Deep Sea Rivalry

Fleur hugged her knees, eyes languishing on the various needles and gauges set in the gray metal walls, and gave another long, heartfelt sigh. Fully twelve atmospheres remaining, by what she could tell. Or, by a more relevant metric, a half-dozen more hours steeping in ennui inside the tiny decompression chamber. She should be grateful, she knew. Relish a bit of boredom after the mishap earlier that day, from which only quick reactions and some impressive new technology had saved her. But that was the sort of thing that happened five hundred feet beneath the surface. That was part of the thrill. Free diving on the world stage was daring, dangerous, exciting. Risky. Nine hours in a steel box with only a bare cot and a jumble of spare tanks and fins for company was none of those things.

Still, she had to smile a little. When her sponsors had trotted her out in that revolutionary new wetsuit, they were all about slogans and safety margins, cutting-edge science and national pride. A girl could survive a meteor strike wearing it, they’d said, and Fleur had to believe them. The tight weave seemed practically bulletproof. And thought it left her movement unimpeded, some thing or other about the way it squeezed her body was supposed to make the bends a thing of the past. Naturally, then, she accepted it, not as some boring safety measure, but rather as a sleek red license to push the limit flatteringly trimmed in blue and white. And push it she had. She liked to think she really could have snatched that record right back from her stupid, smug competitor – Natali’s face swam before her, the bane of her competitive career, the stupid smug look she gave as the press swarmed around to play up the rivalry – if her ascent balloon hadn’t torn open 180 meters beneath the surface. She’d made it up on emergency air without dying horribly, though, which was a miracle in itself, even if it meant almost half a day lounging about and waiting for the tortuously slow decompression cycle to finish. Just in case, of course, they told her as they sealed the door between them.

She lay back on the cot, closed her eyes and sighed again. She dreamed of tomorrow’s cool, blue depths. Imagined herself sliding into the light-starved abyss, leaving Natali floating jealous in her wake. She cracked an eye suddenly open, looked around – had something moved? Probably, she decided, looking pointedly at the pile of equipment she was pretty sure went against one code or another. And on the subject of legalities, was there even anyone else still on the boat? The captain himself would be out on shore by now, unless that one night had been a particularly lurid dream. Not that she really cared about rules and regulations. She sighed again, a lungful that would fill a phone booth at normal pressure, and flicked her eyes over to the nearest gauge out of habit. Not a hair under twelve atmospheres. No surprise there. But - was it her imagination, or had it actually inched backwards since she last gave it a glance?

No, she thought, that was just the boredom speaking.  She felt like a student again, sitting in school and swearing they’d invented clocks that jumped back five minutes whenever you looked away. She closed her eyes again and she heard another movement, except this time it was loud enough to recognize a faint, echoing quality that meant it wasn’t coming from inside the chamber. Another glace at the gauge, and – twelve and a quarter? She sat up, legs hanging off the cot. “Is someone there?”

No answer but another muffled clink. “Who-“ she paused, closed her mouth and listened. Something that wasn’t a tap or a clank. So quiet she felt it more than heard it, but it picked gradually up. When she could hear it properly she recognized it easily as the slow, subtle hiss of rushing air. She stood and walked over to the equipment in the corner, but none of it seemed to be leaking.  The dial on the wall was pointing to thirteen now. That was too much. Way too much. A leaking scuba tank couldn’t do that. Her pulse picked up as she called out again, but the only response was a freshening hiss. There was no doubt now, the chamber was refilling, taking in air until it was back up to where it had all started. Had the cycle somehow reset? She checked the panel of buttons and levers on the wall, but she didn’t know quite where to start. She wasn’t a techie. She was a rising star, the diving prodigy, the Blonde Beauty, the French Mermaid. All she could really tell was that the needles on the pressure gauges were moving backwards, and that they weren’t moving slowly. Fourteen atmospheres, they showed, then fifteen, then seventeen. That was… she recalled the simple conversions she’d learned. Diving ten meters was equivalent to adding one atmosphere. One atmosphere worked out to about fifteen PSI. She watched the needle push past eighteen and keep on moving. That was 180 meters, right? That’s where it had started, where it should have stopped. But the needles kept on moving. Nineteen, twenty atmospheres. She looked down at herself, slid a trembling hand down the front of her wetsuit. That meant 300 PSI inside the chamber. Inside her. She could blow a Macy’s parade attraction up like a party balloon with all the air inside her body. Half the gauges were maxed out now, the rest well on their way. There had to be some malfunction. She traced her fingers around the knobs, over various buttons and half-legible labels, but before she could work up the courage to touch anything, a deafening silence fell over the chamber and with it, a palpable sense of relief. Someone was getting a talking to once she got out, but-

Squeeeaak.

