(Reupload/Old) Pressures of Heroism

An old Biohazard Ben centric commission people have been asking me about, so I thought I'd reupload it. Please note that this story is nearly five years old so the quality of the writing may be a LITTLE shakier compared to recent stories.

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When three o’clock came, the parade began. Its main attraction, fat with air and gas, cast its wide shadow over the crowded sidewalks, with no vehicles to be seen on the road bar two jet black tankers fitted with ropes to pull their bloated payload. It overshadowed the street with a slow, but sure dominance, twenty feet by twenty demanding the attention of its onlookers. A painted cartoon grin and wide eyes stared straight ahead, while its turgid curves creaked as loudly as nearing thunder. The object held the redolence of the city’s mayor and floated above the bustle, in the form of a parade balloon made with a generous admission of girth to the stomach. People snapped photos of the grotesquely obese effigy and gossiped among themselves, trying to figure out whether the bloated rendition of their elected official was meant to be a tribute or an insult.

“Was there meant to be a parade today? I didn’t hear anything about it.”

“Me neither, maybe the mayor did it to get some buzz going for election season?”

A pair of thick, fat hands decked in purple metal clapped the shoulders of two chatting businessmen at the far edge of the crowd. Their conversation halted the moment they felt the heavy grip, and in unison their turned their heads to glimpse behind them. With a flabbergasted squeal, they tried to yell out and warn the crowd of the impending danger, but by the time their mouths yawned wide, the gauntlets released a rush of purple gas from their vents, and the men reeled back coughing and spluttering.

“Go along now, enjoy the parade…” A low, strong voice whispered. A grin on the speaker’s lips, as he slipped back into the shadow of the alley he emerged from, not wanting to be seen.

The two men stumbled clumsily into the crowd, eliciting cries of shock and angry slurs from people they had barged through. Their heads still foggy from whatever poison the gas contained, or so they thought. They kept pushing, desperate for some distance between themselves and the gasser. After a minute or so, they broke through the final wall of bodies between them and the street. To their surprise, the black tankers stopped to meet them, and a cavalcade of oddly dressed men poured out.

“So, these are the first two, eh? Boss could have picked someone a bit bigger, get a better spread for the gas,” came muffled, from behind a gas mask wearing man weighing close to three hundred pounds or more. Wrapped from head to toe in shiny black spandex, like the rest of the drivers. He sniggered cruelly at the businessmen, who just stood there utterly baffled until one of them disturbed the silence with a raucous belch.

“He’s blowing up!” Cried a bystander.

The second of the two men billowed outward in every direction, his face filling out like a disturbed pufferfish. He had previously been a modestly slim man, but now he was as round as a basketball, straining the taut fabric of his suit. The first man tried to yell out in shock, but all he managed was a similar sounding vocal eruption. Horror paled his skin, and he rapidly took a rounded form to match his colleague. The two of them lost their footing, with gravity slowly weakening its hold as more and more gas built up within their bodies. Threads of taut fabric pulled taut, and snapped in rapid succession. Bearing flesh with a sheen comparable to a taut balloon. Everyone held their breath instinctively, creating a long, pregnant silence through which only the mayoral balloon’s creaking filled.

And then with a startling blast, the two men popped like you would expect from a child’s cartoon, leaving nothing in their wake but their shoes, bags, and a veil of purple gas that enveloped the newly panicked citizens.

***

On his way back to the 50th floor, Lark had run into his boss in the elevator. He wasn’t particularly in the mood to be praised by the weaselly sycophant, but as ever, he put on his award-winning smile and feigned the expression of someone genuinely interested in hearing another drawn out ‘heartfelt’ thank you. It was tedious, but a necessary requirement to keep up his camouflage as a hard-working office administrator. Every superhero needed an alias, but Lark often felt as though he should have splashed out for something less monotonous. He had to be selective to avoid anything physically intensive, to prevent revealing his super-human strength in a moment of carelessness, and he had to make sure his profession would let him fade into the background as necessary. Anything high profile, or rather, anything genuinely exciting, was off limits. So here he was, posturing as a servile paper pusher, all so he could slip away at a moment’s notice and assume his identity as Wonder Man.

