A quick speed-write commission for  Lightness!
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Will couldn't control his breathing, anxiety over being late to work upsetting his tempo, and he kept inhaling more than he let out. As a result, his ordinarily small muffin top stomach had billowed with air, and now strained unflatteringly against his red work jumper. To any onlookers it looked as though the blonde haired twenty something had stuck a beachball underneath his clothes and inflated it to near capacity, but before he over-inhaled and revealed his bare flesh to the busy street, he managed to find a thread of clarity amidst his racing thoughts and pulled on it to unknot the anxious jumble in his head. Normality returned soon after, and his breathing settled back into a quick but manageable rhythm.

“Shit, I’m nearly fifteen minutes late,” Will strained and pressed down on his stomach to release the built-up pressure. No one had stopped to check if he was alright, and he was glad for that, he dreaded the thought of being condescended to like a greenhorn inflator. In New Pneuma your control over pressure to expand your body, and the size you could reach, acted as social capital. Getting caught having a minor panic attack and nearly losing control of your girth might as well have been a death sentence to an up and coming business junior like Will, who was already in deep shit for being – now twenty minutes – late to his first investment pitch at Baumann Industries.

Will looked up, and his throat went dry when he realised just how intimidating Baumann Tower was. In addition to also being the WIDEST building in New Pneuma city, it was easily the tallest. At one thousand and eight hundred meters, housing one hundred and twenty floors, with each corridor, nook, and cranny jumbo sized for the zaftig figures who kept it running as the most profitable inflation-based business centre in the western hemisphere; Will panicked upon realising he had to climb eighty of those large-scale floors. To make matters worse, an email had made the rounds and alerted all staff to the temporary closure of the building’s elevator service.

“Time to bite the bullet,” Will muttered in utter defeat and reached into his trouser pocket for his phone and began mentally guarding himself against the tongue-lashing to come, hoping that he wouldn’t come off as a total unprofessional disaster. At least, that’s what he intended to do when a massy stranger pumped to the limit of his suspenders nearly knocked him from the sidewalk and into traffic. Will caught himself, and then gritted his teeth in preparation to hurl admonishments at the balloon-bellied man, when a thought struck him. He noticed the way the man merrily bounced along his way, galivanting at a pace normally impossible for a creature of his substantial dimensions. At least that would be the case, if he weren’t full of lighter than air gas. A common method of getting around in New Pneuma City, if you were of the heavier disposition, was to fill yourself with helium or plain air until it counteracted the tug and inconvenience of gravity brought on by your weight.

Will planned to use that same method to arrive at his pitch meeting on the 80th floor bursting with confidence, though not literally, he hoped.

Across from Baumann Tower was a ‘gas station’ that rarely saw visits from cars but saw frequent incomings from the inflatable citizenry. Will stood in line at one of their many filling stations – retrofitted gas pumps designed to comfortably be used by the human mouth – and tapped his foot impatiently while he waited for a purple-haired glut to finish his business. This guy’s fit to blow, does he really need to spend so much time pumping back up? When it finally came to Will’s turn, he approached the hard-hat wearing pump attendant and flashed his Baumann Industries platinum card.

“I’m going to need an extended top-up,” Will said to the confusion of the attendant who looked at his uninflated body and cocked a brow.

“How extended are we talkin’?”

“Until I get up there,” Will thumbed at the tower’s height.

“… that’s gonna cost you.”

Will handed his card over. “Max it out if you have to.”

The attendant’s eyes glittered, and he dutifully removed the disposable gummy tooth-grip on the pump nozzle for a fresh one before handing it over. “Okay big spender, what’ll your filling be?”

“Hydrogen. Lifts faster,” Will said. Going on urban legend rather than due science. He had never properly investigated the properties of his favourite gas fillings before, and something nagged him that he should.

“Okay… just spit the hose out when you’re done.” The attendant set the dial, and the pump spat like a metal cobra before a sibilant rush of hydrogen pleasantly roused Will’s attention.

