A Giant Rivalry

Another unreleased story for Mel! This was a Speedwrite from 2017 I believe?

Will felt his temper rise. He looked across the decimated streets, past the collapsed buildings, and into the eyes of his rival. By rights, this city was meant to be his stomping grounds, and his alone. Unclaimed by others, in accordance with the giant’s code. To march on another giant’s property, and begin a wanton rampage without permission, was the highest insult one could pay their peers. Of course, Stephen knew that. He revelled in breaking rules, and making mischief, seeing just how far his capricious antics could carry him before he met resistance. It made Will angry, angry enough to explode.

He fought back the urge to explode prematurely, and vented the excess hot air by flaring his nostrils like a cartoon bull. He was a balloon giant, and of the same caste as his unwanted guest. A subset of the species that was entirely hollow, and capable of bulging to obscene sizes through breathing in air and storing it. Will was roughly fifty feet in height, and nearly as wide. His hollow body was convex and near-spherical, but his shiny fat limbs retained their dexterity through his lack of weight. He was made of thick rubber-like skin, but he was still a balloon; and it rendered him airy, and nimble. Though his cumbersome waddling from one fat foot to another looked unwieldy to the tiny humans below, Will could manage to dart across the landscape with ease and precision.

The blonde-haired enormity did just that. While Stephen was busy picking at his teeth with an uprooted transmission tower from a decimated radio station, Will bounded forward and violently smashed into his rival with his belly. It struck the opposing giant, hard, and knocked him to the ground. Cries of panic from the comparatively ant-like citizens rang out, while the enormous man descended heavily into a market street and utterly flattened it under his wide shoulders.

“What do you think you’re playing at!?” Will accosted the toppled giant, biting back the rising urge to inflate in rage.

Stephen rubbed the back of his head. He did so casually, as if he had been a normal sized man who tripped on his shoe-laces; rather than a behemoth supernatural creature, who had just annihilated a score of small businesses with his fall. He was much taller than Will, but not as wide. His face was framed by plump cheeks, and a prominent double chin. With a wider than average nose, and smirking blue eyes. He picked debris out of his short brown hair and added to the collateral of his rampage, by displacing more store-fronts when he rose to his full height. He pushed himself to his feet, and gave out a loud belly-laugh.

“Bwahahaha! Wow, I didn’t know you had that in you! You’re getting real big and tough, huh?” He smacked his stomach, and began rubbing it in wide circles.

“Big enough. You shouldn’t BE here, this is MY city.” Will flared his nostrils again as a warning. He allowed himself to fill this time. His rage transmuting into super-heated air deep within his cavernous stomach, proceeding to fill his circular body and oval limbs at a breakneck pace. With scarlet cheeks billowing up, he took the time before they limited his speech to issue an ultimatum. Locked dead on Stephen, he boomed. “You have until the count of ten to get out, and if not, I’m going to -blow- you out of the city!”

He didn’t expect much in the way of a positive response, Stephen never did listen to anyone but himself. “Oh. Scary, is the big bad blimp going to keep billowing until he pushes me out of the ring?” He smacked his stomach again, the callous smile he donned showing how lightly he took Will’s threat. “Go on then, do it!”

Will growled. Then steeled himself. He imagined himself towering over his opponent, crushing him beneath a single finger. He would show him. He would prove to him just how big he really was. Then the city truly would belong to one giant, and one giant only. With a herculean effort, Will tilted his head to the sky and arched his back, to take in as much air as he physically could. He exerted every fibre of his body, to fill himself to the gills. A roaring thunder deafened everything for miles around, it was the sound of his flesh stretching under the strain of fresh air.

“Still not impressed pipsqueak, you can do better than that, surely.”

In a lapse of judgement, Will responded to Stephen’s loud goading. He re-doubled his efforts, expanding so quickly he lost his footing and attained buoyancy. Slowly drifting into the air, as the contours of his body dripped with sweat and became glossy with rivulets of liquid produced by his hard effort. He surpassed his competitor in height, and kept growing. A feeling of resistance tickled the underside of his belly, which he took to be Stephen standing in the same place that was now being smooshed under Will’s titanic orb-body.

“How’s THIS?” Will exclaimed, feeling adulated by the closeness of the clouds above. He was so truly massive, and unbreakable. It would take so much more to make him pop, he was unbeatable. His body steamed in the heat, his see-through balloon skin gathering light in the lazy early afternoon sun.

Then he felt cool air, deep in his navel. Unbeknownst to him, Stephen had plugged the blonde-balloon’s navel with a hose from a nearby fire-station and set it to expel frigid air rather than water. A sudden pang of stress ran through Will’s body, and as pin-prick leaks sprung up along the curve of his body, he didn’t feel so invincible.

“Oooooh… Maybe I went too f—”

Will detonated with all the force of a grand explosive. KABOOM!