T.O.O.N. - Road Pizza

 “Come on, shove over!” said the cheetah driving the ambulance, violently waving his hand over, as if he might swat the cars off the road if he gestured madly enough. And for all he knew, he could of. After all, anything seemed possible these days.

“Relax. They’re not gonna let you be an ambulance driver if you can’t keep a cool head.” Said the tall, dark dog next to him, gripping the handle above the passenger window tightly.

“Keep a cool head; I’m keeping my head VERY fucking cool under the circumstances. It’s against the law to not pull over to the side of the road when the siren is going, you assholes!” he shouted out the window at the small handful of cars that, from the elevated position of the cab in the ambulance, looked like slow, stupid cockroaches ambling forward and indecisively veering left and right to try and let the ambulance pass.

“Oh, for- “ the cheetah started, checking his side view mirror and swerving to the right, around the car in front of him, and weaving around two more cars before speeding off, hearing the third member of their team give a dismayed cry and tumble around in the back as he did so.

“Ah-HA! How’s THAT for emergency response!” he said, sticking his hand out the window. The dog couldn’t see what he was doing with his hand, but he could make an accurate guess as to what gesture he was making.

“Hey, man, don’t do that!” he said, concerned. “There’s a bumper sticker on the back with HQ’s phone number on it! We could get reported!”

“We WON’T get reported, because I’LL be driving too dangerously for them to read it!” he said, taking a sharp corner and hearing the third EMT crash to the other side again.

“What if you crash the car? Are you going to drive like this when he have our patient in the back? She got run over by a truck, you know.”

“Yes, god dammit! I’m trying to save lives!” he said.

“So you wouldn’t drive like this if there wasn’t lives on stake?”

“Yes.”

“Yes you wouldn’t drive like this, or yes you would?”

“…yes…” he said, an insane glint in his eye and he swerved around another car slowing down at a red light. The cheetah pounded on the back of the cab.

“Hey!” He shouted. He knew she probably couldn’t hear him very well over the blaring sirens.

“Hello? Yes?” said a feminine voice from the back of the ambulance. The dog watched the deer girl crawl her way towards the ovular window with difficulty.

“Sorry for the bumpy ride. I just wanted to warn you that you should probably hang onto something.” He said, driving all too quickly towards a large gridlock of stopped cars at a red light.

“Why? What are you going toOH MY GOD!” she shouted as the cheetah wheeled the ambulance to the left, jouncing over a median, and turning into the oncoming lane. The deer girl braced herself between the gurney and the wall, and the dog slammed the invisible brakes at his feet, and covered his eyes with the hand that wasn’t hanging onto the handle on the ceiling for dear life. The cheetah deftly wove in and out of cars that were swerving out of the ambulance’s way. His hand kept flitting over and off his eyes, trying to decide whether or not he wanted to see the road.

“What are you- Ah! Look ou- no, to the left- oh, no, no, no don’-“ he stammered, as the cheetah deftly darted in and out of swerving traffic, trying to ignore him. He swerved tightly to the left through an intersection, engaging the handbrake and causing the whole ambulance to powerslide across four lanes of traffic, and causing the dog to finally realize that, no, he does not want to look, and he covered his eyes and slumped down into the corner and yelled until the car lurched back to the left and the cheetah yelled “TIME!” He uncovered his eyes and saw the cheetah looking at a stop watch around his neck and realized they had come to a stop.

“6:57! And you said I couldn’t get make it under 10! Ha!” he said, throwing his head back as he said it and unbuckled his seatbelt.

“We’re…we’re here?” asked the dog.

“Yep! We’re here. We’re here!” he shouted, banging on the back of the cab. “Look alive people, we’re saving lives here! Let’s go!” He opened his car door and jumped out. The dog, quickly gathering his senses, unbuckled his seatbelt and fell outside dizzily. He ran to the back where the doors were waiting, open, and helped the cheetah wheel the gurney out the back and extend the wheels. They threw their first aid kits on top and jogged to the small crowd of people gathered around the side of the street.