She turned to the door and then quickly back down to the panel, where a bright red light winked on and off above a label that sent her heart pounding: Manual Vent Engaged.

“Wait! Stop!” she shouted, running to the door, but it was already too late. From the corners of the chamber came a violent hissing, and in moments she could feel the pent-up pressure billowing up inside her as the atmospheric pressure dropped. She gulped it down, but didn’t dare to try shouting again lest the blast of escaping air rip her lungs to shreds. Her cheeks reddened and her chest heaved. A familiar pounding rose in the back of her throat, the throbbing sensation of holding in your breath when you desperately wanted to breathe. The sensation began to spread, pulsing in her chest, leaking out to fill her whole body. The rush of venting air grew louder, it wasn’t enough to drown out her panicked whimpering.

How much more was there to go? She couldn’t tell. Her legs didn’t seem to want to work. She pressed her hands to her stomach, squeezed her arms against the balloon that seemed to fill inside her. How many atmospheres was the suit rated for, again? Up and down her body it squeezed her, growing tighter, ever tighter. The material beneath her fingers seemed stretched, taut and smooth and… round? She pulled her arms away and looked down. What she saw made her eyes go wide – but not nearly as wide as the rest of her. Her breasts pushed out before her like two slick, red watermelons, her stomach a graceful curve between them. Even as she stared she could feel the suit tightening, hear the hollow gurgle inside herself, watch the watermelons ripening. Her initial impression had been wrong, she realized; there was no balloon inside her. She was the balloon.

Larger and larger she grew as the densely-packed atmosphere drained away, causing the air trapped inside her to bubble up like uncorked champagne. Her cheeks were near-spherical, belly like a bright red exercise ball. She stumbled, threw her arms stiffly out in a bid to stay upright, but her legs were sluggish, her balance disrupted by her newfound girth and the steady rocking of the boat. She took a clumsy step back and lost her footing. As she impacted the hard metal floor she felt her whole body thrum with a noted like a bass drum.

She bounced once, still vibrating, and came to rest on her back. She stared up at the drab ceiling, watched from the corner of her eye as her stomach made a concerted bid to reach it. She waved her limbs uselessly, but she knew she couldn’t move, couldn’t sit up, couldn’t lift herself to reach the panel on the wall to stop the evacuating air.

There seemed to be no end to the air blossoming up inside her. She was filling out like a life raft, every two atmospheres’ difference pumping her body tight as a car tire. Her ballooning thighs pushed slowly apart, swollen arms spreading out like smooth red sausages, her entire frame blowing up until she seemed to fill half the chamber. It felt as if she’d swallowed a whale. Her wetsuit stretched ominously, staccato snaps filling the air. Her limbs didn’t seem to want to move. Any moment now the stitching would give way, the wrong seam would fail. A single rip, that was all it would take, and then the suit would tear away and the building pressure would blow up her naked body like a bomb. She closed her eyes, felt sweat running down her temples, a throb in her chest…

Squeeeaak.

The door to the chamber gave a metallic clank and swung slowly open, venting the last bit of pressure with a hiss. She looked over her spherical belly, which groaned at the sudden drop in atmospheric pressure, and her eyes met a sight straight out of her nightmares.

“You just don’t know when to let go, do you?” Natali purred and smiled, tossing her velvet hair, letting it fall back over olive-skinned shoulders and frame her rosy cheeks. “Two… accidents in one day. What’s a girl to do under all that pressure?”

