again and began to fall back down to the floor. She kept her body steady, still positioning her huge gluteus maximus towards the ground. It impacted the ground again, making a tight hollow bouncing sound, and she flew back up to the ceiling. She reached her arms upwards as the door on top came towards her. As she began to slow to a stop in midair again, her fingers contacted the edges of the frame and immediately she plunged them through the crack between the door and the fame. She grabbed tight and held onto the frames, she was now where she wanted to be.
“Now to get rid of this huge rump.” Kamiko shifted the air inside her buttocks towards her midsection again, bulging it out. Then she let the air from her belly escape out her mouth, giving her body normal human proportions again.
“Okay, now that I’m up here, I’d better see what’s in the room above.
Kamiko pulled herself upwards and let the top of her head touch the door above her. Then she pushed upwards a bit more and looked through the opening that she created. It was dark above her head as well; it looked like another closet similar to the one below her but much smaller. She looked to the front and saw what looked like a screen door. To the left and to the right were cabinets that contained a bunch of clothes, mostly kimonos, all of them very expensive and gaudy.
As her arms began to get strained and tired from supporting her body, Kamiko quickly slid her head backwards and tilted the door to the other side. She turned her head and scanned the back for anything suspicious. All she saw were more cabinets.
“Good, the coast is clear.” Kamiko thought.
Gradually and slowly she lifted herself upwards, pushing the door out of the way. Despite the shaking and protests of her already-taxed arm muscles, she had to keep her ascent steady so that the door on her head wouldn’t fall down and make a noise. For about a few seconds she struggled and pulled until her hips were level with the floor above her. She edged them backwards and sat down, relieved that she was now on stable ground and her arms didn’t have to experience more pain. Kamiko shook her arms a bit to loosen them up, then she pulled her legs up, grabbed the door, and slowly pulled it over the opening and closed it up gently.
“Phew, I’m glad that’s over” Kamiko wiped her sweaty brow as she stood up on her feet and tiptoed over to the screen door in front of her. Carefully and quietly she opened the door a crack and looked into the room outside. On the other edge she caught sight of a young girl about her age, lying down on a colorful tatami mat taking a nap.
“Ah! That must be that rich girl Kazuko!” Kamiko narrowed her eyes in satisfaction. She looked at the girl’s face and saw the makeup on it. She had red blushes painted onto her white snowy face. She had what looked like red eyeliner painted onto her eyelids; it was a dark crimson color. Kazuko’s hair was done up fancily, with long ornate golden pins holding her long and smooth jet-black locks into tight ordered rolls. Kamiko grimaced at what looked more like a geisha with bad fashion sense rather than a nobleman’s daughter. She twisted her face in disgust even more at her green and red kimono with gold trim.
“Ugh, this girl needs some fashion sense smacked into her!”
Kazuko turned a bit on her back and groaned. Suddenly the door to the front of the room began to open. Kamiko quickly closed the closet door and put her ear up against it to hear what was going on inside.
“Kazuko-chan. Wake up my dear.” chided a deep voice within. It was Lord Hanzo.
“Papa, I’m a little tired.” Kazuko yawned as she opened her eyes and stretched her arms out.”
“I know dear, but I think you’ve gotten enough rest for today. The servants have finished the party preparations downstairs and we’re ready to start the party. The guests are beginning to arrive.”
“Oh okay. As long as I get to see my lovely presents.” grinned the spoiled girl.
“And there are plenty of them, just get yourself read so that we can start greeting our guests. Especially Lord Taro, I want to impress him the most, especially since he has made all this possible.”
“Fine, fine daddy. Let me fix my makeup a little.”
“Okay sweetheart, don’t take too long.”
“Hmph.” Kazuko pouted as she got up and stretched out again. Lord Hanzo walked towards the front door and closed it behind him as he left.
Kazuko walked towards her closet to grab something. “I need a little bit more eyeliner so I can wow the boys.” Before she could reach the edge of the door to open it, it quickly slid open and before she could gasp a pair of lips attached themselves to hers. Her eyes bulged out in shock she saw the fierce girl in a blue bodysuit in front of her begin to blow air down her gullet.
Down below in the main hall, Lord Hanzo was conversing with the guests that had arrived to celebrate his daughter’s birthday. As he was chatting with a pair of friends that came from up north, a tall grey-haired man with a long sinewy beard approached him from behind. Lord Hanzo suddenly halted his animated conversation with his friends and turned around to look at the dark presence that had entered his personal space. As he glanced upon the fierce grey eyes of Lord Taro, Lord Hanzo’s brow lifted up in happiness and he immediately kneeled down on the ground and bowed graciously towards him.
“Oh Master Taro, what a pleasure it is to have you here!”
“Hanzo, please. There’s no need to act this submissive in this environment. This is your daughter’s birthday afterall.”
“Whatever you say Master Taro, how was your journey?”
“It was good. Nothing bothered me along the way, except my worries.”
“Oh, I heard about what happened to Lady Komoda a while back. Strange, wasn’t it?”
“It was not strange at all to me. I am very familiar with how she met her fate.”
“Is that so? I heard her fortress was totally obliterated. Granted it was a rickety old place, but still whatever destroyed it used great force.”
“Indeed, but it is a force that I am aware of. And I used to know someone who could exert it upon Lady Komoda’s forces.”
“Who might that be?”
“Someone who I expelled from the kingdom shortly after we took over: One of Hideyoshi’s aides. She was a fierce spirit, and I know she had something to do with it. It was none other than…”
Before Lord Taro could finish his sentence, the large door of the closet at the end of the room began to slide open. Everyone looked towards the entrance that had just opened up.
“Ah, they must be bringing the gifts for your daughter out Hanzo.” Commented …
“But, they’re supposed to bring them out after she has come down. What is going one?’
As Hanzo spoke something appeared at the entrance to the closet. At the edge of the door a little head peeked out of the side to look at the audience. It was Kazuko, but something was wrong. Her cheeks were comically puffed-out to the size of baseballs.
“K…Kazuko!?” Hanzo’s eyes bugged out of his sockets as he caught a glimpse of his hapless daughter’s bloated face.
Kazuko’s eyes had a look of both embarrassment and fear within them. Behind her head was what looked like a gigantic round red and green orb with a v-shaped flesh-colored spot right below her head. It began to roll outside the door. Hanzo and everyone else in the room quickly realized that the orb behind Kazuko’s body was none other than her body! Indeed her once-slim petite figure had been transformed into a huge flesh balloon that was at least twenty feet in diameter. She scrunched her eyes in shame as her huge blimpy body rolled outside. It was amazing that her gaudy kimono could stretch and cover her massive taut sphere of a body. Little tiny hands and feet wiggled goofily and futilely around in their respective places on Kazuko’s balloon body like the now vestigial limbs they were. The bottom of the kimono could only cover down to her bellybutton, leaving her pale round naked underside exposed.
As Kazuko’s mammoth girth cleared the doorway, a normal-sized black ponytail-haired girl wearing what looked like a skin-tight blue bodysuit that covered her body from toe to nose was pushing the helpless girl towards the front of the audience. The guards started to rush towards the intruder but when they saw that she was holding a knife dangerously close to the inflated Kazuko’s underside they quickly stopped and backed off.
As this spectacle occurred, all Hanzo could do was gape in fear at the horrible predicament that his daughter had gotten into. Lord Taro however narrowed his eyes and focused on Kamiko. The audience in the room was completely silent, except for a few muted whispers.