“Alright, stand back, clear a path!” shouted the dog, fishing an IV bag out of his first aid kit while the cheetah undid the Velcro on a neck brace. The crowd of people parted, giving the EMTs a good look at the raccoon woman, completely flattened on the road. The EMTs stopped. They stared at her for a while, the crowd of people looking expectantly at them.

“God…dammit!” yelled the cheetah, throwing his neck brace on the ground. “You learn anything in your T.O.O.N. seminars about this?” he asked, pointing.

“No…” said the dog. The cheetah sighed.

“So we’re improvising again?”

“Yeah, let’s hope she doesn’t sue us.” He said as they packed their legitimate medical devices back into their first aid kits and wheeled the gurney back to the ambulance. They pulled up to the open doors and held their first aid kits up to the deer girl, who looked at both of them worryingly.

“Are we improvising again?” she asked.

“Yes.” They both said in unison. She gave a groan and took their kits from them, moving to the front of the cabin to retrieve a brand-new looking toolbox, a recent necessary purchase that they had made for occasions just like this. The dog took it graciously and set it back on top of the gurney, which they wheeled unenthusiastically back to the victim. The dog opened up the toolbox on the way and started raking through the various tools inside.

“turkey baster…dustpan…nutcracker…crowbar?”

“No, there’s gotta be something better than that.” Said the cheetah.

“Chisel?” asked the dog, holding two chisels in one hand.

“Didn’t we buy spatulas last week?” the dog lifted a tray out of the toolbox and set it aside.

“Ah. Here we go.” He said, pulling two stainless steel spatulas out as they reached the victim. The cheetah snatched one.

“Start scrapin’.” He said. They set out on either side of the woman and started gingerly scraping her off the pavement. It was hard to tell how old she was, as she was face down, spread eagled, but it was plain to see that she was in good shape. She was wearing a deep violet sweatsuit, the trendy kind with designs and rhinestones embossed on the back and the company name stitched across the butt. She had been jogging in the morning and didn’t hear the truck coming from behind her until it ran her over. One might think this would kill her and reduce her to a horrible bloody mess on the side of the road. And, at one point, she very well may have. But ever since the Transformative Omni-Ontological Nexus occured, (or T.O.O.N. offhand,) the world these furs lived in started being governed by a law of physics much different than it had before. Everyone was trying to adapt, but the healthcare industry was hit the hardest. Almost all knowledge about modern medicine had to be thrown out as, literally overnight, everyone had become practically indestructible.

So, rather than being receiving horrible, fatal injuries, she was squashed flat on the road, spread eagle, face down. The two EMTs scraped dutifully away, separating her slightly curled raccoon tail from the back of her legs and scraping her limbs off first, before they both lifted up on either end of her and peeled the rest of her off. They struggled with her floppy body, but managed to turn it around and lay her facing up on the gurney. They saw that she was quite young and attractive, and her hair was trimmed into a short pixie cut that was popular with girls that were really into fitness. The pupils in her wide eyes darted around, looking at the crowd, and between the two EMTs. Her mouth was slightly agape and the rest of her face was frozen. The dog leaned in and looked her in the eye.

“You’ve been in an accident. There was…you…were struck by a vehicle. Over. It ran you over.” He stammered. She stared at him silently. “But it’s okay now, because we are medical professionals. And you are in good hands now. So we’re just gonna…wheel you into this ambulance and take you to the hospital. Get you to a doctor. Everything is going to be O.K.” he said as he and the cheetah smoothed her arms down by her sides, making sure there weren’t any bits of her hanging off the side of the gurney. The cheetah held one of the straps on the gurney, not sure if he should use them or not. They looked at each other, shrugged, and started strapping her two-dimensional body to the gurney. They figured spinal injuries were probably off the table now, but then again, they didn’t really know what they were doing anyway. The dog picked the toolbox up and they wheeled her back to the ambulance. The deer gasped when she saw the raccoon. The EMTs hefted the gurney up and rolled it into the back. The deer looked back and forth between the flattened raccoon and her fellow medics.

