"Beached Balloon"

The sands parted with the force of Umi’s spell. A long, thin bullet conjured from the waters which made up his body. It flew and struck a roughly made target constructed from a half-eaten coconut and a circle of squashed mango fruit for the bullseye. The watery bullet impacted the hard coconut and shattered it, sending bits of shell and the pulpy orange used to paint it into the ocean.

“Bullseye, did you see that? Perfect aim.” Umi declared with pride, rewarding himself with another bite from a mango. His free hand still rippled, partially liquid and still in a state of readiness for further spell casting. Like a magician turning to his audience after a trick he was particularly proud of, Umi faced the beached creature. “Impressed, Tum?”

The display elicited languid applause from a shark-tailed creature lounging on the beach, its golden eyes half-lidded with a look of complete disinterest. It was large, the size of a cruise ship, at least. Tum bared his triangular teeth in a sneer, then rolled his eyes. “Hardly.” Tum reared up, coiling his wide shark-like lower body in a serpentine fashion. He sat in a relaxed manner that reminded Umi of how someone with two legs might cross their legs. He knew Tum could change from his half-shark body to a bipedal one at any time, but in the few months he had spent under his care in the Glittering Sea, he hadn’t seen him transform once. It might have been a matter of difficulty, or discomfort, but Umi had a sinking suspicion that it had more to do with his pride. Tumultuous Waters looked down on humans, he probably wanted to make a point of resembling them as little as possible.

“Not up to your standards?” Umi finished the mango in a second bite, his mouth was wide and full of similarly pointed teeth to his enormous host. Umi was large, just not cruise-ship large. He drew a healing symbol with his watery hand. Concentrating, he pulled on his instinctual knowledge of water magic and furrowed his thick brow to command its flow. He nearly lost the shape of the spell a few times, but after a minute of pulling funny faces and wracking his brain for old lessons passed down by his mentor, he succeeded. An orb of pure water, clean and transparent as fine glass. “Then what about this?” Umi boasted with a confidence he used to distract Tum from the sweat and effort it took to finish the spell.

“Well done you made a ball,” Tumultuous jostled to build momentum, preparing to roll over. Apparently done with humouring Umi.

Umi smirked. He aimed at his friend, preparing to soak him with the orb. It flew with a mental provocation, coming within inches of his wet and rubbery flank.

And then the golden tattoos lining his body flared. The orb struck his skin but did not penetrate, Umi’s eyes widened. Tumultuous laughed with a loudness that couldn’t have come from his chest alone, a distant thundering call followed its taunting rhythm. His eyes flashed, the same gold as his tattoos, and Umi doubled over as his own spell struck him in the gut and merged with his body. He immediately began to swell up like a dry sponge dropped in a bathtub.

His sloshing belly, already full of mango and coconut milk, grew wider and heavier. The low curve spilled over his knees, then grew too heavy for his body to stay upright. He collapsed forward, legs kicking, trapped on a fleshy waterbed which propped him up from the sand and denied him movement. With a wet pop, his shark-like tail manifested in response to his skin becoming wet. Umi growled, flashing his teeth at Tumultuous. “What did you do!?”

“You should have known better, little shark.” Tumultuous traced a golden line etched into his grey-blue skin, drawing attention to the way it glistened like pirate’s treasure. “The Glittering Sea is my domain, and like any self-respecting deity, my power is absolute when residing within its borders.” He reached down, gently pressing a clawed finger into Umi’s swelling gut. “Oh my, feeling a bit waterlogged? I could help you with that,” his wicked glee was palpable. “I’m rather good at popping balloons, you know.”

Umi took a deep breath. Which might not have been the best course of action, he thought, as his moobs blew up to smack his double-chin with the force of heaving water balloons forgotten and left to inflate with the force of a tap on full blast. “You won’t have to use that claw,” Umi blushed. “I was casting a detox spell. Ordinarily, it swells someone with pure water and then uses it to remove toxins. But since we’re both ‘made’ of magic.” He had to stop talking, a shudder of pleasure wracked him. The hot ocean wind felt like a warm massage on his taxed, stretching belly. “Well it... can’t tell we’re not meant to be -full- of magic, so it’s trying to remove it, failing, and trying harder. Like a feedback loop.”

Umi screwed his eyes shut. His cheeks were flushing a deep red, contrasting the blue light shining through his taut copper skin. Over the course of his explanation, he had doubled in size. As big as a village hut, the intensity of the spell had been such that his natural elasticity had taken a hit. He was big, to a normal person, but he had been bigger. Size wasn’t the issue, pressure - specifically, magical pressure - was. He tried to hold on, but the inflation had spread to his limbs. They grew fat, useless, with thick wobbling proportions that weren’t good for anything except preparing to burst like the collection of water balloons they were.

“I can’t... hold it in...” Umi’s huffed and puffed, like he was exhausted from a workout. Water dribbled from the corners of his mouth and started to flow out of his navel. His rich blue tattoos pulsed brightly, warning anyone near him that they were in the presence of a beached balloon rapidly approaching his limits. “I’m too tight, I’m... going to...” His bloated cheeks made his words nearly imperceptible. His head sunk into the ballooning mass that used to be his shoulders and neck, straining and pulsating for a brief few seconds before.

SPLASH!

A crater was formed from the force of Umi’s explosion, Tumultuous himself had been covered in sand and thoroughly soaked by healing waters. In the middle of the blast zone, glowing liquid formed a long-haired shape and Umi laid there with a hot blush and a heaving chest from the overwhelming sensation of popping like a balloon.

Tumultuous Water’s leaned forward. “Almost impressive, but try to be a little more durable next time~”