In a few moments, Kamiko had pushed the rounded Kazuko onto the stage in front of the huge audience, right onto her back, with her pointy bellybutton poking towards the ceiling. After she was done pushing, Kamiko jumped into the air and landed right on top of Kazuko’s globe of a body.
“Lord Hanzo, please listen!” Kamiko yelled out. “It has come to attention that your daughter is shall we say, quite privileged. She has not only extravagant gifts but also many key comforts and beautiful clothes. She might enjoy them, but does she or you, Lord Hanzo, realize who does not enjoy these luxuries? While many people in this land starve and toil the soil, you leech off their earnings and take it to feed your own families and friends while leaving the vast majority of the people in poverty! This is a selfish deed that shall not go unpunished and the example that I will soon make of you, Lord Hanzo, and your spoiled daughter here will show that the power you have gotten from Lord Taro can be weakened!”
The audience gasped as the ninja girl on top of the deformed Kazuko bent down, placed her lips onto her exposed navel, and puffed her cheeks out to blow some air into it. Quickly Kamiko got back up, slid down off the side of Kazuko, ran into the closet, and shut the door behind her.
“Guards! Don’t let her get away!” screamed the infuriated Lord Hanzo at the top of his lungs. The guards in the audience began to rush towards the closet but a low grumbling sound from inside the bloated Kazuko quickly distracted them.”
“Wha… What is happening!?” gasped Lord Hanzo as he saw his victim of a daughter start to expand even more.
“Master Taro!” Hanzo turned to the side to try and find Lord Taro, but he was gone. He quickly looked towards the front to see his frightened and flustered daughter scream muffled shrieks from behind her billowed-up cheeks. Her body was ballooning bigger, and bigger, and bigger! It was making suspicious creaking noises as her ultra-tight skin began to reach critical mass.
“She’s going to explode!” Someone in the audience screamed out. Others began to panic as Kazuko’s now-humongous body pressed against the tall ceiling, began to shake and then…
…A loud high-pitched hiss broke out. Her navel had blown out and now was letting all the tightly-compressed air inside her escape. It was at first just a slight gust, but then the air escaping her turned into a hurricane wind force that blasted the ceiling above the heads of the audience into the sky. The pagoda they were in blew its top like a volcano spewing its internal matter into the night sky. Planks of wood and other various debris rocketed into the starry night. The audience within the halls was blown out the main door, shot out like water in a squirt gun.
A minute later after the carnage ended, Lord Hanzo laid face down on the cool dirt in front of his face. He slowly got up and turned his head back to see what happened. The huge castle which had used to belong to him was not nothing more than a few planks of wood sticking out of the ground and random rubble strewn about the area. However this didn’t nearly bother him as much as the thought of what had happened to his dear Kazuko. He quickly got up on his feet and began stumbling towards what used to be the entrance of the main hall. Careful not to step on the other people who had been knocked out by the blast, he ran through the two vertical planks that used to be part of the frame for the hall’s entrance and suddenly he came to a stop with a look of horror on his face.
In front of him he saw Kazuko; her body was no longer an inflated orb, but now a flat sheet-like substance that covered at least area twenty square feet on the ground. Her once-smooth skin was now just a rubbery sheet on the ground with a torn and stretched kimono covering her limp pancake-like body. He ran towards where her head was. Kazuko’s eyes were closed, but she was breathing. She opened her eyes, looked at her father and mumbled out…
“D… Daddy?”
Lord Hanzo’s eyes rolled back into his head and he fell backwards and fainted.
Lord Taro strolled along the outskirts of the castle’s rubble. He observed the guests and guards getting up, rubbing their heads, and recovering after surviving the gigantic blast. His thumb and index finger massaged his chin as he reflected upon the grand spectacle that had taken place. Then he looked towards the woods and spotted a lone blue figure running towards the forest; it was Kamiko. Lord Taro quickly turned around, spotted a group of guards that had just come to their senses.
“Guards! I have spotted the assassin, after her!” barked Taro.
The guards shook their heads, looked towards the direction where Lord Taro was pointing, and they immediately began to pursue Kamiko with their swords drawn. As Kamiko ran towards the forest she looked backwards and saw the guards rapidly gaining on her.
“Shoot, they saw me. I’ll try and lose them in the forest.” Kamiko thought as she ran swiftly into the entrance of the forest.
“Quicker men! Quicker! We’ll lose her in there!” shouted the guard at the front of the pack.
The group of angered men entered the forest, but much to their dismay they could not see Kamiko in front of them.
“Damn! We lost her!” A bearded guard shouted.
“Look around the bushes and trees! Ninjas always like to hide around in them! Start searching! Lord Taro will reward us if we capture her, dead or alive!”
The pack of four men split up and began searching through the bushes and looking up into the trees. A couple of them sliced their katanas through the bushes, trimming them as if they were made of Styrofoam.
A bearded guard wandering near a tree looked upwards to see if anything was up there, but before he could get a good look a pair of blue shiny arms wrapped themselves tightly around his neck. Then they began to expand and bulge up like dry sponges in water, cutting of any chance of air entering the hapless guard’s windpipe or for any sound to escape his mouth. Just a mere few moments later, one of the other guards searching near the bearded guard’s spot heard a dull thump. He ran over to the area where he heard the noise and found the guard on the ground, suffocated.
“Holy shi…” Just before the guard could finish his exclamation, this time a pair of smooth yet toned legs dropped down and its thighs grasped the guard’s neck. They ballooned up like plumping sausages and made the guard join his friend.
Five minutes later the two other guards began to search near the vicinity where the two other guards had been searching for the fugitive ninja girl. While walking by a tree, one of them tripped over something on the ground.
“Hey get up you clutz! We need to find tha… Oh no.”
The guard’s mouth dropped to the ground when he saw that his comrade had fallen right over the lifeless bodies of the two other guards. He looked up into the tree but all he could see were the crescent moon beams seeping through the canopy.
Back at the ruins of the castle, Lord Hanzo squatted on the ground beside the stretched-out flat body of his daughter crying furiously. Lord Taro approached the once-proud weeping man and tapped on his back. The devastated Hanzo turned around, looked up into the eyes of Taro, and knelt down to the ground in front of him.
“Please tell me you found her. Please tell me you found and killed the witch who did this to my daughter!”
“Unfortunately the answer is no. In fact she killed two of your guards while she got away.”
“Oh God I’ll kill her! I’ll kill her and anyone associated with her! How could she or anyone do this horrible thing to my sweet special daughter?”
“I have to admit, I’m impressed that Tomoko has learned so many new tricks.” grinned Taro.
“T… Tomoko!? She, she’s still…”
“She has always been around. She has been around ever since we took over, and now she has sent us a little greeting.” Lord Taro’s grin melted into a grim stare as a looked up into the night sky and pondered the events that had just transpired.
Back at the old temple in the middle of the bamboo forest, Tomoko sat in front of the standing Kamiko, debriefing her on her mission.
“…And you recited the speech as well?” questioned Tomoko.
“Every single word.” replied Kamiko.
“Ahhhh good, good. Now Lord Taro has finally discovered our presence, now all we need to do is get our message out to the people and soon we might be able to move onto bigger things.” Tomoko smiled and closed her eyes for a short bit to reflect. Kamiko pulled her mask down and began to speak.”
“Sensei, I just ruined that girl’s body using my abilities. I know she profited off of her father’s oppression of the people, but why did she have to suffer for it?”