“What…what am I supposed to do?” she asked.

“We don’t know.” Said the cheetah.

“I think what they mean to say…” said the dog, making sure to speak loud enough for the raccoon to hear, “…is let’s start the SOP for this condition, which is quite common!” The doe leaned forward to whisper.

“But there IS no SOP for this condition!” she whispered, desperately.

“I know, I know. But I have an idea.” He whispered back. “I was looking on the internet, around when we were buying the tools for the toolbox, and I remember reading on a forum about something like this happening in San Bernedino. Someone fell off a building and smashed flat on the sidewalk. The paramedics on the scene hooked him up to an oxygen tank and he got better.”

“What do you mean he ‘got better’?” asked the cheetah.

“They said he just kinda…re-inflated.” Said the dog, shrugging.

“You know what? It’s better than nothing. Give her some oxygen.” Said the cheetah, pointing at the deer. She nodded.

“And you. Drive like a sane person.” Said the dog, pointing at the cheetah.

“Why? We need to get her to a hospital.”

“We need to get her back alive, and we’ve never dealt with anything like this before. We’re here to save lives, remember?”

“Fine. I’ll drive safely.” Said the cheetah, sighing. They slammed the doors shut, leaving the doe in the back with the raccoon. She started preparing an oxygen mask and looked down at the raccoon girl, who was eyeing her silently. She smiled sheepishly.

“Just relax. This is an oxygen mask. Our driver is the best in the business, even at his slowest he’ll get you to a hospital quick as a whip.” She said, unreeling the hose and holding it over the raccoon’s face. She wasn’t quite sure how to lift her head up, so she hesitantly pinched the top of her head and peeled it off the gurney, looping her finger through the elastic band and pulling it over the back of her head.

“There we go.” She said. “Now you just breathe…deep.” She said, as the elastic band pulled inward and folded the girl’s head like a crepe.

“Oh dear.” She said. She gingerly pinched either side of the girl’s head and smoothed it back out, before it folded upward like a taco, her eyes looking out in opposite directions, darting around in confusion.

“Maybe I…better just start the oxygen.” She said, smiling nervously. She gripped the top of the valve and tried to turn it. The raccoon girl’s eye looked back and forth between the tank and the doe. It was stuck tight. The doe cursed under her breath, knowing that it probably got jammed because of the cheetah’s earlier reckless driving. She got thrown up against the oxygen tanks during one of his perilous turns and they slammed into the wall at an angle. She remembers silently wishing that nothing broke. At the time, she though her wishes were mercifully true. Now, she cursed and twisted on the valve with all her might. Finally, it gave with a squeak and turned as she heard the hiss of oxygen and gave a sigh of relief.

The raccoon girl’s cheeks puffed up on either side of her bi-folded head, which started unfolding, gaining a more three-dimensional shape. Her chest started poofing up, followed by her belly.

“Ooh, perhaps I turned it on a bit high…” she whispered, watching the girl unflatten, her body rising like bread in an oven. Ordinarily, oxygen masks weren’t supposed to make the wearer’s cheeks puff up like that. Then again, these were unusual circumstances…

The girl’s body was almost fully three dimensional now; the doe could see the raccoon numbly flexing her fingers and twitch the end of her tail. She loosened the straps a bit so her body could rise up into them. After about 30 seconds, the doe was ready to call her fully recovered. The girl’s bushy tail was twitching normally, she was clenching and unclenching her hands, and her face was expressive again, although it was hard to read her expression with her cheeks puffed up. She was laying her head back, dimly opening and closing her eyes, clearly shocked and exhausted from the situation.