“Really Lark, you’re a lifesaver. We couldn’t have met our deadline without you. I feel guilty we can’t offer you any more overtime pay, but really, thank you so much, again.” His boss snivelled. A short man, sleek bald, and pointy nosed. A typical managerial type, who was your best friend in times of crisis; but willing to exert his power over you, for the pettiest of reasons during clear weather. It was the bane of Lark’s existence, having to kowtow before a gnat he could vaporize without a second thought, but he had to grin and bear it.

When the elevator reached its destination and the chime rung to announce its arrival, the doors parted open to an office in chaos. Lark exited first, with his timid floor manager in tow. People were frantic, screaming into their handsets, hopelessly trying to juggle what seemed like a thousand phones ringing in unison. The company had its rough days, but never an outright bedlam like this. Tempers were running high, but an island of calm seemed to exist at the far end of the tumult by the floor-length windows that looked out onto the main street. Lark heard his cowardly boss retreat into the elevator, after judging the situation to be out of his limited control. Lark stepped forward, and gently joined his co-workers in the only sane spot in sight.

“What’s going on?” Lark’s voice came out soft, and calming. His questioning was met by a brunette in a tidy grey pantsuit.

“There was an explosion in the street. Some men in black bodysuits drove this… balloon down the street, and then, out of nowhere, two men blew up like balloons!” She repeated what she had apparently seen with a bewildered slowness, as though she didn’t believe the words coming out of her own mouth.

Lark frowned, and tried to look out of the window. Unknown to everyone around him, he could see up to fifty miles in every direction if he focused. A perk of his superhuman physiology, or rather it would be if it had worked as intended. The street was hidden from view by a miasma of thick purple smog, that even managed to block his multitudes of super-powered visions. X-Ray, Heat-Ray, nothing penetrated the sea of gasses. All that was visible, was a portly parade balloon that somewhat resembled the city’s mayor. Curiously, Lark could use his vision on the balloon; and its heat signature was bizarre to him; along with the dozen or so rubber-clad goons who were riding on its back. They were boiling, according to his eyes. Like explosives at critical mass. It perturbed him enough to spring into action.

With a heroic heel-turn, he marched into the side corridors of the 50th floor. Ducking, weaving, and making use of his expert sensory perception to avoid his fraught co-workers. It took him no time at all to reach his destination. An inconspicuous broom closet, that appeared derelict to everyone else. Lark produced the key, turned the lock, and entered the dusty space beyond. Once he was sure the door was secured, he depressed a specific floor tile with his impressive leg strength and deployed the mechanism to open the floor, and create the entry chute to a much more accommodating space.

He slid through the complex tunnel, and came out on the other side surrounded by a clinical white monochrome. Clean, sharp lines, accented by pale green power grids, and advanced technological displays afforded to him by generous donations from fans and backers all in the fight against super-crime. He loosened his tie, and entered a long cylindrical chamber across the room.

In public, Lark Corden – AKA – Wonderman, compressed his form to appear less intimidating and to add another layer of safety to his secret identity. Robotic hands, dextrous and precise, disrobed him, leaving him bare naked. His body unconsciously expanded to its full herculean stature without any prying eyes, with biceps that could rival a champion power-lifter and a sculpted set of abdominals so perfect he felt it a slight shame to cover it up with his costume. The robotic hands sprayed him with a high-tech set of spandex and nanomachines, nano-spandex, he called it. They arranged to form a uniquely fitted skin-tight white spandex suit, with matching green gloves and boots, and a fitted domino mask that hid his eyes.

A few moments were spent in external silence, as the suit sent a diagnostic report to Lark’s eardrums in a frequency that only he could hear. It detailed the implementation of a new functionality to expunge poisonous substances from the wearer, and to enhance the effect of rejuvenate substances. A handy little addition, if the individual responsible for gassing the city dealt in poisons.

>> Nano-Spandex suit deployment complete. Functions nominal, prepare for departure.

The cylindrical chamber opened above him, becoming a route to the surface. Tensing his inhuman muscles, Lark Corden faded, and Wonderman took over, springing into action by accelerating above until he breached the surface exit some distance away from the city. He embraced the cool afternoon air, savoured his first taste of open space since starting office hours, and reoriented himself city-ward to jet off at sonic speeds!