Tomoko opened her eyes and cleared her throat. She looked up at Kamiko and saw eyes of confidence and fierceness, yet also of compassion and hope.
“Her father is already suffering. In fact, he is probably suffering more than she is right now. Plus he lost his castle during the process so I imagine it is a huge shock to him. He treats that spoiled little girl as if she was made of gold. Hmph.”
“She did seem like a brat, but was that really enough of a reason to do such an extreme thing to her?” Kamiko’s brow was furrowed with both anger yet uncertainty. She had never questioned her teacher’s motives so critically before.
“Besides the fact that I saw her palanquin run a little boy off the road, down a hill, and into a rock that broke his leg, and all she did was look backwards, and then shrug off the whole incident as if it were nothing. Yes, I guess she didn’t deserve what she got. In fact, maybe you should have popped her!”
Kamiko just stared at her irate teacher. Sweat began to bead out of the pores on her forehead.
“I know you might have compassion for many human beings, despite their flaws. But sometimes certain people do not deserve any at all, because they show no compassion towards others. Maybe now that girl will understand what its like to be disabled, or wounded.”
Tomoko looked back down and closed her eyes. Kamiko sat down in front of her and stared into her Zen-like state. She was looking at an enigma of a woman, not just because of her abilities and power, but because of her character. Was she insane, or was she a guardian of justice? Kamiko felt inclined to believe the latter. Besides, trying to bring peace into the world was never a clean job.
Deep within the bamboo forest the wispy branches and leaves swooned and floated around near the top of the stalks, like an eternal and organic green mass. In the background they watched a tall snow-capped mountain that appeared to be bathing among the crystal clear blue sky. It was a plain yet beautiful sight; that is until a large dark round shadow began to fly around on the surface of the bamboo canopy.
Up in the azure sky, a dark blue orb with an deep shiny luster hovered over the bamboo sea, almost perfect in its roundness except for four cones for limbs and a tiny head with a healthy and shiny black ponytail flapping in the wind like a banner.
Kamiko the Fuusenkuniochi was flying around, but not on a mission to steal anything or assassinate someone, but instead she just needed to relax. She decided to heed the advice of her mentor Tomoko earlier in the day to go out and soothe her nerves after her mission at Lord Hanzo’s castle. She had known that her special abilities to inflate herself and others as a weapon gave her great power, but what she did last night instilled a sense of shock and awe not only in the elite ranks of Lord Taro’s aristocracy, but within herself.
As she shifted her head around and admired the panoramic view she had of the area, she sighed deeply and wondered:
“Sometimes I feel like this forest is about as big as my task at hand. How much longer will I have to go on as an instrument in Tomoko sensei’s plans? I don’t know why I trust her, but for some reason she really does know how to make things better for people out there.”
As Kamiko contemplated her conflicted feelings, she closed her eyes as she floated gracefully over the forest and remembered the time when she sat beside the bed of her dying stepfather, Yoshiyuki. She remembered how pale and weak he looked, and how his once-hearty and tanned face had transformed into what looked like white wax. Kamiko placed her hand on his side, feeling the gasping breaths shake his dying body.
“Oh Kamiko, did… did you ever know you were more like a true daughter to me rather than, than, an adopted one?”
“You treated us all like your own papa-san. You helped us grow into something better.”
Yoshiyuki sighed and narrowed his eyes as he heard Kamiko speak. Her voice soothed his battered nerves as he fought of the onslaught of the disease wreaking havoc within his body.
“Kamiko, Kamiko-rin. I am dying, I know it. But I don’t feel I am dying in vain. You right next to my side is proof enough, as well as Minako, Rin, Eiko, and Mao. All of them have grown up to be such mature and fine example of women. It makes my withering heart feel full again.”
“Oh please papa-san, don’t despair like this! You may look like you’re in bad shape now, but you’ll eventually get better.”
“Kamiko, this disease has eaten away at my health for almost two months. I am reaching the end of my life for sure. But please don’t waste your energy trying to bring me back. I want to see you and your sisters keep things going well around the farm, I know you can do it.”
Yoshiyuki looked up towards the ceiling, just as his breathing began to slow down.
“Before I go Kamiko, you must know this. I know the harvests haven’t been doing too well. I think the rice paddies around here have been loosing a lot of their vitality. There hasn’t been enough water to go around and keep them fertile. It is a shame really; I miss the time when Lord Hideyoshi was in power. He and I were such good friends and he made sure everyone else had enough resources to keep their crops healthy and productive.”
Yoshiyuki sighed as he thought again about Hideyoshi, remembering his once-proud rule over the land.
“However I don’t trust the ones who have replaced him. They have let the farmers down by neglecting their relationship with us. I don’t even know who the name of the new ruler is, its madness.”
Kamiko put her hand on Yoshiyuki’s forehead and gently rubbed his sweaty brow to sooth his slight frustration.
“Kamiko, dear Kamiko, if you can in some way, get him out of power. We need someone again who isn’t selfish and neglectful. We need help, and the ones who have protested have had their opinions fall on deaf ears. It may take time, but you have to work in a way that neither he nor the hawkish eyes of his cronies ever catch a glimpse of your motives.”
“But, but I’m just a girl.” said Kamiko.
“That has nothing to do with anything dear. People out there might think men are the ones who can do everything, but I’m not so sure of what they think. I have seen women who have done greater things than men, and they have sacrificed themselves in ways that even the strongest and hardest men would cringe over.”
Yoshiyuki began to cough hard. Kamiko quickly ran to the bucket of fresh water than she had on hand and attempted to pour some down the mouth of her ailing step-father. However he just turned his head to the side and refused.
“Please father, drink. You need some fluid to regain strength.”
“Don’t worry Kamiko; I have all the strength in the world. It isn’t in me, but I see it right in front of my face.”
Yoshiyuki’s eyes then began to slowly close as his last breath filled his lungs. Then he expelled the last gulp of oxygen that he would ever take as his heart within the deep recesses of his chest began to slow down its beat. Kamiko just kneeled by his side staring into the lifeless eyelids of Yoshiyuki and tears welled up in her eyes.
A single tear drop tapped the leaf of a bamboo leaf at the tip of a branch perched at the top of a chute as the still-inflated Kamiko sobbed over the bittersweet memory of Yoshiyuki’s passing. She hovered steadily as she remembered the pain of losing the man that helped her grow into a young woman. She then realized how his final words were not just an emotional farewell, but they were the means by what she could justify her current lot in life. She knew about Lord Taro’s neglectful rule not just from the mouth of Tomoko, but from Yoshiyuki as well. What she was doing as a Fuusenkunoichi might seem strange and sometimes violent, but it did have a distinct and worthwhile purpose.
Ahead of her she looked towards a single tall bamboo stalk that stood out among the others. She hovered over to it and gained a bit of altitude. After she positioned her globular bottom over it she began to expel the huge mass of chi-heated air inside her and descend. Kamiko tilted her body to the side so that her right foot would alight upon the tip of the bamboo chute. It gently touched the blunt bamboo edge as Kamiko’s body continued to compress and release the gas inside her. After a mere few seconds of deflating, Kamiko was back to her normal lithe feminine form. She kept her legs close together as she balanced herself on the tip of the bamboo stalk, then she crossed her arms as she looked off into the horizon and began to contemplate some more. It was a beautiful sight, and her hawkish eyes used the magnificent panorama in front of her to fuel her imagination.
Just a mere ten miles away from the bamboo forest, the castle of Lord Taro towered above the village in front of it. Perched on a hill, the brilliant red pagoda watched over the humble residences like an eternal imperial guard.