“Ooooookay, I think we’re ready to turn your air down a tad…” the doe said, wrapping her dexterous hoof around the valve. She made the slightest effort to turn it clockwise and the handle snapped off with a metallic ping. She didn’t realize what happened at first, and stared at the broken valve handle in her hand before the raccoon girl looked up, confused. The doe quickly hid the valve behind her back and smiled nervously.

“Okay, turns out your oxygen is just fine.” She lied, “Hang on just a moment.” She edged past the gurney up to the ovular window separating the cab from the back. She knocked frantically on it, the vestigial hoof material on her fingers clacking loudly on the safety glass. The dog looked back, saw the panic on the deer’s face, and slid the window halfway open.

“What is it?” he asked.

“There’s a problem.” She whispered desperately. The dog stole a quick look at the raccoon girl, who looked fine to him, and looked back at the doe.

“What is it?” he asked again, in a whisper.

“One of the oxygen tanks got damaged on the way here, and-“ she started before the dog gave a tired sigh and swore. “I’m sorry…I’m so sorry…I don’t know what to do…” she said, almost silently, tears welling in her eyes.

“No no no no, look at me. This isn’t your fault. None of us know what we’re doing. Look, just…don’t touch anything. We’re not touching another finger on that girl’s head till we get her to a doctor.” He said.

“Okay. Thank you, but is it alright if I-“ she started to say, before the raccoon girl gave a moan of alarm. She turned back, not seeing anything wrong, and turned back to the dog. He pointed at her.

“Calm her down. But remember don’t touch ANYTHING.” He whispered before closing the window. She heard him say something to the cheetah and she almost immediately felt the ambulance speed up. She looked back at the raccoon girl and was going to ask what her moans of protest she kept making were about, before she saw that the girl’s belly was inflating. At a rather rapid rate, too. It looked like someone was inflating a beach ball under her dark purple sweatshirt. She was at a loss for words, and looked at the raccoon girl’s face to find that she was looking her in the face, a wild, desperate expression on her face. She kept yelling something, but behind the oxygen mask and her puffy cheeks all it sounded like to the doe was “HRMPH MMM MMMPH!” It took every ounce of the doe’s willpower to put on a relaxed face and try to keep her voice calm.

“Now, don’t worry. This is perfectly…” she said, gesturing her hands in circling motions around her belly, which was now the size of a fully inflated beachball. Her sweatshirt was rising up as well as the white tank top she was wearing underneath it, and she could see the salt-and-pepper colored fur of her belly peeking out, straining against the strap across her midsection. Looking at the raccoon’s expanding belly, she lost her train of thought.

“PHMMPHMM MM MMMPH!?” the raccoon girl all but screamed, snapping the doe out of her trance.

“Uh uh…it’s…it’s perfectly normal. She said.

“MMMMPH!?” the raccoon girl said, incredulously. Her belly made a groaning sound as the material of her sweatshirt was stretched further than it intended to stretch, and her belly pushed against the nylon straps of the gurney. Her belly was easily sticking out further than 2 feet, her sweatshirt and thin layer of white tank top peeking out from beneath it stretching out and out. The doe looked at the raccoon girl’s hands, rolling around and clenching and unclenching madly, picking at the straps with her fingers, trying desperately to free herself. That was when the doe realized the girl’s hips were expanding too. Her hips expanded into her hands, her sweatpants stretched tight beneath her round, expanding love handles, and she was now probably twice as wide, if not wider, than she was before. The doe gave her hip an experimental poke. Expecting to poke her hard hip bone, it instead gave like an inflatable mattress. She poked the side of the raccoon’s exposed belly with several fingers and it gave the same way. The raccoon gave a squealing cry, and glared daggers at the doe, blushing. The doe apologized to the girl, feeling clearly violated, before both of their attention was drawn to the raccoon’s expanding breasts, and her blush blazed hotter on her face.