Fleur gave a little squeak, tried to scuttle backwards, but she only wobbled pitifully. Natali gave a loud, short laugh in response. One word played over in Fleur’s mind, that one exquisitely emphasized word, underlining the sudden revelation that there had been no unplanned malfunctions after all. Dread filled her like hissing air as Natali sauntered forward, a tight yellow-and-green bikini clinging to the athletic body that was cresting the horizon of Fleur’s enormous stomach.

“But then again,” Natali continued, tracing a finger around the diving knife still strapped to one leg, “Isn’t pushing limits half the fun?”

She walked across the chamber, moving closer until Fleur lay entirely in her shadow. In one smooth motion she slid forward, mounting Fleur’s swollen stomach like a rodeo rider, naked thighs spread wide. Fleur whimpered, cheeks burning red as the new weight squeezed her overfull body. Natali grinned mischievously at her discomfort, squeezing her legs, sending a pulse of pressure through Fleur that seemed as if it might push her over the edge. Laughing again, Natali drew her knife and lowered it like a pin towards Fleur’s balloon belly.

No no no pleaded Fleur silently, but she was completely at her rival’s mercy. She watched the point of the knife inch closer – she closed her eyes, waiting for the worst – several long seconds passed. She opened her eyes again to see it skim a hairsbreadth from the taut red fabric, wandering out over the vast expanse of her body, exploring the trim of her suit, poking ever so gently at the seams.

“But I forget my manners,” Natali said suddenly, slipping the knife back in its sheath, flashing a smile that only increased Fleur’s distress. “I never said hello, did I?”

She leaned in, prostrating herself over Fleur’s voluminous frame, propping herself up on hands pressed against firm watermelon breasts. Closer still she lowered her face until only her gripping legs kept her from sliding forward off the slope of Fleur’s stomach.

“Bonjour,” she said when their noses nearly touched and kissed Fleur softly on each cheek. She grinned mischievously, staring triumphant into pleading eyes inches from her own. “Et au rev-“

With strength of desperation Fleur struck, adrenaline fueling her swollen arms as she brought them up and wrapped tightly around the back of Natali’s head. Natali jerked away, trying to push herself free, but Fleur held on, squeezing ever harder, drawing her closer until she could nearly feel the soft touch of lips against her face. With a final heave she pulled Natali in and covered her lips with her own.

She blew.

The rush of air that blasted forth was so massive, so rapid, that she feared for a moment that her throat might tear. Her wetsuit squeezed like a giant hand, forcing the air out of her body, and Natali was the squealing, helpless receptacle for every last bit of it. Even as Fleur paused to gather herself for another heaving exhalation the balance of pressure worked to correct itself, gushing down Natali’s throat like a firehose. Natali was nothing more than an expanse of swelling olive skin, whimpering and groaning and puffing out so rapidly it was a wonder she didn’t simply burst then and there.

Fleur continued her assault with vigor. Her wetsuit still stretched drum-tight against her enormous girth, but it no longer creaked and crackled and threatened to give way at any moment. She reveled in the sensation of her own deflation, but even more satisfying was the feeling of Natali’s belly ballooning out against hers, the short, loud rip that sounded as the knife burst off her swollen thigh. A fire burned in Fleur’s chest, kindled by fear and humiliation, whipped into a blaze by the desire for vengeance, the feeling of power. All but one thought was lost to her as she filled her flailing rival until her belly swelled out round as her own. One goal: she was going to pump every last bit of air into Natali that she could handle, and then keep on going.

Natali’s bulk was enormous now, pressing down on Fleur like a small whale. Fleur’s limbs were loosening as the air left her body, limbering up, regaining their strength and flexibility. Without warning she broke the kiss and heaved upwards, forcing Natali off of her before she became too difficult to move. They rolled over another, jockeying for position, but Natali’s pressure-stiffened arms and legs were no match for Fleur’s returned mobility. They skidded over the smooth floor, scattering piles of equipment like two enormous bowling balls, finally coming to rest against a cold metal wall. Natali was propped half-upright, Fleur leaning in on top of her. Fleur smiled, touching Natali’s cheek as she tried to turn away, met her panicked eyes as she locked lips and resumed her inflation.