The main courtyard within the imposing heavily-guarded walls housed calm and serene stone gardens with fountains, creeks, and a few swooping pines. Lord Taro strolled towards a small Shinto shrine at the far-east corner of the garden. There Lord Hanzo kneeled and prayed at the wooden edifice, praying and chanting while uttering the name of his horribly deflated daughter, Kazuko. Taro just stood behind the hunched-over man as he prayed towards the recovery of his daughter. Feeling a presence behind him, Hanzo lifted his torso up and looked behind him. His eyes opened in shock as he turned towards his master and knelt before him.
“Oh Master Taro! Do you have good news regarding my daughter!? Please tell me we can get her back to normal.”
Taro’s grey eyes just glared down at the groveling man, both filled with a slight sense of pity, yet also with a hint of disgust.
“Well my dear Hanzo. It is too early to tell whether your daughter can be helped. However I do have someone who might be able to lift both your spirits and satisfy my needs.”
Hanzo still bowed his head to the ground in front of Taro’s feet, he felt a little confused upon hearing his master’s news so he looked up into his face and asked…
“Someone? Like who?”
Lord Taro stepped aside to reveal a woman in a white robe with plain embroidered blue flowers lining her sleeves. Her smooth black hair was done up in a tall and long ponytail as she stood with her arms planted on her front, looking towards the kneeling Hanzo.
“May I introduce you to Sadako, probably the best female assassin in the land. I have hired her specifically with the intent of dispatching the person who obliterated your castle and disfigured your daughter.”
Hanzo kept staring at the serene yet deadly woman in front of her, his once-morose face morphed slowly into a gleeful grin. He know had a chance for revenge and whenever Master Taro summoned someone who could do the job, he knew the people whom he hired would succeed.
“Please bring me her head, so I can spit upon it.” requested the vengeful and delighted Lord Hanzo.
Sadako just bowed her round and graceful face towards Lord Hanzo in compliance and turned around. She walked towards the doors that lead to the main yard so she could embark on her mission. As she disappeared Lord Hanzo turned towards Master Taro and again bowed deeply.
“Oh thank you. Thank you so much my Lord.”
“Quite an impressive request dear Hanzo. Just make sure I am around when you claim your trophy.” Lord Taro chuckled slightly in glee at the thought of his sycophantic minion defacing Kamiko’s decapitated head; that is if Sadako the assassin did her job.
As the day passed, the sun began to dip towards the horizon, tinting the once-blue sky into a deeper shade of orange. Kamiko still stood perched on the tip of the bamboo chute, staring off into the distance. As she continued to think about her current quest to bring stability back to the kingdom, Kamiko felt a low rumble within her stomach. She remembered that she hadn’t eaten the whole time she had been away from the temple.
“I’d better go back to Tomoko-sensei’s place. I hope we can have ramen tonight.” Kamiko sighed in pleasure at the thought of a hearty bowl of steaming ramen to fill her empty belly. Just as she was ready to inflate herself her senses tingled but not out of hunger; there was something near her. Quickly she looked behind her and jumped backwards. Just as she did this a long spear swooshed past her, flying up towards where her torso used to be before she moved. As Kamiko flipped backwards she landed right on top of another bamboo stalk and saw the spear that had almost skewered her and discovered that it had a thin chain attached to it. The long chain then suddenly turned taut and it pulled it back through the bamboo canopy from where it came from. Kamiko looked towards where the spear disappeared and she immediately jumped down feet first into the sea of bamboo leaves.
After landing into the ground and standing up from a crouch the blue and rubbery Kamiko saw an elegant lady with white robes standing in front of her. As lifted her head to stare into Kamiko’s eyes, Sadako grinned and slung another chain-attached spear towards the Fuusenkunoichi. Kamiko quickly leaned back and fell back-first onto the ground as the chained spear flew over her and embedded itself into a thick stalk of bamboo. Sadako tugged on the chain and rocketed the speak back towards her and also caused the large bamboo chute to break at the spot right below where the spear had embedded itself, pulling the jagged bottom of the chute right toward Kamiko’s head on the ground. She swiftly rolled to the right as the deadly bottom of the bamboo stalk hit the ground where she once-laid. The rest of the bamboo just fell down to earth, emitting a loud dull thud.
To avoid another attack from the spear-chucking assassin, Kamiko jumped up towards another bamboo pole, grabbed it, and held on as she eyed the deadly woman below her.
“Who are you!?” Kamiko yelled at the killer woman below her. “Who sent you!?”
Sadako just grinned and grabbed her white robe, pulling it off with a swift pull and flinging it to the cold forest floor in back of her. She wore a loincloth around her pelvic area, similar to what a sumo wrestler would wear. On her legs she wore a pair of long white knee-high stockings and a pair of sandals on her feet. Her arms had two elbow-length black-leather gloves adorning them with metal studs on each of her knuckles. On her chest she wore some tightly-wrapped strips of cloth around her chest and a red vest over her shoulders, with white cherry blossoms as a pattern. Sadako spread her legs apart and placed the two spears connected by a single long chain behind her shoulders and said…
“I am Sadako, or the Bloody Blossom as some people prefer to call me. I hope you enjoyed the fun you had with Lord Hanzo and his daughter, because I am going to place a price upon it. And now you must pay.”
Sadako then lifted both spears and positioned them horizontally above her head. She began to spin around, slowly at first, but quickly she began to pick up speed. She allowed the spears to dangle from their chains as they suspended themselves in mid-air from the centrifugal force. Now Sadako was spinning around like some sort of possessed top, she let the spears out further and further, any bamboo stalk that got in the way of them instantly got cut cleanly in half. Kamiko realized that Sadako was turning herself into a giant spinning rotor of death, so she flung herself off the pole she clung to and ran away while ducking the falling bamboo stalks that were cut down by Sadako’s deadly spinning fury.
Furiously trying to avoid Sadako’s whirling onslaught, Kamiko desperately tried to think of a way to escape. She couldn’t inflate and fly out of the way; Sadako’s flying spears would surely pop her as she flew off. To make matters even worse; as Kamiko ran away from Sadako she followed her. Kamiko knew she had to run towards an open space so Sadako’s spinning spear attack wouldn’t be as effective due to the lack of bamboo stalks to cut down. Since Kamiko had lived in the forest for a while she had grown accustomed to remembering the layout of it, especially the clearings that were within. She remembered that there was a particularly large one to east and she was currently running in that direction. All Kamiko could do right now was get away from Sadako in a quick and efficient manner so she ran towards a nearby bamboo stalk, grabbed the stalk, and swung around it a couple times like a gymnast. She then let go and propelled herself towards another stalk, grabbed it, swung around, and flung herself towards another stalk.
Kamiko was able to escape the deadly spears of Sadako in a quicker and swifter fashion once she had become more dexterous as swinging off the bamboo stalks. She did this method for at least five minutes straight until she spotted a light ahead.
“There’s the clearing!” Kamiko thought.
She sped up a bit to reach the clearing faster and then she finally slingshot herself into the open area and landed on her feet. She started running towards the middle of the large spacious grassy space and waited for Sadako to emerge from the side she had just emerged from. Within the bamboo forest the sound of the whirling spears and shattering bamboo grew louder, louder, and louder, until a few stalks began to explode from the clearing fly towards where Kamiko stood. The athletic and inflatable ninja girl jumped out of the way of a particularly slim rod of bamboo that flew towards her and planted itself in the ground. It was at least six feet long and it was totally hollow in the middle. Kamiko plucked it from the ground and held it as the spinning Sadako emerged from the forest. Sadako still spun wildly and approached Kamiko, but as she grew closer to her Sadako slowed down and began to reel in her spinning spears. As the spears came closer to Sadako’s body, she slowed down her spinning whirl.