    Her boobs expanded like two balloons, stretching her sweatshirt and causing the zipper to groan as it slowly ran downwards. It finally stopped just below the hem of her tank top, which plunged down far enough to give a generous view of her deepening cleavage. Her breasts were about the size of cantaloupes when the doe looked further down her body, seeing that her butt was expanding similarly. Her butt cheeks might have been the size of two basketballs had she not been laying on her back, or strapped down. They expanded outwards, pushing into her hands and trying to force her body upward, into the straps that were trying their hardest to keep her contained. Then, she saw that her thighs were expanding, stretching the legs of her sweatpants like rubber tubing. Her arms were inflating similarly. Her belly had expanded to the size of a small exercise ball, and the straps of the gurney were preventing her from expanding to her fullest extent.

    “Okay. This is all normal.” The doe forced herself to say. The raccoon screamed from under the oxygen mask and puffy cheeks, shut her eyes, and started thrashing up and down in the gurney, desperate to escape. She tried to arch her fattening legs up enough for her running shoes to find purchase, she tried to wiggle her grasping hands out far enough to undo the straps, she tried to slide her whole body up and down to help her hands or feet. She tried to do anything to escape the relentless flow of oxygen into her body. The doe backed away in fright before nervously bringing her hand forward. She tried to rest her hand on top of the girl’s massive tummy, on her fur right next to her belly button, but her hand drew back after every touch like she was touching a hot oven. She uneasily rested her hand on the top and patted it gently.

    “Calm down. Please calm down.” She said, somewhat desperately. The raccoon girl ceased her thrashing to looking the doe right in the eyes, a pained and pleading look in her eyes. She was mumbling things from behind the mask and her now gigantic puffed up cheeks, but the doe thought she might know what the raccoon was saying. She looked at the window, and neither of the other EMTs were looking.

“Maybe…maybe I can do something about the oxygen mask…” she said. The raccoon gave a muffled squeal and started nodding enthusiastically. The doe leaned forwards and the raccoon eagerly stuck her head forward for her. The doe reached around the girl’s head and grabbed the elastic band. She tried to pull it up and over her head, but her cheeks had grown so big that it was almost impossible to move it up or down. She struggled with it for a bit before the raccoon girl started getting impatient and started shaking her head around to help loosen it. All it did was make the doe lose her grip.

“Hold still.” She said. The raccoon obeyed. She tried to move the elastic band once again, but it was stretched too tight. She gave up on that and grabbed the mask itself. She was surprised to find not open air when she squeezed it, but solid muzzle. The air had somehow inflated the girl’s short raccoon muzzle to the point where it filled the entire interior of the mask. She wouldn’t be able to get a grip. She grabbed onto the hose, and put the other hand just below the girl’s muzzle, with her fingers resting on both of the girl’s puffy cheeks. She pulled upward, hard, the raccoon closing her eyes and trying to pull her own head back as far as she could, but the mask was stuck fast. Whether it was the overly-strained elastic band or vacuum suction created when her muzzle inflated inside the mask, it wouldn’t budge.

“I…I…I…” the doe stammered, before the raccoon lost patience and hope and started thrashing around again. The strap around her midsection unbuckled, causing the doe to leap back as her belly sprang up an extra foot. The raccoon stopped thrashing and gave muffled whimpering moans and her eyes started searching wildly around what little visibility she had for something to help her escape. Her hands, which looked dainty at the end of her inflating arms, stroked her massive belly and sides before groping around the edges of the gurney, looking for something to get the other straps off. Then the doe realized something she could do.

“The straps! You want me to undo the straps?” she asked. The raccoon gave a loud, squealing cry and started mumbling other things as she nodded her head enthusiastically again, the hose connecting her to the tank whipping up and down. The doe went to the strap just above her knees and deftly unbuckled it, the girl’s body expanding up so quickly she actually bounced on the gurney, her fat arms held as far out as she could hold them to steady herself before bending them as far up as the straps would allow her to try and take the strap off just above her now soccerball-sized breasts. The doe moved up to undo that one when she realized she was brushing against the wall, and looked up at how big the girl had become.

