To Be So Grossly Pneumatic

(Disclaimer: Any acts of transformation, expansion, or mental altercation have been consented to by the owners of the characters affected. Any acts depicted are meant as explorations of the fetishistic psyche, hold artistic merit, and are compliant with the TOS of Patreon).
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Commission for Anonymous!

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Over two hundred tonnes in weight, two hundred meters in length, formed from countless metal lattices ringed around a hollow chamber filled with rubberised cotton cells. Those cells were filled to near-bursting with hydrogen, while the entire envelope containing them was covered in a subtly shiny, grey canvas fabric. The cabin near the front of the great thing’s belly was made from a combination of rich dark oak, and more lightweight metal which reinforced it and secured it to the keel. A pair of powerful engines were attached to the main gondola, which provided the thrust. Everything came together in beautiful, pneumatic unison, to create a rigid airship.

A Zeppelin, and to be even more precise, it was the Royal Halcyon. It was named for a particular species of bird, the tree kingfisher, noted for its beautiful azure plumage. When the light hit the ordinarily grey fabric of the Royal Halcyon’s envelope, the coating applied to give it its sheen - the makeup of which is a highly guarded secret kept by royal shipbuilders - shimmered a brilliant blue as it safeguarded the potent gases within from the sun’s heat.

The Royal Halcyon was the largest airship in operation across the entire planet. The country of Heliund’s pride and joy. It was always manned by highly trailed flight staff, aeromancers, and alchemists who specialized in the synthesis of gasses and liquids required to keep the ship operational under all but the direst of circumstances. Only the country’s elite could buy their way on to the vessel, and its passengers were largely made up of royal guests, people invited personally by either the king himself or his family.

I never had any intention of riding the Royal Halcyon. I envied it. I envied its enormity, its heft, its defiance of gravity. I envied the way it cut through the clouds, like the heavens were making way for its arrival like a welcomed guest into providence. I envied the way its rigid hull bulged slightly at full pressure, with a surety that it would, and could never rupture. I envied it in every way conceivable, and to combat that envy, I imagined myself in its place.

In my mind’s eye I was a mixture of human silhouette, and the mechanical perfection of the airship. My body was blown up to proportions that would make the most elastic of balloons seem like childish playthings. My limbs were thick, somewhat receded, but still present and pointed out at angles to help me steer my body mid-flight. My torso was elongated to mirror the aerodynamic shape of an airship, though it was closer to a non-rigid blimp, than a rigid airship. And everything which made up the explicit content of my underwear, my genitalia and the crack of my buttocks, had been replaced by a mass of smooth rubbery material that widened out towards the tail end of my new body. A set of fins had been attached to the point furthest from my head, and a gondola with engines even MORE uproarious than the Royal Halcyon thrummed from the curve of my belly.

When I came to, I had a stiff erection that poked against the yielding fabric of my brown trousers. Thankfully, I was able to cross my legs and hide it with some discomfort, and wished it away by filling my head with nonsense equations from my time at school, and the mundane routine of the errands I would have to perform when I got back from my trip. I looked across to the man wearing pinstripe black and blue trousers, matching waistcoat, and a crisp white under-shirt with puffy sleeves. He glanced at me sidelong, then smirked at me in a way I found almost lecherous.

“Are you that eager to undergo the tests, my friend?” He said in the heavily accented voice of someone who had grown up in Heliund’s nobility. He was very squat, with hair devoid of pigment, and a curly wide-reaching moustache with no accompanying beard. His fatness made him look like a miniature version of the striped blimps they flew overhead for royal ceremonies. His hair had a sharp widows peak at the front, that gave way to a head of snowy white. It grew fluffier and more untamed towards the back of his head, and two angular tufts pointed out at his temples giving him the look of someone freshly struck by lightning.

“I suppose I am a little bit excited, Professor...” I struggled to recall his name. Ironic that such a noticeable man would be so easy to forget the name of.

“Luftriser,” he said with a giggle. “Quite the name, no?” He patted his stomach and took a deep breath. His belly expanded against the expensively styled clothing he wore. His belt buckle bearing the insignia of the Royal Institute of Aeronautics strained against his waist. “I look like an airship, I make airships, you could be forgiven to think that my name was self-appointed in reference to my work. But no, not the case. I swear by the king’s life it was the name my parents gave me. Perhaps they had the gift of foresight, eh, my friend?”

“My surname is Aerie, so if your parents were clairvoyant, perhaps mine were too,” I said and smiled awkwardly at the lengthy explanation. Professor Luftriser - if he truly was a balloon - appeared to have no shortage of hot air. “Will the procedure hurt?”

He shook his head vigorously. “Oh no, not at all. I’ve tested it myself and experienced a rather... affirming set of results. The most discomfort you will feel is a slight, um, shift in priorities. Test subjects for the polymorphic elasticiser tend to react differently on a case-by-case basis, but there are some shared experiences.”

“Such as?” I pressed for an answer.

The Professor wobbled his hand from side to side, and made a long drawn out “eh” noise. “Mister Gerard, I think it would be better if you take me on my word and simply... experience it for yourself. To answer your initial question. No, no pain,” he smiled in an overly enthusiastic manner, and let out the air he had been holding. Without the extra pressure he was still very round, and his belt buckle vest buttons had stopped threatening to fire at me like bullets.