His approach took seconds, his body breaking the sound barrier to become a white-green streak across the sky, parting clouds with a sonic boom to announce his coming. Slowing over the city proper, he gasped audibly at the scene unfolding before his very eyes. Instead of one parade balloon, there were hundreds, even thousands. Men, blown up to incredulous proportions, at different stages of swelling. Some loomed above everyone, buck naked, and threatening to detonate at the slightest collision. Others were still in possession of their humanoid form, but fighting a losing battle with their clothing, that shredded and popped in succession to the effects of the purple gas.

Outraged that the situation had escalated so rapidly, Wonderman accessed the powers of his super-hearing. He entered a soft trance state, and pooled the total of his mental focus into the singular task of locating the mayoral float – from which he suspected, the mastermind was pulling the strings on this macabre balloon show. It was an arduous task to sift through so many distressed noises of people panicking at seeing their friends warp into glossy orbs, who could potentially burst at any second. In his search, he eventually caught the muffled chatter of people discussing the ‘master plan’ and to ‘keep filling the street.’ Wonderman took it as a sign.

He homed in, adjusted his bearing, and flew with righteous anger landing directly on the buttocks of his target’s primary mode of transportation. He looked around, and saw a dozen goons. Each garbed in tight black spandex, gas masks, and armed with modified flamethrowers that gushed excess purple gas down into the streets, making it impossible for the victimized citizens to avoid its effects.

Wonderman’s heroic drop hadn’t gone unnoticed. Two of the goons positioned at the rear aimed their weapons, and prepared to unleash their payload. They were slow and clumsy, compared to the superhero’s vast array of overwhelming abilities. In a blur of motion, the heavy metal weapons were bent at an angle. The tanks connected to the men’s backs were removed, and their silhouettes went careening off the edge into the purple abyss ringing the float.

“Lay down your arms! If you have any sense, and any remorse for the cruelty you have inflicted upon this fair city, then surrender to the just arm of the law!” Wonderman bellowed.

The goons looked among themselves, and laughed. Big, raunchy, belly laughs. Wonderman put his arms up in a boxing stance, preparing to take them down with another round of supersonic beatings. Their villainous chorus aggravated him, and he felt his jaw tense. He took one step forward, prepared to unleash hell, when the din stopped with the awkward pause of a stopped record. The cause, was the emergence of a man. A man so large, Wonderman wondered if he even could even be likened to a human.

He wore the same black latex as the others, tinged with a purple sheen. A thick X shaped harness attached two six-foot-high gas tanks to his back, which had the side effect of framing his bulging breasts too tightly. Thick purple armour fitted with vents covered his hands and feet, and a belt crafted out of a similar material was nearly obscured from sight under his titanic stomach. On the stomach, which looked like half a parade balloon on its own, was a shiny purple biological hazard symbol.

Seeing that symbol. He knew exactly who he was up against. Standing ten feet tall, four feet wide. Hair swooped back and up, with a fat-faced toothy grin that said, ‘you can’t do a thing to stop me’. It was none other, but the self-confessed exhibitionist of villainy…

“BIOHAZARD BEN!” Wonderman roared, loosening his nano-spandex to accommodate extra muscle mass. He expanded tightly, and powerfully. Against an opponent this grand in scale, additional power was a necessity.

“Wonderman! How wonderful of you to join us,” he winked, still grinning. “Are you here to stop the festivities?”

“Of course, I am, look at the terror you’ve unleashed!”

“Terror…?”

“What else would you call this… this… ghoulish parade!?”

Ben smiled, a genuine smile this time. “Why, Wonderman, you have more powers than I’ve had hot meals. Among them, is super hearing. Why don’t you use it to scan the man-balloons around us?”

Wonderman sensed a trap, but he obliged anyway out of morbid curiosity. Instead of panicked, shrill cries. He heard something that disturbed him on a deeper level. He heard joy, and pleasure. He listened to the largest of the expanded men shout their happiness, and relish in the freedom of their gas-granted immensity as they floated untethered by gravity. Some were simply happy to be away from the daily grind, while others seemed to take a more sexual approach to their situation. Only a few displayed genuine distresses, and even then, as the inflations continued – they too mellowed in their responses.

Wonderman cried out in horror. “You brainwashed them!”

“No. Not at all. A mild anaesthetic mixed with a serotonin uplift, but this strain of my gas contains no psychotropics. Absolutely no mind-altering substances.” Ben replied, with a matter-of-fact confidence.

“But… but some of them, they burst, they popped! You killed them!”