The straps had allowed to grow more up and out, and her midsection was clearly spherical. She didn’t just rest on her back, she rested atop her back, of which only a small point was still touching the gurney. The end of her belly was brushing against the roof, nearly blotting out the light. The doe panicked and fumbled with the buckle, trying to undo it before doing it on her fourth or fifth try, and the raccoon bounced upwards once again, before teetering on the small of her back. She was huge, and she tried to bend her arms up to grab the hose, but they were so thick that they couldn’t bend up that far. She looked down and squealed in dismay as her hands receded away from her face on her thickening arms. Her fat, round legs wiggled futilely as her hips and crotch were joining her midsection and getting rounder and rounder and she grew bigger and fuller. Her tailed wagged back and forth, jutting out just above her butt, now the size of two watermelons. She cried in dismay and gyrated her fat arms around in circles, flapping her small hands up and down. She was blushing profusely and looking with wide eyes over her gigantic, round body. She couldn’t see much over her breasts, which had surpassed the size of soccer balls and were now beach ball sized, their generous cleavage spilling out from out of the collar of her sweatshirt and over the hem of her white tank top. She looked big enough to park a small car in. The doe couldn’t stall any longer, she HAD to alert her friends.

She tried to edge past the raccoon’s bulk, but she had gotten too big. Her big inflated arm, which was rapidly becoming encompassed by her large, round midsection was in the way. She ducked under it and pushed it up gently, rolling the girl over and making her squeal and flail her hand around. She reached the front of the cabin, but saw that the window was being obscured by the girl’s growing bulk. She apologized to the girl and shoved her inflated body, probably around where her shoulder used to be, if she had to guess, away from the window. The raccoon gave another cry in a violated tone and kept flailing. She found that if she released the pressure, the raccoon would just cover the window again, so she kept the raccoon shoved as far away as she could. She tried to say something to alert the two EMTs in the cab, but she hesitated to keep the raccoon girl pushed back, and her elbows gave out. She made a quick yipe and the raccoon girl’s spherical body expanded back out, shoving her into the corner and pinning her there. She struggled the push the girl’s body back, but the pressure was too great. The girl’s belly finally blotted out the light, leaving her in darkness. She could do nothing but listen to the hiss of oxygen, the groaning of the girl’s stretching clothes, and her muffled cries, growing more and more desperate the higher the pressure got.

    The doe suddenly got the idea to open up the back doors. She didn’t know why it would help, but it seemed like a good idea. Anything seemed like a good idea at the point. She shoved against the raccoon girl’s sweatshirt with all her might, ignoring the girl’s moaning protests, and started pawing her way hand over hand back to the rear of the cabin. A sliver of the light was revealed from above the girl’s massive, round girth, and the doe found herself nearly face-to-face with the girl’s flailing hand, which didn’t look like it was on an arm so anymore so much as a conical mound. She was almost completely spherical. She HAD to open that door. She continued, pushing the girl’s encroaching mass back one paw at a time, pushing herself onward with effort. But the light got blotted out again. She just kept getting bigger and rounder by the second. She could hear the pistons on the bottom of the gurney give way as her highly pressurized, round body compressed it down to the ground. It took all her strength with both hands to hold the girl’s body at bay, but the fight was too much, and her strength left her. The girl’s body smashed her against the wall. The doe would feel her taut, inflated body enveloping every nook and cranny of her body, feel the raccoon’s belly fur on her face, feel the large form jiggle ever so slightly as the girl continued to flail and fight, all while she was crushed oppressively against the wall.

    They had gotten here so fast, what was taking them so long to get to the hospital? And surely the oxygen tank should have run out of air by now? She closed her eyes and the raccoon girl smooshed her harder and harder against the wall of the cabin.

    “FINALLY! God! Don’t EVER make me drive that slow again!” yelled the cheetah, slamming the ambulance into park and unbuckling his seatbelt.

    “You need to go through training again. Injured people don’t take well to being thrown around the back of a car.” Said the dog, disapprovingly.