“I can’t believe she isn’t falling to the ground yet. She should be dizzy as hell.” thought the impressed Kamiko.
Finally Sadako stopped her spinning, planted her feet into the ground, and grasped both spears by their handles firmly in her hands and held them over her head. She then held them in front of her and crossed them.
“You’re good at running, but you still haven’t proven your fighting skills. Young girl.” snarled the sultry femme. “Now let’s face off against each other.”
Kamiko’s right hand grabbed the small katana tied around her wrist and pointed it towards Sadako.
“Let’s go.” Kamiko held the long bamboo pole in front of her and held the katana in front of her, ready to clash weapons with her adversary.
Immediately Sadako tossed both spears at Kamiko, still crossed while flying through the air, and as they neared the ninja girl the two spear-tipped poles closed up while attempting to cut Kamiko in half like a pair of oversized scissors. Kamiko jumped up into the air, landed feet first on the spear handles, and jumped towards Sadako with her katana aimed at her head. Sadako saw Kamiko hurdling towards her with the small katana, so she pulled the spears back towards her, let the limp chains fold upwards and smack Kamiko’s right wrist, forcing her to let go of the katana. This caused Kamiko to stumble about in mid air as the mini-katana swiveled about in an arc and planted itself blade-first into the ground.
As Kamiko fell towards the ground she firmly grasped the bamboo pole that she held, swung it forward and pointed it towards the ground. As the tip dug into the ground the rest of the pole vaulted forwards, and Kamiko pointed her feet in the same direction. As the pole completed its arc, Kamiko landed feet-first on the ground and pulled the long stick out of the ground. Just after performing her impressive acrobatic stunt, Sadako turned towards Kamiko and shot one her tethered spears towards her. Anticipating this move, Kamiko lifted her left arm with the grappling arrow tied around the wrist, aimed it towards the approaching spear, and fired. The swift arrow flew towards the base of the spear’s handle and wrapped itself around the chain section, and Kamiko tugged the string attached to the arrow towards the left, allowing the spear to just narrowly miss her head.
After missing Kamiko, the spear hit the ground, but before Sadako could pull it out, Kamiko did the job for her by giving the string within her left hand a powerful tug. The base of the spear flew towards her and Kamiko grabbed the base of the spear just before it could hit her. Wasting no time, Kamiko established a firm grip on the spear’s handle and with all her might gave it a gigantic tug strong enough to allow the stunned Sadako to let go and start spinning around as she lost her grasp on her prized weapon. Sadako spun around a few times and just as she began to stop she fell down towards the ground on all fours. While Sadako lost her balance, Kamiko saw that she had fallen down with her butt facing her. As Kamiko stared at her snowy jiggling buttocks she instantly got a fantastic idea.
Immediately Kamiko pointed the long and thin bamboo tube towards Sadako’s backside and began to sprint right towards it. Before Sadako could get any chance to respond she felt a hard cold shaft penetrate her hindquarters. Her eyes bugged out in shock at what had just happened to her as the bamboo pole that Kamiko brandished violated her. At first she couldn’t do anything but stay frozen in her squatted position, unable to comprehend what had just happened to her. Just as Sadako started to turn her head to face her opponent, Kamiko took a huge breath, large enough to distend her stomach to the look of a nine-month pregnant woman and blow into the long bamboo tube. As Kamiko’s large stomach deflated, Sadako’s stomach billowed out. Sadako winced in pain as the warm air flowed into her, blowing her up.
“Oh, oh, oh GOD!” Sadako shrieked as she placed her hand on her naked round belly and felt how huge it had become.
Showing no mercy, Kamiko took another huge breath and blew into the tube again, inflating the hapless Sadako like a party balloon.
“Stop, STOP! The pressure! It’s, getting, too much!” Sadako pleaded with desperate mercy.
“It isn’t too comfortable, isn’t it?” said the confident and victorious Kamiko. “I can blow myself up like a balloon all the time, and I don’t bat an eye. And yet you can’t handle any of this. I thought you were a professional.”
“You’re a witch! A freak that needs to be burned so that your presence can never plague this world again!”
Upon hearing her insult, Kamiko took another puff into the tube, this time causing not only Sadako’s stomach to billow out to gargantuan proportions, but her limbs to plump up and her butt to billow up. All Sadako could do was wiggle her arms and legs as she rolled over onto her back and stared up into the sky. Sadako’s view of the purple night didn’t last long as Kamiko’s masked face blocked it and looked straight into her frightened eyes.
“I see Lord Hanzo and Taro have sent you to get me back for giving them a slap in the face. And it looks like you’ve just failed.”
Tears began to well up in the eyes of the swollen and defeated woman warrior as she began to ponder how horrible her fate was. Being blown up like a balloon at the hands of a smaller and presumably weaker feminine opponent.
“However, don’t think that you won’t see him again. You can tell Lord Taro that you screwed up, and I’ll let you return back to the castle since you bothered to come such a long way to meet me.”
Sadako stared into the eyes of Kamiko. She could see a grin form underneath shiny blue rubber that covered her mouth.
“Now, before we leave, I have to meet someone before you begin your journey.”
Kamiko’s face then dropped out of Sadako’s view. Her brow was drenched with sweat as she frantically wondered who Kamiko was going to meet. Then her eyes bugged out in fear as she heard Kamiko inhale and blow another large gust of warm air into her.
The last thing Sadako saw was her belly rise up into the cool night air and the strips of cloth around her breasts snap and fall off.
Back at Lord Taro’s castle the midnight moon shown above the blue roof tiles. Within the lop level of the pagoda, Taro himself was preparing for a good night’s sleep.
“That assassin I sent hasn’t come back yet.” Taro scratched his chin as he wondered about the whereabouts of his hired minion.
“Maybe she decided to camp somewhere when it got dark. Her little tiff with Tomoko’s helper probably took a little longer than expected.”
Taro then stretched his arms above his head, laid himself down on the bedding, and looked up towards the white ceiling. Before he could doze off, Taro began to hear a bunch of commotion among the guards in the main courtyard down below his window. Irritated by the disturbance he got out of bed, stomped towards the window, and slid it open. He looked down and saw a group of guards pointing upwards. The sentries on the walls held bright lanterns to shine light at an object in the night sky.
“What on earth are you all shouting about down there?!” Taro angrily screamed at the guards below.”
“Commander Taro!” One of the sentries holding a lantern yelled back. “There’s something in the sky approaching the castle! It’s getting near the wall!”
“What!?” gasped the puzzled Taro. He looked upwards and spotted what looked like a large round thirty-foot diameter blue orb approaching the floor right below him. On the shiny blue orb were what looked like a pair of tiny feet sticking out, another pair of little hands down below, and while the huge balloon tumbled towards the towering castle, a tiny masked head with a black ponytail rotated over the horizon of the huge floating globe.
“It’s Tomoko’s assassin girl! She’s foolish to think she can infiltrate the castle like this!” Lord Taro grinned at the chance to dispatch the intruder easily and effortlessly.
“Archers!” shouted Lord Taro. “Shoot her down! Let us pop this silly balloon girl!”