“Again, you jump to the worst possible scenario! The popped balloons are fine. Naked as can be, enjoying an afterglow daze on the street floor, but completely unharmed. I would explain the science to you Wonderman, but I shudder to think how your overly righteous brain would twist my words if I kept talking at length.”

“Then what the hell is your plan!?” Wonderman gritted his teeth. He despised being talked down to. The tone this villain took with him brought memories of Lark’s routine humiliation at the hands of his rat-faced manager to the surface. He was ready to strike, his fingers unconsciously curled into a fist.

“To have fun!” Ben lifted his columnar arms to the sky, and his goons smacked their guts in a ritual of respect. “To uplift the masses. To give the common man a taste of the bizarre, the taboo. To let him swell like the ego of the elite, and to seek pleasures denied to him by the pressing constraint of daily normality. Proper thinking and etiquette be damned, let them swell with true joy!”

Wonderman had heard enough. He interrupted. “So, anyone filled with your gas returns to normal after exploding?”

“Well yes, but I thought you would have more questions tha—”

The superhero’s fist impacted Ben’s stomach. It met resistance, but it kept pushing. Wonderman’s anger fuelled his forward momentum, and he let out a war cry while his knuckles tried desperately to find the other side of the Biohazard’s body. He put everything he had into this one blow, he wanted a decisive end to this madness. Heroic triumph filled his thoughts, and he… just… needed… one… more… push…!

“Oh no! I’m going to be defeated!” Ben stood his ground, Wonderman almost lost in his stomach as he pressed his sonic-speed propelled limb into the former’s gut. Ben looked to be in a fluster, until the last moment, when a devil’s smirk accompanied a deepening of his voice. “… just kidding.” In a rush of displaced air, Ben swallowed air, and buffed his stomach back out to its full rotundity. The sheer force of the rebound sent his hero aggressor flying, with a shockwave that shattered glass for yards and yards. Some of the glass punctured the man-balloons, and they burst in an awkward pattern akin to a poorly timed firework show.

Wonderman hurtled along the street. A red-hot anger pooled inside of him. His impatience and careless tactics had lent to the rupture of so many balloon men. Even if his adversary had sworn to their safety, he still welled up with guilt.

He stopped spinning at some point, several blocks away from the mayoral balloon. Revving up his powers, tensing his body, he thrusted both fists forward and shot like a bullet to re-join the fray. Biohazard Ben was waiting for him, hands on the sides of his gut, unable to reach his hips so the stance didn’t have quite the same effect. The two of them locked eyes, and resumed battle. Wonderman had the advantage of speed, but the durability of the walking blimp felt endless. Every impact elicited a rebound of equal, if not surpassing force.

Wonderman stood still for a fraction of a second too long, and gawked in surprise as Ben forced his right arm to swell up to titanic proportions and delivered a right hook that matched Wonderman’s super strength. All the hero could do was grit his teeth, and cross his arms, to barely stand his ground. His feet sinking into the parade balloon. Ben’s right arm returned to its normal level of massiveness, and he began preparing the left for a follow-up assault. Wonderman seized the opportunity to fire a stream of heated energy from his eyes, directly into the biohazard symbol, like a bullseye!

His strategy worked, as the goons retreated from their boss, who’s belly stretched the heated fabric of his suit like a bag of popcorn fast approaching its popping point. Wonderman kept firing, intending on taking him out with a tremendous bang!

“The boss is gonna take us out with him!” One nameless goon screamed.

“The city’s toast, we gotta get outta here!” A second goon jumped off the side.

At that, Wonderman stopped. Take out the whole city? He hadn’t factored in the force of the explosion. There was no justice if taking his opponent out cost him the safety of the entire populace he was sworn to protect. It wasn’t worth it. He cooled his heat vision, and with its cessation, Ben’s armoured gloves and boots opened their vents; pouring gas out in every direction to return their wearer to a less critical state.

“Phew! I nearly went off there, who knew you liked them big?” Biohazard Ben winked.

“Be quiet! The only reason I kept staring, was to aim my heat vision. If we weren’t surrounded by honest citizens, then I would have kept heating you until you blew apart into vapour!” Wonderman returned.

Ben rolled his shoulders, still unshaken. His confidence could have been admirable, if he wasn’t so disgustingly amoral and evil. Wonderman quickly considered his options. Physical attacks were useless, because of their durability; heat and energy based attacks were useless, because they could cause a lethal detonation; but what about the opposite of heat…? Cold! That was it!

