"My Children are many.... and as diverse as they are perverse..."

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For some more rounding out the monsters this year- I'm revisiting the Thousand Young! As I should have done sooner! And here we have... the Breathtaker...

Running more on instinct than true malice, the Breathtakers are a fertile and insidious kind. They appear much as any rubber or inflatable object, and in fact go dormant when lacking air. But when faced with sources of inflation, such as pumps, tanks, already inflated balloons. . . . living beings.... they spring into action! Able to inflate or deflate their prey- both result in the creation of more Breathtakers. How devious! >:3

But don't worry! They're no more difficult to damage than any normal balloon! . . . If you pop one though- you might want to hold your breath...

The Breathtakers are monsters from Lilly Jade Katrin!

...................................... By Lilly Jade Katrin!
WARNING: Spoopy inflation/deflation stuff

"Man, must be weird having a birthday on Halloween, huh? Everyone celebrating something other than you." "You kidding? People show up to your birthday party with costumes and candy." "Point taken."

Ashley and her best friend Cindy were busy at Cindy's house, decorating for a not-particularly-a-surprise costume party for their best friend Sharon. The party was not until tomorrow, but every year they insisted on going the whole ten yards, and these things take preparation - and Cindy can survive with her living room decked out in streamers and balloons for an extra day or so.

"Hey, have you seen the scissors?" "Over here, I needed them for the balloon bag." Cindy was sitting on the floor blowing up balloons, half by her own breath; the other half were fated to meet the helium tank next. She held up the scissors to Ash, who started cutting streamers, then taping them up to the walls. "So Jared says he's got an epic costume planned this year, what do you-"

Ash was cut short by an ear-piercing shriek. She spun around in shock to find Cindy blowing a violet balloon rather larger than the other ones, eyes wide, seemingly stuck to the balloon ... her lower arms suddenly flat and shrivelled, flopping around like loose rubber as she struggled and failed to pull at the balloon!

Ash rushed to her friend, grabbing the balloon with both hands and trying to pull. No luck, it was quite firmly stuck, already near twice the size of the other balloons. Cindy wobbled on the spot, her pants flattening as the legs inside them deflated, her waistband dropping off her vanishing hips, a shoe falling off a tiny foot with the sock dangling oddly to the floor. Cindy's shirt started to droop off her shoulders as her enviable breasts shrank into a pair of flat, floppy sacks of skin, and her arms fell helplessly to her sides as they seemed to practically melt away.

Tears streaming out her eyes as her cheeks puckered in, her cries for help fading weaker and weaker into a gentle, sobbing whine, staring pitifully at Ash as her torso sank limply into the floor. Ash reached instinctively for Cindy's closest hand only to close her fingers around a couple deflated balloons, blue and yellow, detached from their neighbors where Cindy's arm used to be.

Cindy was deflating into a pile of random balloons and there was nothing Ash could do to help! She could only watch as Cindy's head let out its last whimper and crumpled flat like a deflated balloon, already turning a greenish color, her lips curling into a simple nozzle as the menacing violet balloon, a good three feet across, finally drifted off its prey. Ash stared at it, shaking, it seeming to stare back, slowly rotating to face her...

And then it lunged! Ash screamed and scrambled to her feet, dodging the balloon as it rushed at her! It stopped in midair and re-aimed, floating quickly towards her again, attracted like a magnet! Ash dashed through the doorway and shut it tight, gasping for air.

Thump

Thump

Thump

CRACK The balloon was trying to break through the door, slamming against it with an amazing force for a mass of pressurized rubber! "No! No no no no NO!" Ash panicked and took off down the hall, just in time for the door's latch to shatter from the pressure, the balloon squeezing through the doorway and careening against the walls in its chase. She took a hard right into the kitchen, merely attempting to dodge, and then her eyes laid upon the knife rack on the counter.

With bare seconds to react, Ash yanked out what she prayed was the pointiest knife in the rack and brandished it. The balloon bore it no mind, wildly attempting to lock lips with her, but with a reflex she didn't know she had, Ash managed to jam the knife hard into the balloon, shattering it with a bang into dozens of little scraps.

It was gone. Ash gasped for air, sliding down the counter to the floor, shaking. Panting in victory and safety. Letting her free hand fall atop her pregnant belly and-

I'm ... not pregnant ...

Ash stared down at her belly, eyes wide, and gasped - and promptly seemed to forget how to stop gasping. It was round, very round, her tank top sliding up to expose it, her shorts button popping off clear across the room. And it was growing - she was uncontrollably sucking in air and her belly was making room for it!

Ash tried screaming for help, to no avail - she couldn't get a single sound out of her mouth, she just kept sucking on air, and could barely make her gasps audible. She brought her hand to her mouth in an attempt to stop it, squeezing her inflating palm against her newly pouting lips. The air flowed in through her nose. She tried plugging that too. Her eyes fluttered with a moan as the air pushed into her clothes and up through her privates. And when she attempted to cover that with her other hand, she could even feel the air rushing into her butt!

Ash felt very full, and rather stiff all over, as her legs and arms splayed out straight. The knife clattered to the kitchen floor as her fingers stiffened and straightened and promptly melted into her puffy palms. Her pants started to shred around her ballooning legs, her feet bulging out of her shoes before catapulting one of them across the kitchen. Her chest ballooned up, squeezing out of her tank top and up against her puffy cheeks, unnaturally shiny and rubbery and smooth. As they started to obscure her vision, she could see a couple balloons drifting up into the air from past her legs, a mangled sneaker dangling off one of them.

