It was one of the last few days of the winter break at Furren University, and the last of the planned parties had recently been concluded. With this, cleaning had also begun in most areas of the campus. In Triss Everstead’s large classroom, the teacher herself and one of the freshmen in her class were finishing up the cleaning process. All that was left was to deal with the many balloons that had been blown up for the previous parties.
Triss was a fennec fox with white and gray fur, the two colors making a pattern that looked somewhat like a cow’s skin. She had one yellow eye and one light blue eye, and two large ears atop her head. A long, fluffy tail swayed behind her as she reentered the classroom, having recently put out a couple bags of trash.
Still in the room was Cherri, one of her top students in her freshmen class. Cherri was a slightly tall wolf with a shock of bright green hair going between two beige ears. She had two hazel eyes, one of which had a crimson spot of fur around it, and a light blue nose at the end of her beige snout. Most of the fur on her body was beige as well, save for various crimson spots in many places. Her feet were crimson as well, and a fluffy tail wagged slightly as she got a couple fun ideas as for what to do with the multitude of balloons in the room.
Triss saw a slight smile form on Cherri’s face, and the professor herself grinned as she questioned what was up. “Cherri, did you think of something to do with the balloons?”
“Well, Ms. Everstead, I did have one idea… I remember you mentioning something about wanting to save all this helium for future use, right?”
Triss nodded, having in fact said something along those lines during one of the parties. “Mhm… It was a hassle to get all those balloons down… meaning the helium must be pretty fresh.”
“Well… if you’d be willing to reward me for doing so… I’d love to be a tank to hold the helium for you.”
Triss chuckled at the idea, thinking it was a joke before noticing that Cherri actually seemed serious about it. After a moment, Triss decided that, if nothing else, the idea would make cleaning up the classroom much more fun, and it would let Triss hold onto that helium for a little while…
Triss nodded and smiled. “Y’know what, sure, I’ll figure out how to reward you for it later, but for now, go ahead.”
Cherri giggled to herself and grabbed the nearest balloon, carefully using a claw to poke a small hole in it and putting said hole up to her lips. Helium soon began to blow from the balloon into her mouth, causing her cheeks to puff out as she used her hands to press the gas out of the balloon. Instead of going into her lungs, though, it kept going all the way down to her stomach, causing Cherri to feel considerably full by the time she finished the first balloon.
She tossed the empty thing to the side and grabbed another one, repeating the process. This time, her stomach began to expand outwards as it made room for the incoming gas, leaving her with a small potbelly when she had sucked down all the helium in the second balloon, and making her look like she swallowed a soccer ball when she finished the third. Triss couldn’t do much other than watch Cherri’s expansion, and sat down in one of the nearby desks as Cherri began working steadily through the many, many balloons left in front of her.
When she was a good ten balloons in, Cherri’s stomach was the size of a beach ball, and her chest had started to inflate too. From Cherri’s point of view, it was getting hard to stand properly, and at this point she was constantly on her toes from the helium inside her pulling her upwards.
She could feel her hide tingling from how much it was being stretched, and the sensation was oddly pleasing to her. A few more balloons later, and Cherri could feel herself beginning to float a few inches off of the ground. Now that picking up any more balloons was totally out of the question, Triss got up to assist Cherri and began holding up the balloons to Cherri’s lips so she could keep taking in the helium from them.
By the time the last of the balloons had been emptied into Cherri’s huge stomach, Triss was awkwardly holding her down with one arm around Cherri’s neck. Cherri’s arms and legs had become domes atop her now-spherical body, and Cherri herself was in another world mentally due to an intense pressure daze.
Before letting her float to the ceiling of the room, Triss pulled Cherri over to her desk, where she took a strap of velcro, of which she kept for situations similar to this one, and wrapped it around Cherri’s snout, sealing it shut before finally letting go of the wolf and watching her float upwards, hitting the ceiling and bouncing against it a couple times before finally settling and staying there as a big fox balloon.
As Triss promised, there would be a generous reward for offering to be a tank to hold that helium. What the reward would be, though, was going to have to be decided later. For now, there were quite a few empty balloons to clean up…