The air flowed less violently between them now, but Fleur’s fervor was undiminished. Relentlessly she squeezed her body, pouring all her hatred, all her fear and anger, right down her rival’s throat. Natali squeaked pitifully, but it was worse than useless. Fleur pressed on despite the feeble protest, strengthened in spite of it, extracting twisted satisfaction from every inch her rival swelled beneath her.

Soon Fleur was nearly back to normal size, but still she squeezed with all her might, working herself like a pump. Slowly the last few breaths came, Fleur now fighting uphill against the pressure, feeling Natali’s taut, creaking skin rising in response until she was swollen, immobile, as tight and round as Fleur had ever been, her cheeks bulging like oranges and her arms and legs spread out comically.

When Fleur could force no more past her rival’s lips she slid smoothly back onto the floor, standing before Natali’s spherical frame and scanning her up and down with a satisfied smile. The pressure inside them was finally equal, though it seemed strange to think it; Natali resembled little more than an olive-skinned beach ball while Fleur, wrapped in the grip of her space-age wetsuit, simply looked a bit curvy. She slid a hand appraisingly down her front. Enough air inside her to burst someone like a tick under normal pressure. Well - she flicked Natali’s belly, producing a panicked squeal and a sharp, reverberating note - almost. She looked down as something cold and heavy rolled against her ankle – a spare tank of air knocked over by their struggle. Well, she thought, she knew how to fix that.

Picking the tank up in one hand, she grabbed the hose with the other and set it all upright before Natali with a little metal clank. The valve squeaked open easily in her grasp and the hose jumped in her hand, hissing over Natali’s protests as Fleur flashed a wicked grin.

Natali’s eyes widened, her eyebrows a pleading arch. She shook her head desperately, managed a pitiful “Hmm-mmn! Mmmn-mm!” Fleur leaned forward, toying with the hose, shooting a jet of air over Natali’s cheeks, blowing back her hair. Still grinning, she met her distended rival’s eyes and then pushed the end of the hose between her own lips.

Fleur felt her chest rise again, cheeks bulging at the blast of pressure, but she bit down hard, riding out the initial shock until she was groaning not with fear or discomfort but with gleeful anticipation. She closed her eyes, shutting out Natali’s flailing limbs to concentrate on the air swirling inside her, on the feeling of her body pushing out against her suit. Her stomach rounded slowly out again as her internal pressure climbed, breasts plumping and thighs expanding. Seconds ticked by. After a short while she opened her eyes and looking down at herself, traced the curve of her belly with one hand. Enough air beneath her touch to pop someone like a cheap balloon. Definitely.

She turned shut the valve on the tank and let the hose drop from her mouth. One step forward and her plump form pressed into the sphere that was Natali. She leaned in, half-climbing onto her, watching her rising panic with relish. Giggling, she kissed her on each swollen cheek, and then with one last look at her desperate expression, she locked her rival in a kiss and blew once more.

Natali waved her sausage arms, kicked her balloon thighs, struggled with all her might, but Fleur hardly even noticed as she pumped one long breath down her rival’s throat. Natali was helpless against her power, swollen to her quavering limit and forced even fuller. She trembled and throbbed with the exhalation, her very skin singing like overstretched rubber. Every inch of her stretched drum-tight, fighting to contain the blimpfull of air crammed inside her.

Fleur began to blow once more, and Natali knew she could hold no more. For a moment she teetered on the brink, body pulsing rhythmically, cheeks flushing crimson with the effort of fighting the straw she knew would break the camel’s back, but there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop it. A little squeak sounded as the final puff entered her, and then an enormous, echoing bang.

Fleur blinked her eyes, massaging the spot where her head had impacted the wall. Tiny shreds of green and yellow swirled around the chamber like snow, settling gradually over the floor. She stared at the spot where Natali had exploded, replaying the moment in her mind’s eye. Her pitiful moans, that delicious little squeak as she tried to hold it all in, the way she trembled as she was pumped too full, trembling and finally bursting like a party balloon. Slowly Fleur smiled, and then she grinned. How’s that for pushing limits? she thought, watching the drifting tatters that were all that remained of her former rival.