    “But we strapped her in!”

    “It doesn’t matter! We don’t know how to fix her! We need to get her to a doctor, and fast!” he said, unbuckling his seatbelt and opening his door. The cheetah did the same and they both speedwalked to the back of the ambulance.

    “What do we tell the doctor?” asked the cheetah.

    “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of that.” Said the dog as he reached for the door handle. “We’ll just have to ask-“ he started to say, but the moment he unlatched the door handle both the doors flew open, making the EMTs jump back, and a vast, dark purple expanse bulged out of the back of the ambulance, completely smooth and round save for two tiny, wiggling running shoes on either side. The cheetah and dog looked at each other, then at the ambulance. They approached it slowly and each poked it. The shoes wiggled more violently. The cheetah put his ear up against it and the dog followed. They could hear muffled screams reverberating through the girl’s huge, inflate body.

    “Is that…?” asked the cheetah, his question trailing off as they both stepped back again.

    “Oh god dammit.” Said the dog, cradling his face in the palm of his hand.

    “What…what happened?”

    “You know what? Who cares. We’ll dump her off here, and then we’ll split. I don’t wanna deal with this crap now.”

    “Whoa, you’re never one to shirk your duty like that.” Said the cheetah, playfully.

    “Well, this…” the dog said, gesturing up and down at the girl’s massively stretched sweatpants. “…is a little above and beyond my call of duty. Help me get her out.” He said. They each grabbed one of her feet and pulled, and she stretched outwards a little, but otherwise wouldn’t budge. The cheetah spied the base of her tail and let go of his shoe. He looped his hand around it and tugged it till it came out from under her body completely and wagged agitatedly in his hands. He then blushed at the sudden realization that he had just put his ear up against her big, round butt only seconds earlier. The dog snapped him out of it as he counted down from 3 and they both pulled, the cheetah from the tail and the dog from both of her shoes. She stretched outwards again, the dog struggling to keep his grip as her shoes wiggled around, and at first it seemed like she wasn’t moving again. Then, she slid out an inch. Then another inch. They could see gray and black bristly hair from where her sweatpants rode down and her sweatshirt rode up around her midsection. She slid out inch by inch and then, without warning, she popped out of the back like a cork. The sudden force of it made the dog lose his balance, as his entire front met her plush bottom between her feet, bouncing him backwards and her upwards and he landed on top of the cheetah. A great shadow passed over them and they scrambled to turn around. She hovered about two feet off the ground, floating gently back towards them after the hose connecting her to the ambulance snapped taught. They stared in awe at her as she stared in embarrassment at them. She was almost as big as the ambulance itself, although far more spherical. Her sweatsuit stretched and strained to contain her body, relenting at around the foot or so of exposed fur around her midsection. The angle she was floating at them gave them a wonderful view of her cleavage, the spot where her beach ball-sized breasts fought for space. Her face was contorted in desperation and embarrassment, blushing profusely. Her hands, tiny in comparison to the rest of her body, flapped in a futile attempt to slow herself down, or exert some sort of control over her round, inflated body. They stared in awe at her until the dog put his arm out and caught her on the collarbone, gently holding her in place as she floated with neutral buoyancy. They were speechless, but the raccoon was far from it, squealing and mumbling and moaning behind the mask with tears in her eyes.

    “So you spose we should uh…” started the cheetah. They stared at her a little longer.

    “We should get that mask off.” Finished the dog.

    “Good idea.” They tried unsuccessfully to take the elastic off or just pull the mask off. The cheetah got an idea and headed back for the ambulance. He reached inside one of the first aid kits, searching for scissors. Before, they would use scissors to cut the clothing off of trauma victims. Never in a million years would he have guessed he’d be using it for something like this. While he was searching his eyes wandered up and looked at the side of the cabin. He had to double take to realize what he was seeing.

“Whoa.” He said, simply.