The tiny face on the huge balloon-female suddenly began to shake around and murmur in protest. Lord Taro couldn’t hear what she was yelling due to her distance and also the huge bulging cheeks that prevented any intelligible words to escape her mouth.
“What are you waiting for!? Take her out men!”
Down below, three men reached for arrows in the containers behind their back and placed them on their respective bows. They placed the butts of the arrows on the tight strings, pulled them back, and aimed at the huge inflated rubber-clad girl above them. They grinned at the easy shot and fired the deadly pointy projectiles.
A split second later, a huge explosion echoed throughout the village below the castle, instantly forcing the inhabitants within each house to wake up.
Just a mere minute after the huge explosion, Lord Taro exited a door on the bottom floor of the pagoda and entered the main courtyard. There was hardly anything left of the pneumatic intruder that had harassed the castle just a minute earlier. Many of the guards were still rubbing their heads after having been knocked over by the blast. There were a few spots of spattered blood on the castle walls and some limp pieces of blue flaccid rubber lying around in random spots.
“Ugh, look at the mess she made. But at least she will not bother us again. Now I can hunt down Tomoko and get her out of the way as well.” said Taro.
“Commander Taro! We’ve found her head!” shouted the captain of the guards as he approached his master.
“Excellent! Now my friend Hanzo can have his wish.”
As a guard ran towards Lord Taro with the head of the now-popped girl dangling by the long ponytail that he grasped firmly within his hand; he kneeled in front of Lord Taro and offered it to him. Taro gleefully snatched the disembodied head and held it in front of his face. The girl’s eyes were rolled back into her head, frozen still after she expired, yet the rubbery mask still covered her mouth and nose. At first Taro grinned, but then he noticed something suspicious about the face that he looked at. Quickly he pulled the mask down and his eyes grew wide with shock. It was Sadako.
Lord Taro’s face grew red with fury as he tossed Sadako’s head at a nearby guard. He caught it as it hit his chest and knocked the breath out of him. All Lord Taro did was storm off towards the entrance to the castle, fuming at Sadako’s failure. But before he could return to his room and stew with anger, another guard approached him from behind and called for him.
“Lord Taro! We’ve just found this small scroll among the remains! It appears to be a message!”
“Quickly Lord Taro turned around and snatched the small rolled-up piece of paper from the hands of the guard, opened it up, and read…
“Greetings Taro,
This is just the first thing that will blow up in your face.
Tomoko”
After seeing Tomoko’s name at the end of the brief message, Lord Taro’s face turned a crimson red as he tossed it to the ground, raised his arms into the night sky, and bellowed furiously towards the heavens.
Back at the old temple nestled within the middle of the bamboo forest, a dim light shone from within. Inside Kamiko was enjoying a nice large bowl of hot ramen while wearing her comfortable light red kimono. She wolfed down the thick hearty noodles, the battle she had with Sadako had famished her. Kamiko took a pause from eating to look towards Tomoko who sat on the floor on the other side of the room and read from a parchment.
“Did you hear that sound just now sensei?”
“Yes, it looks like Hanzo just broke our ‘little’ present for him.”
“Ugh, I’d hate be there now.” grimaced Kamiko. She tried to imagine the fate Sadako had just met, but quickly put it out of her mind.
“Hmph, that Sadako was always a wild card. Oh she seemed calm at first, but she would lash out at your without any warning.” Tomoko reminisced. “Quite a few villagers lost their lives that way when she walked by Taro’s side a few times.”
Kamiko put down her bowl and turned around to face Tomoko.
“Why must he use such violent and careless people to accompany him?”
“You need force from others before you can show everyone how powerful you really are. Just as samurai instill fear in the peasants Lord Taro does the same via his own group of thugs.” Tomoko looked towards the planks on the floor and sighed. Now people will learn that his posse can be defeated, and when he has nobody left to turn to the people can overthrow him.”
Kamiko listened to Tomoko’s observation and tried to fathom the support Lord Taro had.
“But just think how many people we’d have to get out of the way. Plus doesn’t Lord Taro have his own army!?”
“Yes that is true. His army is powerful and perfectly complements his junta, so we might have to find a way in the future to cut them down to size as well.”
Kamiko’s eyes widened at Tomoko’s proposition.
“Take on a huge army!? Are you nuts!? He must have five-thousand people working for him!” Kamiko shrieked.
Tomoko just shook her head and chuckled. “Oh Kamiko, you have already blown down two castles and dispatched a trained assassin with your powers, so what makes you think you can’t take on a five-thousand man army?”
Tomoko got up and walked towards the main door. She slid it open and walked out into the cool evening air. Kamiko just leaned back and stared into the twisty and steamy mass of ramen noodles within her bowl. All she could do was reflect on not only what she accomplished up to this point, but also what her step-feather Yoshiyuki said on his deathbed. She looked at the noodles, all of them represented a path in her life that she had to travel on, and they all were contorted into complicated squiggly shapes that made her get confused and lost as she tried to follow them.
“And yet it all leads somewhere.” she thought.
Just a mere mile away from the old temple where Kamiko and Tomoko resided was small deep lake. The shoreline was nice and shallow, but the middle of it dipped down at least twenty feet below the surface. It was early in the morning and the sun had just broken off from the horizon to fill the sky with sunlight.
On the cool and grainy shoreline, Tomoko stood with her bare feet barely touching the frigid morning water. At first glace it seemed like she was enjoying the placid lake scene in front of her but in reality she was watching the tip of a hollow bamboo pole peeking out of the water. It neared the middle and deepest region of the lake, and beneath it was the curvy silhouette of Kamiko.
Just a mere four feet from the water’s surface Kamiko was dressed up in her blue rubber bodysuit while she sucked in air via the bamboo tube wedged beneath her mask. Tomoko had instructed her to dive to the bottom of the lake’s middle in order to retrieve what she described as a “watertight-wrapped package, not unlike a rice grain container.” She didn’t tell Kamiko what exactly was in the container, but all she thought about right now was getting it up to the surface as quickly as she could. The freezing water made her shiver, even with a skin-tight layer of rubber covering almost her entire body.
Before Kamiko could swim any further a small rock penetrated the water’s ceiling above her head. Right before her eyes she saw the white clump spiral down while trailing streams of bubbles. She looked down and saw the rock sink and disappear into the dark deep water.
“So that’s where it is, eh?” Kamiko thought as she took a deep breath from her bamboo tube and let it escape her lips as she swam downwards to pursue the little rock that had just pointed her to the prize she seeked.
On the shore, Tomoko saw the long bamboo pole that Kamiko used as a breathing apparatus float to the surface.
Kamiko dived deeper and deeper into the dark foreboding water near the bottom of the lake. She made sure to take steady yet powerful strokes so that she wouldn’t waste too much oxygen while descending.
After several powerful strokes down into the depths of the lake, Kamiko’s face bumped into something on the bottom that seemed to be made out of rough fabric. She opened her eyes and just barely she could see the pattern of the cloth covering the large sake container nestled on the lake’s floor. Right on top of the container’s curved surface was a thick rope that was wrapped around it. Heeding some of Tomoko’s advice earlier, Kamiko picked it up and swished it over her head, allowing the rope to wrap over the front of her hip.