She was falling apart! Just like that ... that other woman ... woman, right? What was her name? It was hard to think, the pressure was addling her mind now, and she could feel her head starting to swell and push her facial features apart. The pressure was even in her eyes, forcing them wider, focusing them in two different directions as they bulged clear out of their sockets, squeezing up against her swollen lips, her ballooned nose, even each other.

It felt like her very brain was swelling up inside her skull, hollow and pressurized, trying to force her thoughts out her ears to make room for nothing but more air. Her swollen eyes could make out her breasts, one pink, one orange, drifting disembodied up to the ceiling, and the last coherent thought she could muster in her pressurized state was that it felt like her eyes had just started floating up to join them. Everything was going white and fuzzy, and despite her mental struggles she found herself forgetting how to string words into sentences, then sounds into words, leaving her mind nothing but air...


Name: Breathtaker

ID: TDB-1031

Object Class: Euclid

Containment:

Breathtakers have been classified as highly dangerous Euclid-level subjects on account of strong conversion/assimilation tendencies. Attempts at restoring converted Breathtakers to their original forms have been thus far unsuccessful though research continues. Breathtakers may be destroyed by taking any physical damage to their form, though extreme care must still be taken, as an inflated Breathtaker that is damaged (“burst”) will release a high quantity of invisible, barely detectable spores into the air that will promptly convert any organism that inhales them.

Description:

What the TDB Foundation has classified as the Breathtaker is a “species” of visually normal balloons and other assorted inflatable objects, that nonetheless exhibit not only signs of life, but a seemingly instinctual need to reproduce via conversion of other organisms into new Breathtakers.

A Breathtaker’s nourishment cycle consists largely of alternating between two forms, for convenience known as “deflated” and “inflated”. When a deflated Breathtaker makes contact via its “nozzle” to a breathing “organism”1, it will latch on and completely empty said organism, becoming inflated and converting the organism2 into a new Breathtaker. Deflated Breathtakers are almost completely dormant and show no signs of life until making contact with an organism. Inflated Breathtakers will actively propel themselves through the air3 to seek out an organism to “breed” with, and upon making contact with one will latch on and empty completely into said organism to convert it, becoming deflated in the process.

Deflated Breathtakers convert organisms to more deflated Breathtakers, while inflated Breathtakers convert organisms to more inflated Breathtakers. The “maturity” of a Breathtaker, determined by the maturity of its “parent” and the number of times it has inflated and deflated in the past, determines its form and the form and maturity of its “children”. “Young” Breathtakers often take the approximate shape and coloration of the organism they were spawned from (e.g. a young Breathtaker spawned from a human would appear as a blow-up doll), while more mature Breathtakers tend to appear as party balloons of various colors, an empty balloon while deflated and a spheroid when inflated4. Breathtakers have been observed slowly shifting forms over time; a young human-shaped Breathtaker over repeated inflations and deflations became rounder and yellower until appearing as a standard yellow party balloon. Particularly “experienced” Breathtakers have been observed converting a single organism into multiple, even dozens of new mature Breathtakers, the organism separating into parts as it is converted.

1 Tests have shown that this includes non-living air sources such as tanks, air compressors, and normal balloons.

2 Some mature Breathtakers have been observed converting whatever clothing or accessories the host organism may be wearing along with it. Suggestions to classify these Breathtakers as “G-rated” have been rejected by the upper research staff.

3 All Breathtakers have shown the ability to self-locomote in midair, but Breathtakers with more complex shapes such as humanoids can walk on the ground and move their limbs as well.

4 Exceptions have been observed. Some very mature Breathtakers have taken on more complex shapes and even behavior patterns, suggested by researchers to be a form of evolution towards more efficient reproduction. Subject BT-4395 in particular has not only taken on a female humanoid shape but seemingly human intelligence and speech patterns, and a notably seductive personality.



OOC Summary, for Aloween 4:

Description: Simple balloons and inflatables, apparently no different from any in the real world, yet secretly alive.

Fetish: Inflation/deflation and transformation. In particular my mind was on transformations like redflare500.deviantart.com/art… because I particularly enjoy them yet find them rare (not without good reason, but still).

Horror: I was aiming for a more psychological, paranoid horror here. These aren’t creepy things you’d find in the shadows in the woods; these are apparently everyday objects. You could open a bag of balloons you just picked up at the grocery store and halfway through blowing them up one of them suddenly is alive and is sucking the everything out of you. There’s a good chance it will leave little to no trace behind; you’re just vanished with no explanation. And the next time someone comes to look for you, there’s a good chance they’ll encounter it - now *you* - and become the next victim. So basically, kinda a Lovecraft/Doctor Who/SCP Foundation sort of scary.

Abilities: At any level, the ability to forcibly convert anything else to more of them - turning whatever they latch onto, usually humans, into more living balloons. Some of them, shaped like blow-up dolls, pool toys, or parade balloons may even imitate normal life.

Weaknesses: As weak as normal balloon latex, easy to rip, cut, pierce. Just, don’t try to harm it when it’s inflated or the resulting air can transform people.