“What a day for a parade!”
Nate was grinning ear to ear, glancing down at the flyer clasped in their paws. Dog Days of Summer! it read in large, cartoonist font – covered in stylized balloons and a little printed mural of a sunny day.
Enjoy a day at the park! Live entertainment, food, and a parade to finish it off – be there, this Saturday!
Well, they couldn’t exactly miss that, could they? Good thing they’d found the flyer in the first place, they’d have missed the event otherwise!
A quick crosstown bus ride later and the lycanroc was enjoying a fairground burger, idly wandering around the local park amidst an absolutely huge crowd of people – evidently everyone else had been just as ready for a saturday out as they had!
It was a great day out, in Nate’s opinion – games, food, a day in the sun – but, as the evening started to crawl closer, the lycanroc found themselves wandering around the fairground proper, peeking into the occasional tent or storage area to see what was around.
One of the tents, marked helpfully “parade supplies”, drew their attention the most. Inside was… gas. Helium tanks, it looked like?
Probably for filling parade balloons! Shame this parade didn’t really have any, it seemed like a simple marching band affair.
Glancing around to make sure nobody was watching, the lycanroc slipped into the tent – stepping over a few discarded yellow and white balloons to stand over one of the closer tanks. Maybe…
Without a second thought – perhaps even on impulse – the lycanroc stuffed the tank’s hose in their mouth and turned the valve until it was fully open.
Cool helium rushed into their snout, the cold sensation of gas hissing out of their nose lasting only a moment before something… fascinating began to occur.
Their usually grey nose began to swell, turning a soft pink as the smell of rubber filled their focus! Nate’s lupine snout began to round out slightly, being overtaken with soft yellows and browns and whites as it began to swell and stretch into something resembling a cartoonishly proportioned canine snout!
To say Nate was suddenly excited was an understatement – in fact, if the tank hadn’t already been opened as far as it could be they would’ve turned it higher!
“Mmph!” The lycanroc giggled, the cool helium gas starting to flow into their tummy proper, straining it against their clothes. Their usually red eyes first stained a light purple, before lightening into an almost electric blue – flattening out along with their nose and facial features into cartoony collie decals as their hair stretched and recolored into a rubbery blond mop!
Their overall proportions were shifting steadily, added height and lost weight starting to press Nate against the ceiling of the tent, even as their forepaws swelled and fused into huge, inflatable collie mitts, tearing the sleeves of their shirt!
“Mmm!”
The first tank trickled to a stop, and with their huge unwieldy paws they weren’t getting another hose in their snout anytime soon.
Resorting to simply shoving their mouth over another tank, the mostly-collie grinned as the valve fell to the floor, tank stuck in the on position!
Their tail exploded outwards, huge and see-through yellow and brown latex wagging in the evening air outside now that they effectively took up most of the space.
Rounding out further and further, Nate (or was it Cai?) dropped to all fours as their proportions shifted into something more befitting a parade collie, finally tearing free of the tent just as their changes drew to a close!
Little ropes tied themselves around the hooks on the collie’s paws, tethering them to the fairground just in time for the band to arrive for parade practice!
Their mind was a bit fuzzy for a moment, before it hit them – of course they were a parade collie, right? A big balloon dog for a dog days festival!
Besides, what kind of parade didn’t have balloons?