Wonderman could win. He was sure of it.

In a flash, the hero vanished. Then re-appeared, locking lips with the bloated Biohazard. The latter widened his eyes, in supreme shock. This embarrassing arrangement would likely make the papers, and lead everyone to unsavoury conclusions about Wonderman’s preferences… but it was all for justice. Wonderman accessed his frigid breath ability, attempting to unleash a small blizzard deep into the other’s gaseous body. Freezing him from the inside out would render him immobile, and prevent his morbidly obese form from exploding! It was fool proof.

Unless Biohazard had a higher output. The inside of Wonderman’s mouth didn’t feel cold, with the fury of a nascent blizzard, as it should have. It felt warm, and tingly. His cheeks puffed up, and then stretched beyond their normal elasticity. His strong, perfectly defined body, began to soften. Hard pectorals became ballooning moobs, chiselled abdominals lumped together, and lost all shape as his stomach blew out into a mighty sphere. Even his biceps, his precious traps, lats, deltoids, glutes, everything was rounding out into pneumatic, air filled, rotundity!

Unthinking, and panicking at the sensation of being turned into one of his opponent’s prized balloons, Wonderman struck with all his power. He heard metal shatter, and quickly pushed off Biohazard’s pliant chest. Still adjusting to his new size, he hazily sent a mental command to his nano-spandex suit to filter out any poisonous compounds infesting his body. It denied the request, and alerted Wonderman to an increase in a medicinal compound, that was boosting his strength. The gas! Its properties somehow began increasing the potency of his own abilities, which he rationalized as a side effect of having come directly from Biohazard’s own internal supply.

It continued to build inside of him. He suppressed the urge to belch. A superhero didn’t indulge in such uncouth behaviour. He struggled to keep it from altering his form. His stomach stuck out a good foot in front, nearing two. His thighs squeaked and rubbed together, and the elasticity of the nano-spandex was being tested to its absolute limits. Patches of bare tan flesh were already appearing across his body. He tried to look down, and inspect the damage further, but his chiselled square jaw rounded into a bouncy double chin and was rebuked by the growing shelf of his shapely breasts. At this rate, he was going to detonate. He could feel it. A heat, reluctantly he compared it to the warm trigger-twitch of sexual pleasure, built from the core of his body.

“Damn you Biohazard! What… have…” Wonderman’s jaw dropped.

Biohazard was looming up and above, growing far beyond the size he had reached taking Wonderman’s heat blast. Without the metallic belt to keep his pressure in check, he was inflating asymmetrically. One arm was the size it had been during his massive-fist attack, while one leg mirrored it, and only one side of his chest had ballooned up proper. The inoculating sent of his sugary-sweet gasses filled the street, above the parade balloon, and rising higher and higher. He began to even out, into a titanic black sphere in the mist, painting an unfortunate similarity between his convex body… and a gigantic bomb!

The planetary man rotated, until his excessively fat face leered at Wonderman. Between involuntary belches, and moans, he spoke in a low, deep, still deepening voice. The increasing bass in his speech felt like a count-down to detonation. “You’ve really done it now… I didn’t think you had it in you, Ooooooh…” he loosed another belch, and doubled in size. His limbs were so thick and bloated, their usefulness had long gone. Even the vented armour had cracked, and fallen off, leaving him without a secure method to diminish his size.

“Ugh… I didn’t mean to do this… I just wanted to stop you!”

“Well there’s still a way.”

“How? You’re a monstrous sphere, and sooner or later, I’m going to be just like you!”

“Then why don’t we monsters take a little trip together?” Ben looked upwards, hinting. “If you take me high enough, then I won’t be in range to flatten the city. You had best…” His facial cheeks bulged again, partially obscuring his eyes, and smooshing his fat lips. Causing him to partially slur his words. “… hurry, because I’m feeling like I might blow my top, if you know what I mean.”

With no choice but to follow his instructions, Wonderman flew beneath the monolithic balloon, and pushed with all his might. Straining, sweating, he began to fly skyward. Aiming for the stratosphere, he worried he might not make it that far – as the sensory overload from the gasses played out across every inch of his rapidly bearing skin. Stripped to a pair of stretched underwear, even the sensation of the wind on his taut sweaty blimp body felt like an erotic assault. He managed to push Biohazard well into the sky, and past the clouds, but that was his limit. His ascent slowed, and he began reaching a critical state of roundness like his opponent.