Suddenly Kamiko began to twitch a bit as her breath began to run out. Quickly she dug her right fingers beneath her stretchy mask and fingered a small round pellet squired away beneath it. She took the small green pellet out from underneath the mask and quickly popped it into her mouth like a pill and swallowed it. A rumbling began to emit from Kamiko’s belly as she pulled the rope right against her midsection, then the rumbling turned into a dull hissing. Kamiko’s tummy began to bulge out rapidly, almost as quickly as it would when she inflated for flight, but at a slower pace. Her whole body bulged up and expanded as the gas released from the pellet.
From the shore, Tomoko saw what looked like a dark circle approach the water’s surface from underneath. As the shadow grew larger and larger, Tomoko smiled as a very round and inflated Kamiko surfaced from the lake’s surface. She wiggled her puffy legs and arms as her round and wet body made loud dull creaking sounds. Tomoko grinned at rope tied around Kamiko’s spherical shiny body which tugged and squished her as she bobbed in the water like a cork. Behind Tomoko was a long rope rolled up on the ground; she picked it up and started tying it into a lasso in order to reel in her ballooned apprentice and retrieve the contents that she had grabbed from the lake’s bottom.
Inside the temple, Kamiko walked around the large grain container while squeezing the water out of her soggy hair. She was now wearing her red and comfy kimono, pleased to have it warm her chilled body.
“Why store it at the bottom of a lake sensei?” questioned Kamiko.
“Well it is quite heavy and nobody would be able to get it from the lake’s bottom, even if they had the tools necessary to do so.” Tomoko grunted as she used her katana to slice the individual ropes wrapped vertically around the container’s ropes which held it together. As she sliced the last rope Tomoko gave the container a swift kick, causing it to spill a bunch of katanas, spears, and other weapons onto the temple’s wooden floor.
“Oh my, you had an entire armory at the bottom of the lake!” gasped Kamiko. She picked up a katana with a blue sheath and rubbed it with her petite hands. Tomoko nabbed it from her grasp and unsheathed the sword from its holster, admiring its platinum gleam..
“There were the weapons that used to belong to the retainers of Lord Hideyoshi. Lord Taro confiscated them all, but fortunately he foolishly left them out in an open air pile and some villagers were able to steal and hide them in the container we just broke open. Then I used my Fuusenkunoichi skills to pick it up and drop it into the lake.”
Tomoko stared at her reflection from within the silver mirrory surface of the katana’s blade. “Thankfully it looks like they did a good job sealing up the container, so none of these weapons have rusted.” Quickly she slid the long blade back into its sheath.
“Here, help me store these weapons in those two closets on the other side there.” Tomoko pointed to a pair of sliding doors on the other side of the large hallway.
Kamiko carefully propped another armful of katanas against the white wall of the closet. As she went back to the center of the room to take the remaining nine katanas on the floor and store them in the closet, she walked towards Tomoko.
“Sensei, who’s going to use these weapons?”
“Why, the retainers of course. What remains of them, which is at least 24 men and one woman.” replied Tomoko.
“But there are at least a hundred swords from my count. Three-quarter of them will remain unused.”
“They will not be for long Kamiko. Others will use them.” Tomoko turned towards the front door and swished her arm in a arc.
“Others? You mean we will be recruiting some people!? For what?”
“Why, a rebellion.” Tomoko stared at the front door, watching the mid-morning sunlight seep through the cracks.
“Against Lord Taro!? But that’s still one-hundred against five-thousand! You can’t be serious!.” Kamiko felt uneasy about Tomoko’s seemingly insane proposal.
“Oh Kamiko.” Tomoko paused, took a deep breath, turned towards the young girl. “Why must you so soon forget the fact that you destroyed both Lady Komoda’s and Lord Hanzo’s fortresses? Those compounds housed at least five-hundred troops in total. And remember, you won’t be the only one using your powers.”
“You mean, you’ll be fighting too?”
“Me and Yuri. She was my first student.”
“You never told me you had a student before me.” Kamiko placed her arms in a akimbo position on her body.
“Well, she was my first and only student while Lord Hideyoshi was still in power. Also we might have more young girls joining our ranks as Fuusenkunoichi.”
Kamiko just stood there and contemplated what Tomoko had just said. “There can be more?”
“Also you’ll be instrumental in teaching them how to fight and develop their powers Kamiko. You and Yuri will be my sempais; well, if I persuade Yuri that is.”
It came as a shock to Kamiko to think that she was experienced enough to actually teach others. She had never thought about having that privilege.
“Now this whole process will take at least half a year before we begin the final assault on Lord Taro’s forces. Since he knows that we are a threat to him, he will also be searching for us. Right now we are in quite a safe position, but once we start rounding up supports his spies might report these developments. So we have to work underground as much as possible without arousing any more suspicion.”
Kamiko nodded her head in agreement with Tomoko’s strategy. Then she dipped her head, rubbed it, and then lifted it up.
“So, what are we going to do first sensei?”
“Well, you are going to be in charge of recruiting more girls to join us, so they can learn the art of the Fuusenkunoichi. I will be busy recruiting the 24 men.”
“How many girls should I find?” Kamiko asked.
“Ten would be just enough for me, but if you can find more that would be just as good, if not better.”
Kamiko gulped at the mission she had to undertake. “Where will I find girls who are willing to, well, blow themselves up like balloons and fight?”
“Well, they have to be girls like you. In other words: Ones who have nothing to lose, and believe me there are plenty out there like this.”
Tomoko turned towards the front door again and continued to stare at the rays of light peeking through.
“However, we have to schedule a little visit with Yuri.”
On the banks of the Iwamura river was probably one of the most well-known brothels in the kingdom. The courtesans and geishas here were considered to be some of the classiest and sexiest women in the land, all with beautiful smooth skin, pearly white makeup, and long silky black hair. Some said that even the toughest warriors who took one whiff of their alluring and sweet perfume would faint in pleasure at the smell. As the men and their willing female escorts dined, played, and enjoyed the beautiful evening, a single small boat with lanterns dangling from its mast floated aimlessly in the river. Within the boat, Kojiro attempted to charm the beautiful courtesan Yuri who laid on her side next to him. Her flowery kimono’s back laid drooped down, exposing her smooth and white back. The horny middle-aged man kept trying to persuade her to reveal more, but Yuri was feeling reluctant tonight, especially in front of this old goat.
“Oh comeon! Show me some of your pretty little shoulders! Maybe your hips as well pretty!”
Yuri just yawned at Kojiro’s blasé request, uninterested in any foreplay tonight.
“Hey, doesn’t your boss know yer supposed to be playin’ around? I paid good money to have some fun tunnigt and dammit I’m gonna’ have some.”
“Well, this is all the fun you’re going to get tonight buddy. You’re one of the luckier men in my opinion, most of them haven’t even seen this much.” Yuri sniffled and kept looking out at the placid lake while fanning her smooth round face.
“Hmmph, he shoulda’ told me you were a toughie!” Kojiro attempted to hook his fingers around the rim of Yuri’s kimono but she whacked her fan upon his fingers, causing him to recoil and grumble.
“The price to see any more would be, quite astronomical. Getting inside me would be a king’s fortune. You on the other hand, you would need to have an entire treasury handy to get that far.” Yuri continued to fan herself, still ignoring the advances of the dirty old man behind her. Suddenly he stood up and posed himself into a pouncing position to overwhelm the sultry and unwilling woman.
“Why I oughta’…..” Before Kojiro could finish his sentence, the boat began to rock and tumble. He fell down on his butt and grunted as Yuri gasped as they both felt the boat rise up into the air. Something had surfaced underneath them.