He exhaled, and then clamped down on the gum-grip, the effects of gas pump on his body were immediate as evidenced by his cheeks blowing up like a pair of basketballs. He used his practiced skills as an inflator to direct the air with his throat muscles, building it up within his torso, forcing his chest and stomach to become the first victims of the rounding process and stretch until the contours of his humanoid midsection became a great sweeping curve. Gravity began to lose its hold, and he couldn’t hold back a rising blush on his chipmunkishly round cheeks. It always felt so good to start floating, and it rivalled few experiences for Will’s favourite part of the whole event.

Will ascended past, and quickly cleared the roof of the gas station. With more inflations under his belt than most twenty somethings, his body had adjusted with continuous stretching; expansion; and reduction exercises – giving him a natural elasticity that allowed him to grow far bigger than most while being frugal with his gas intake.
He watched himself balloon in the reflective tinted glass of Baumann towers. Passing the tenth floor, the twentieth, rising faster and becoming wider, Will tried hard not to lose himself to the tingling pleasure caressing his rubbery flesh. Wider and more voluminous than a weather balloon, he wondered what the people on the other side of the glass thought of his unique method of commuting to his destination floor. He laughed at the fact that no one else had attempted this before, and his size and hollowness as a human balloon gave his chuckling a bassoon quality. A jolly reverberation, echoing through his rapidly embiggening body. While he was able, he flexed his arms. The limbs themselves becoming unbendable and useless, as they filled with pressure that couldn’t be contained by his overwhelming orb of a midsection.

Floor 80. He was here, and conveniently the pump finally snagged, tethering him in front of his destination.
Tugging with his pneumatically fattened face, he used his tooth-grip on the hose to generate momentum and swung towards the broad window pane of the 80th floor. On contact, he felt the coolness of the glass against his taut belly, and a long “bwooooom” sounded out.

Two windows swung open like double doors, and Will’s boss – ‘The Baron’ – a large German man with slick backed black hair and a pony-tail who barely fit in the space he had made for himself stood there smoking a cigar. “Ah, young master William.” He said in a thick accent, “look boys, William discovered a ‘new’ way to get to work… though not on time!” Raucous laughter erupted from the board room which Will could barely see into. He wasn’t sure if the lights were just too dim, or if he was having trouble focusing. Actually. Why was he up here again?
“Oh boy, he’s got it bad folks…” the globular suited man sighed and gestured for someone to come closer. An aide arrived with a cart, on top of which was a plunger loaded into cannon-like apparatus. With frustration, he pressed a button and Will felt the plunger launch itself firmly into his navel. “Don’t you know why no one floats up to their office, new boy?”

Will spat out the hose, enraged. “Because I’m the first!” Will’s arms and legs had recessed into divots created by the insane internal pressure of his balloon-like core, the hands and feet now round and cartoonish reminiscent in the way a rubber glove behaved when bored students and professors blew into them to pass the time; oblong shapes with little nubs.

“No. It’s ‘cause of Inflated Ego Syndrome; y’know… the way you kind of forget why you inflated in the first place?” The Baron sighed, and began reeling Will in.

Will felt his temperature rise. He had completely forgotten why he had floated up here, or why this man was so important. All that mattered was that he receive proper dues for his herculean inflation, his godly girth, or else he would show them just who they were dealing with. “How DARE you!” Will lost the last shred of his sanity, and began inhaling like a vacuum. His over-pressurized body, now more run-away hot air balloon than weather balloon, oscillated wildly and turned a warning shade of deep pink. Sweat dripped, and the elasticated threads of his jumper and trousers threatened to come apart all at once in a textile explosion… at least if Will didn’t beat them to it.
The Baron looked around the cart with the suction cup pulley, and retrieved a sharp, shiny, pin. “I’ll overlook your lateness on account of impressing me on sheer size, Master William.” He reeled the self-destructing blonde balloon in close enough to touch; and nonchalantly jabbed him with a pin.

KABOOM!

Where there was once an ego-maniacal new hire of the Baumann Corporation threatening to blow out the windows, there was simply a hot rush of pressurized gas and a fluttering of pinkish peach rubber scraps big enough to sew into a circus tarp.

“Someone gather up the young man’s scraps and reform him by lunch, please!”