“I… I can’t go any higher…” Wonderman gasped, feeling defeated.

“Well, we’ll create a few gale winds, but at least this way I won’t be bringing devastation to the poor folks down below.”

“Why do you even care?” Wonderman panted, the pressure kept building. He reluctantly admitted to himself, that it felt wonderful. At that moment, he understood how the man-balloons below them could be so calm despite such a harrowing experience befalling them. All he wanted to do, was bask in his own massiveness, and let it take him to detonation. Bursting like a cheap balloon, is all that he deserved. He failed to save the day. He was a poor hero.

“Why do you…? I believe in my cause, to challenge the status quo. Although my plans may seem sinister, it’s basically a form of exotic entertainment. No one ever gets hurt.” Biohazard laughed, it boomed like the word of a fat god. To Wonderman, he might as well have been one. He was unable to do any serious damage, and even this felt like part of the swollen deity’s master plan. They would both burst, return to normal, and everyone would defame Wonderman as the caped crusader who failed to stop the balloon outbreak.

“Ugh. This… feeling, I shouldn’t give in to it, but…”

“But. It’s freeing, isn’t it?”

Wonderman stopped, and reflected. He only entered a career of super-heroism, because he felt like that was the proper thing to do. He only took such a mundane job to accompany his secret identity, because he felt like that was the proper thing to do. He only engaged Biohazard, and fought with him, because again; it was the proper thing to do.

“It’s… very freeing,” Wonderman admitted. Feeling clarity for the first time in his career. He didn’t want to be a superhero, he didn’t want to push papers at the mercy of his lesser. He wanted the glitz and glamour of a superhuman life, but he abhorred the tedium and restraint that went with it. All along, he should never have been a hero, he should have been… a villain!

“There’s always a place in my group if you want to really send yourself as Wonderman out with a bang.”

“What… happens then?”

“Focus on putting on a good display, I’ll take care of the rest.”

Putting his trust in a balloon was probably the sanest thing he had done all day.

Biohazard and Wonderman locked eyes, both imagining the scenarios they could conjure up together. Their bodies finally came free of the last vestiges of their heroic and villainous costumes, leaving them bare and large enough to eclipse the sun over the city. In the darkness, the gas became luminescent, and in that sultry purple back-glow, they edged towards their breaking points.

So wonderfully taut, and full. Every inch, from the plump soles and palms of their feet and hands, to the wide unnatural barrel chests of their upper body, to the divinely dangerous spheres of their guts. They inhaled, and exhaled. Breathing in sequence, taking more in than they let out. Gas whistled from their eardrums, their nostrils, from their belly buttons. As signals of their impending demise, which they both welcomed completely, enraptured by the sexual inferno of explosive power that consumed their whole bodies.

Rivulets of sweat matted their hair, and they groaned together. Thunder, words of god, nothing compared to the awesome sound of their celestial bodies reaching climax. They glowed fiercely, raging storms of gas becoming explosive violet flame, contained behind gossamer thin tan rubber that used to be their skin. In a moment of total, and utter enlightened bliss, they called out wordless joy and exploded with the fury of a devastating bomb. Harsh winds assaulted the city, and Wonderman was faintly aware of the sight of Ben’s beautiful form turning into a mass of light, before he blacked out into serene darkness.

***

Lark stirred. He bolted upright, remembering that he had just gone and BURST LIKE A BALLOON. He patted his body, discovering he was naked underneath a set of black satin sheets. To his surprise, his muscularity had not returned. He felt his strength, it was still there and in full, meaning he had not been depowered. But his body was still incredibly plump, and fat. Using his advanced calculative abilities, he divined that he must be somewhere in the region of four hundred pounds. Although the jostle of his chest when he sat upright, and the numerous rolls and indentations of freshly grown flab across his formerly athletic body, probably could have told him that without use of his powers.

He was surrounded by luxury. He half expected to wake up in a dungeon. Everything was monochrome, or purple, with a dash of gold here and there to accent the lavish nature of the room. A wide screen television attached to the wall, past the foot of the four-poster bed he found himself in. An ostentatious piece of furniture, about six times too large to fit one person, even as large as he was now.