“What is it? Asked the dog, turning around and leaving the girl floating, flying and crying alone. He looked where the cheetah was looking and saw the doe flattened to the wall like a decal, with her eyes closed tight and a grimace on her face. “Whoa.” He said. The cheetah resumed his train of thought and fished the scissors out, showing them to the dog.

“Balloon girl comes first.” He said, snipping them open and shut.

“You want to pop her!?” asked the dog, surprised. He heard the girl give a desperate squeal behind him.

“No, you idiot. To cut the hose.”

“Oh. Right.” The dog said, wiping the sweat from his palms as the cheetah walked past him. The raccoon girl stopped making noises and stuck her face out eagerly as the cheetah approached her with the scissors.

“Alright, hold still.” He said, before realizing that she didn’t have much choice in the matter. He closed the blades around the hose and snipped it apart. Immediately, a gale force wind hit him from the side, knocking him off his feet as an oxygen mask with a small length of hose attached to it and a very outstretched elastic band hit him in the face. He looked up to see her jetting away, hooking upwards faster than anything he’d ever seen that big move, making a sound a balloon might make when deflating, before bumping butt-first into the hospital, bouncing off the windows. She twirled around, coming out and swinging back down so low that the dog had to duck to avoid her round, purple butt, before coming back up, curving around, and jetting away into the distance. They both lost sight of her.

“We’ll send you the bill!” shouted the cheetah with his hand cupped to his mouth. The dog didn’t laugh at his joke.

“Now her.” He said, referring to the doe flattened to the side of the cabin.

“Should we take her inside?” asked the cheetah.

“After all that? Screw that, I’m taking a lunch break. I can’t handle this stress.” He said, taking a spatula out of the toolbox and into the back of the ambulance. The cheetah joined him. She scraped quite easily off the interior of the ambulance, compared to the raccoon in the street, and they raised the gurney back up and smoothed her out on it. The cheetah took an oxygen mask from one of the oxygen tanks and stretched it over the doe’s face. The dog was fiddling with the straps on the gurney, wondering whether he should strap her in or not. Her face folded upwards like a taco as the elastic band pulled taught. The cheetah made to open the valve on the tank, but it was stuck. He exerted himself, before it gave way and unscrewed with a squeak. Air started flowing rapidly into the doe, filling her cheeks and face back out and re-inflating her torso.

“You really think we should be doing that to her, after what happened to the raccoon?” asked the dog.

“Of course. She’s a smart girl, just don’t strap her in and she’ll take the mask off when she’s back to normal.” Said the cheetah, neither of them noticing how fast she was re-inflating.

    The doe groggily opened her eyes and blinked at the bright light, her body reeling at the sensation of being re-inflated. She flexed her partially two-dimensional fingers and wiggled her partially two-dimensional toes. She realized that her friends were standing over her. As her thoughts got less cloudy, she realized what was happening to her. She looked down and saw her muzzle fully re-inflate from between her puffy brown cheeks, she saw her stomach swell up and her breasts fill out. She tried to move her arm up but it was stuck. She tried to move it up unsuccessfully before she realized that one of the bright yellow nylon straps was around her waist, holding her arms firmly down by her side. She tried to yell “HEY!” to them, but it came out as a “MMPH!” from behind the oxygen mask. They were arguing, the cheetah saying the raccoon was the dog’s fault, the dog accusing the cheetah of not having a plan, completely ignoring her. She struggled and tried to raise her voice so they could hear her, but she just made squeaks and squeals and as her belly was rising, they had an entire argument, made up, and started deciding where to go to lunch before hopping out of the back of the ambulance. The up and down shaking caused the broken handle on the oxygen tank to snap, dangle by a bit of metal, and then fall off. They didn’t even hear the clang it made when it hit the ground. She screamed at them desperately, as her belly was getting larger than a basketball. It obscured her vision of them, her button-up EMT shirt starting to ride up and reveal the white fur of her belly.

They slammed the doors shut.