It was ironic that for all our talk about aviation that we had been transported half-way across the country in an automobile. It was not as romantic as making the journey by airship, though it was less fuel intensive. Most people travelled by car these days. Heliund, despite its namesake as the aeronautic engineering capital of the world, was also one of the world’s leading car manufacturers. It was their money-making export, people trusted in Heliund engineering over their own, and it was thanks to the lucrativeness of that reputation that the country had the funds it needed to be obsessed with skyward progress.

“Why are we in a car, I thought the institute had a fleet of personal airships at its disposal,” I asked and leaned against the car door, watching the dense forestry blur in motion.

Professor Luftriser chuckled, as though my question were utterly ridiculous. “We’re headed to the best kept secret in the kingdom, my boy. Would ‘you’ risk its exposure by ferrying every volunteer in a sky eclipsing balloon?” He tapped his double chin, and it wobbled from the touch. “Though given how deeply you were daydreaming earlier upon spotting that passenger blimp, I would wager you would have, even if it did threaten the secrecy of our work.”

I huffed, embarrassed. The sun disappeared without warning, and we were plunged into the darkness of a long grey tunnel. I recognized the faint hue of blue sorcery-powered lights, which grew brighter and brighter as they became more numerous the deeper they went. My eyes took a moment to adjust from momentary darkness to artificial brightness. We had arrived at the interior of an enormous hangar, with four angular lights marking out a square perimeter at its centre the size of a royal sporting arena. My heart fluttered, as I realized what it could be.

“We will begin right away,” Professor Luftriser looked at me. “Are you particularly attached to your clothing?”

“No,” I answered. “I’m sure I’ll be outfitted with something far more magnificent in a moment.”

The professor led me to the dead centre of the marked space. He handed me a vial of blue liquid and told me to wait until he cleared the area before drinking it. I looked at it, and before I had any time to let myself reconsider, I downed it in one eager gulp. My body immediately flared with an immobilizing sensation of tightness, like I had worked out every muscle in my body to its exhaustion point. I opened my mouth to take a sharp breath, only to have a gust of hot air expunged from deep within me.

Intense. Unceasing. Uncompromising. The formula wracked my body with sensations that were at worst completely alien, and at best hyperbolic versions of things I could have conceivably felt. This made perfect sense to me in a way. I was abandoning my humanity for the simplicity of the airship. It stood to reason that in my last moments of complex flesh and blood mortality that my brain would struggle to parse the new, mechanical functions of a buoyant passenger ship.

I watched as my body swelled up, thickly at first, giving me the appearance of a circus strongman illustrated by a child with a limited understanding of how muscles should curve, and bevel as they grew. My limbs lost what definition they had, and grew longer, and wider, into simpler shapes. I felt my face puff up very slightly, mostly around the neck area. It seemed that while my arms and legs had become tubular, terminating in nubbed spheres like I had predicted in my daydream, my torso was taking on a more convex, oblong shape.

“How does it feel?”

I could barely make out the professor’s voice over the speakers. My body had expanded tenfold. My pores smoothing out for something shiny, but not overly glossy. Like vulcanized rubber instead of the gossamer latex I was familiar when I sated my unusual cravings at home, with toy balloons. The pressure mounted at such a breakneck pace, I had no time to vocalize my thoughts, so I responded with a noise half-way between a moan, and the tortured cry of heavy rubber. The professor laughed over the speaker, and said he would let me get on with the rest of the transformation.

I was the size of several hot air balloons now. My face distorted, probably looking quite distasteful, until my features stretched along the nose of my zeppelin body and the entire front portion now resembled a cartoon. Something like the mascots I had seen when riding airships before. I squinted my new eyes, and saw they were painted on against the surface of my oblong form. I laughed, which was booming and deep, and utterly inhuman in a way that delighted a strange part of me. Now it made sense, I looked like the faced cartoon blimps they illustrated on safety handouts for children.

Another twinge of high pressure. Calling it pain was inaccurate. My arms stretched out, even further, but they weren’t as vestigial as I had anticipated. They flattened out, hardened, and became long triangular wings. My legs twisted together, I could feel my toes warping until they too became metal and curved like propeller blades. My legs themselves melded into the rubbery expanse at my back end, into smaller metal fins, and my genitalia stretched and reformed as a large engine block on the underside of my lower belly.

I was enormous now. It seemed I had exceeded the expectations of my benefactors. My tan rubber exterior pressed against metal walkways with enough force to bend the steel they were constructed from. I laughed, revelling in my supremacy over the manmade structures which failed to contain my magnificence. “Ah, I feel... so big,” I boomed. “So tight,” my body creaked. “I feel... complete!”

Professor Luftriser exited the control room above the walkways and spoke to me through a megaphone. “Ready for your first test flight?”

“Oh yes,” I inflated to full rigidity at the thought of casting my shadow over the country. My envy for the HMS Halcyon popping like a soap bubble in the face of the beautiful, gas-filled beauty I had become. “I’m ready to SOAR.”