The door swung open, and an unmasked goon entered the room with a bathrobe draped over his arm. His face caused Lark to do a double take, because he was sure that he couldn’t be looking at the face of the mayor!

“O-oh, we made a bit of a mess out there, didn’t we?” The plump, moustached man timidly placed the bathrobe at the end of the bed. His white hair and soft, fatherly features, contrasted immensely with the fetishist uniform of Biohazard’s goons.

“We?” Lark perked a brow. “I only saw the parade balloon, I never saw… you…” the realization slowly dawned on him.

“Ah, yes, well. I wanted to retire from office, and I’d frankly, err, um, hah, had enough of the ungrateful citizens and the rest and what not. So, Biohazard let me live out one of my, err, well, yes… fantasies… and…”

“… you were the parade balloon. It didn’t just look like you, it WAS you!?”

Another figure entered the room. Biohazard, stripped bare of his accessories, wearing a similar black monogram bathrobe to the one the mayor had offered Lark. He looked surprisingly normal. He was still an enormous, possibly six-hundred-pound man, but lacking the extra pneumatic size he wore while appearing as a villain. “Did you think you were the only one with an extensive array of powers? My gas can do all sorts, Lark Corden.”

Having an arch nemesis know his alias would ordinarily feel quite chilling, but in this situation, it felt more like two friends meeting for the first time. Wonderman had burst and been reduced to tatters, Lark Corden was still here.

“Can it explain what happened after you and I…” Lark choked, he blushed, he didn’t quite know the words to explain what he and Biohazard Ben had done in their last moments as great fat, sweaty balloons.

“Enjoyed ourselves,” Biohazard finished the sentence. His face lit up, and appeared rather soft, and reassuring. “Please, call me Ben here. Everyone does.”

Ben switched the TV on, and a news report played while Lark got dressed and received a brisk debriefing from the mayor.

Breaking news! At three pm today, two unmarked tankers carrying what appeared to be a parade balloon in the shape of our mayor – who is now reported missing – served as the catalyst for a scene of horror, and debauchery. Men from across the city were exposed to a toxic purple gas, and blew up like LIVING BALLOONS. Despite bursting, they appear to have returned to a normal state,

though some are regrettably unaccounted for. Among the missing, includes our fair city’s heroic symbol of justice. Wonderman. A replacement hero is to be sent in next week, who will – hopefully – restore peace and stability to our fair city. The culprit is the self-confessed exhibitionist of villainy, Biohazard Ben. If you have any suspicions at all about his whereabouts, city police urge you to come forward!

Not that anyone would. Ben explained everything. His connections to the city, and how easily he could bury evidence. The missing people, who had willingly signed up as his goons. The defection of the mayor, which had been set up in advance. Everything was well coordinated, and planned. The only variable, he explained with a genuine fondness, was Lark’s interference as Wonderman. Ben almost appeared sheepish when he asked the former hero to join his organization of inflationary mayhem, and appeared more shocked when Lark had agreed. He had enough of denying himself. He wanted to experience life on the larger side.

The only thing left, Ben explained, was his official inauguration to the team. They explored the compound, and came upon a dining hall that resembled an ancient roman dining hall. With statues erected of Bacchus, the plump fat-bellied god of wine, revelry, and ritual madness.

Ben and Lark sat together, and enjoyed a feast of the finest foods he had ever encountered. They took turns discussing new plans, and Ben would occasionally tease him of his closeted love for larger, wider men. The more they talked, the more Lark felt Wonderman slip away. With the expansion of Ben’s stomach from so much wine and dining, he felt impatient to see it swell once again to inhuman proportions.

“So, you’ve fully converted then, have you. Another blimp-lover… and one with so many useful powers to boot!” Ben slapped Lark’s stomach, and gave it a sensual rub.

“Mm. I don’t think I’d suit the life of a goon.” Lark replied.

“Oh?”

“… do you have any room for lieutenants in your army of swelling men, ‘Biohazard?’”

In the coming days, the research and development team were put to work in overtime. Coming up with an entirely new costume, set of vents, gas tanks, and control devices for Biohazard’s new lieutenant. At the end of the month, the mayor underwent another transformation into a human parade balloon; and atop it was two black-purple latex clad villains.

Biohazard took point, sailing the mayoral blimp. He looked over his shoulder, and invited the second figure to stand with him.

That night,