Yuri trembled slightly with shock as she got up onto her kneesand peered over the boat. She gasped as she saw what looked like a round tight shiny mass of something blue slippery. It looked almost perfectly round except for what looked like a girl’s head perched on the tip, with a long back wet ponytail dangling behind it. She had a blue rubbery mask that was part of her stretchy outfit which covered her smiling puffed-up face.
“Hi there!’ Kamiko greeted the shocked courtesan.
“Who, who are you! How did you learn to do that!?” Stuttered the still-shocked Yuri.
“Oh, this?” Kamiko looked down at her huge globular body. She wiggled her tiny plump hands in unison, giggling at the squeaking sounds they made. “I learned this from your ol’ teacher.”
Yuri just stared ahead at the dark tree-studded shoreline ahead of her. She couldn’t believe that the person Kamiko had just spoke about was still around and alive.
“To… Tomoko-sensei!? She’s still alive?” sputtered the shocked Yuri.
“That’s right. If she wasn’t I wouldn’t be floating around under your boat!” giggled Kamiko.
“Oh my. Oh, my God. How is she?” asked Yuri.
“Hey, who are you talking to there!?” shouted Kijiro “What the!? Who are you!?” gasped the shocked Kojiro after spotting Kamiko.
“Oh, just a Fuusenkunoichi.” smugly replied the inflated ninja girl.
“Fu… fuusen!? You’re a freakin’ balloon-girl of some sort!? And a ninja to boot!?” sputtered and spat the freaked-out old man.
“Balloon-ninja girl. That’s right.” replied Kamiko.
“Oh cripes. This brothel keeps picking up weirder and weirder chicks.” Kojiro slumped down and held his aching head, still sore from the fall he took.
“Okay, let me get this straight Yuri. Why are you hanging around with old codgers like this?” sneered Kamiko.
“Hey, I’m in my prime!” shouted the offended Kojiro.
Yuri just shrugged her shoulders and rolled her eyes. “Hey, they have a lot of disposable income.”
“Not as good as the time when you and Tomoko-sensei were still with Lord …. Eh?”
Yuri just sat down and began fishing for memories within her head of the years she spent with Tomoko.
“You know, I sure felt a lot more powerful back then. Learning how to fight under Tomoko-sensei’s guidance; but now all I’m doing is fighting off a bunch of horny toads here.”
“Okay, I’ve heard enough of this! How about you just go float off balloon-girl and leave me to some quality time with my catch here!?” Kojiro began to grope and tug at the flap of Yuri’s kimono. Before he could do anything drastic, Yuri grabbed the back of his bald head and pulled it towards her. She stared into his eyes and grinned sinisterly.
“How about you go float off.” snarled Yuri. She pressed her lips against Kojiro’s and grasped his neck, causing him to choke. Yuri took a deep breath and started blowing air into the bug-eyed and flustered man. His head began to expand and bulge up like a party balloon being blown up. Each breath caused his head to round out, his cheeks to bulge out, and his eyes to bug out of his sockets. He looked like one of those strange and grotesque Noh masks, but even more comical and cartoon-esque. All Kojiro could do was murmur and groan protesting “Oomfs!” as his head ballooned larger and larger. Soon his head was almost half the size of Kamiko. As Yuri blew her last puff into the hapless Kojiro, she grabbed a cork from a bottle of sake rolling around on the bottom of the boat, lifted her lips from his, and plugged up his mouth before any air could escape.
As she released him, the ballooned-up head of Kojiro just floated away off into the starry sky, carrying his wiggling and tiny body along like a gondola. All he could do was stare ahead with his buggy ping-pong ball eyes off into the distance and murmur in protest as he floated out of Yuri’s sight.
“He should be thankful, I gave him a goodbye kiss.” spat Yuri as she rubbed her lips upon her sleeve. “Ugh! His breath was rancid!”
Kamiko smiled and looked at Yuri. “So I guess you still have it?”
“I need an outfit similar to the one you’re wearing right now. By the way, what’s your name girl?” asked Yuri.
“Kamiko. And you’re Yuri?”
“That’s right, now give me a lift to Tomoko’s place.”
“Okay, just grab my hand on the side here and hang on tight, it’s sort of slippery.”
Yuri ran over to the right side of the boat and climbed over it. Suddenly Yuri slipped on the slippery taut surface of Kamiko’s body, but fortunately she fell onto Kamiko’s puffy little hand and grasped it before she could fall into the water.
“Hang on tight.” repeated Kamiko as she began to inhale and fill her body with more air. Yuri felt Kamiko wet and tight skin grow warm and even tighter as her body doubled in size. As Kamiko began to float upwards, she grasped Yuri’s tightening hand as she hung off the aloft Kamiko. The blimped-up ninja girl and her new partner flew off towards the crescent moon, keeping a steady airborne path towards their imminent destination. While looking back at brothel which she used to work at, Yuri slipped out the long pins within her hair, careful not to prick her pressurized companion, and let them fall into the cold river below her. She enjoyed having the wind blow through her hair, making it wave like a shiny black victory banner.
Back within the warm open hall of the temple within the forest, Tomoko and Kamiko sat side-by-side, looking towards the door where Yuri was changing within.
“She was pretty ecstatic about coming with me. I guess she was tired of her job as a courtesan.”
“Hmph, what degrading work.” grunted Tomoko. “Yuri is too elegant a girl for that sort of job.”
Tomoko laid back on the palms of her hands and sighed deeply.
“Women have such a low position within society, but Lord …. created such an egalitarian kingdom. If a girl lost her parents, she got full property rights to her estate and even got some compensation from Lord …. .”
“Wow, that is so kind of him.” Kamiko closed her eyes and reflected back on what Tomoko had just told her.
“Why do men think that women can’t be equals of men?” asked Kamiko.
Tomoko looked down with her eyes closed and giggled a little bit. “Men already can’t agree among themselves, just think if they had women to chime in on matters.”
On the far end of the hall the closet door slid open, revealing the curvy and voluptuous figure of Yuri, clad in a skin-tight full-body rubber out just like the one Kamiko was wearing, except it was green. She trotted forwards towards Tomoko and Kamiko, both of them sat on their knees to greet her.
Yuri stopped a couple feet away from her teacher and friend, kneeled down, and bowed to the ground before them.
“Onegai shimasu!” shouted Yuri.
“Doozo.” replied Tomoko.
Yuri stood back up and walked backwards. She pulled the mask on her suit over her mouth, grasped her hands together, and held them in front of her. Calmly she closed her eyes and began to inhale. Her belly began to slowly distend outwards, causing her rubber outfit to groan and creak as it stretched to accommodate her expanding body. Just as she began to inhale deeper a bubble of mucus within her throat cracked and popped, causing her to gasp as a great torrent of air began to enter her throat.
Unable to control the flow of air entering her, Yuri’s body began to expand rapidly, her limps plumping and spreading apart while her midsection quickly ballooned into a huge ball with her two bulges for breasts perched upon them. All Yuri could do was bug her eyes out with shock as she inflated out of control, but then she felt a finger poke itself into her pointy navel poking out from under her skin-tight suit. Immediately the torrent of air stopped entering her mouth. Her puffy cheeks forced her mouth shut as she fell down upon her huge, round, and tight belly with a mighty “Oomph!”
As Yuri rocked around immobile, Tomoko walked behind her and pinched one of her large bulging green butt-cheeks, causing her to go “Oooop!” with surprise. Both Kamiko and Tomoko just shook their heads and chuckled slightly.
“You need to freshen up a bit.” Tomoko grinned.