Blueberry juice is used as fuel, and furs turn into blueberries to produce it. Shinespark is one of these furs, and he wouldn't mind the experience... if his handler wouldn't stop making stupid jokes for five minutes.

It's Juicy July, and I've decided to write one story a week to celebrate, based on these prompts by @staticscreens.bsky.social!

This is also the first appearance of a non-canon Shinespark! They look the same as the normal one, but everything else about them can be different.

The thumbnail is an edited version of this artwork by @painttherabbit.bsky.social.

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Shinespark sighed as he clocked into work. The rabbit hated his job, but there weren't any other good options for making money in this town. He'd be crazy not to accept employment at a juice production plant; the payouts were sky-high compared to the local burger joint. Plus, all he had to do was make blueberry juice for forty hours a week.

Yeah, blueberry juice. You know, the stuff that gets burned to create electricity?

At some point in the past, research into energy sources that didn't pollute the planet concluded that, of all things, fruits were viable. They burned clean, held a surprising amount of energy, and were completely renewable. Then some scientist named Jules acted on this knowledge in the craziest way possible. They invented a strain of blueberries that caused you to bloat with juice, which could be extracted painlessly through the navel. This "Julian" strain triggered what came to be known as the Blue Rush.

Thousands of factories started popping up all over the world, offering furs ample cash to eat this new strain of blueberry, turn into a massive sphere, and get juiced. The juice was then sold to power companies to be turned into clean energy. It became the new liquid gold. In the span of a few months, every other energy source - coal, oil, natural gas, even other renewables - ceased to be relevant.

The Blue Rush was ancient history to Shinespark, though. He was born long after it happened. For as long as he'd been alive, the world had run on juice produced by furs that turned themselves into blueberries. And he was one of them.

Some "producers," as they were called, resented the experience of inflating into a juice balloon. Others absolutely loved it, and even put in overtime so they could feel themselves grow again and again. Shinespark didn't mind it. What he did mind was-

"Heya, Shinespark!"

Ugh. Marcus.

Blueberries couldn’t juice themselves on their own, so someone had to do it for them. This job fell to the handlers. There was one for every five producers at the juice plant the bun worked at, and they were also responsible for maintaining morale among their charges. If done well, the positive reinforcement helped ease the monotony of being stuck in one place all day.

Marcus was terrible at keeping his charges' spirits high.

The red and black-furred wolf, with a broad smile on his face, motioned for Shinespark to head to his station. "Today's gonna be another swell day, I just know it!"

The bunny groaned. Marcus's idea of "maintaining morale" was to make the same jokes and puns every day, without fail. His presence turned a standard 9-to-5 into eight hours of constant torment. All the complaints Shinespark sent to HR fell on deaf ears, because the wolf performed exceptionally well at every other aspect of his job. There wasn't anything the bun could do about it except deal with it.

Shinespark took a moment to look at his body; it helped him recollect his sanity. He was a bit chubby. He had light blue and white fur, two fox-like tails, and a dash of yellow on his pawpads and the insides of his ears. None of that would matter when he was berrified, though. Time to get it over with.

He stepped into the work station he'd be spending his next eight hours at. Soft, absorbent foam took the place of the floor in a circular area here, meant to keep berried producers comfortable and absorb any juice spills. It was permanently stained a dark blue; the rabbit didn't know what its original color was. The border of the foam circle concealed a glass wall to keep producers in place. The top of the wall was cushioned with the same foam; it always raised to reach the berries' widest points.

On the floor in front of the foam circle was a hose, which was connected to a producer's navel to drain their juice. The glass wall had a gap in it to allow the hose to pass through. Shinespark placed the end of the tube inside his belly button; suction locked it in place.

The bunny's station was the center one of five arranged in a row. The rest of the stations weren't occupied yet. The plant's owner was fairly flexible with scheduling, allowing Shinespark to attend his shift an hour earlier than most of the other producers. It was a silver lining he gladly took advantage of.

All five stations in the set were connected to a control console, which was operated by a handler. Marcus, of course, played this role for Shinespark, which tormented the rabbit to no end. Of all the handlers he could have gotten, why this humorless hack of a lupine?

Marcus pushed a button on his console, causing a receptacle to descend from the ceiling above Shinespark. It held a Julian blueberry inside. "Alright, my bunny buddy, it's time to start singin' the blues!"

The "bunny buddy" quickly grabbed the berry and started chewing, restraining himself from giving the wolf a verbal tongue-lashing. Shinespark was not Marcus's "buddy." He refused to be friends with someone who couldn't read the room and figure out that his attempts at humor never worked. The rabbit had heard that stupid "singin' the blues" zinger more times than he could count. It wasn't funny the first time, and it still wasn't funny now.

Upon swallowing the berry, Shinespark felt a tingling in his midsection. His white-furred belly had started turning that familiar, dark shade of blue, and it was spreading fast.

"Heh, if you weren't about to round out, you'd probably be a shoo-in for the Blue Fur Group!" Marcus commented.

The bun groaned again. Any other handler would just ask if he was doing OK. Why'd he have to be stuck with the wannabe stand-up comedian?

It didn't take long for all of Shinespark's fur to turn blue. The Julian blueberry strain was engineered to induce berrification as fast as possible. From time of ingestion to cessation of growth, the whole process took about two and a half minutes. Recoloration of the body only took ten seconds, and that time had already passed for the bun.

A series of gloops and blorps began to emanate from Shinespark as his body started flooding with juice. His belly jutted out from his torso, his thighs thickened, and his butt cheeks grew. Berries always took on a bottom-heavy shape in the first stage of swelling.

"Ooh, you look more like a pear than a berry to me," Marcus opined. "But we all know you'll come a-round in the end, heh heh!" The wolf's chuckles infuriated the inflating berry bunny. How the lupine always found his own stale jokes amusing was a mystery for the ages.

"Let me raise the walls for you, berry-bun," Marcus said as he pressed another button on his console. "Don't want you rolling away like a tumbleweed once you're at full size!"

The foam-topped glass walls raised around Shinespark, forming a see-through enclosure. The bloating rabbit wished they went up to the ceiling and were soundproofed. Or maybe his juice-filling stomach could get a lot noisier. Anything to silence or drown out his handler's constant yapping.

Speaking of juice-filling, the bunny's expansion was spreading to his limbs now. Shinespark's belly, chest, and back had combined into one large sphere, and as his arms and legs rounded out, they became four additional spheres attached to the main one.

"You're a berry star, Shinespark!" Marcus shouted. "Or should I say a starfish?" The rabbit would have groaned again, but his cheeks were filled with juice. He instead decided to express his discontent with a stubborn "Mmph."

No longer able to move his limbs, Shinespark started expanding both upwards and outwards. His heavier body began to sink into the foam floor. At the same time, his bloated limbs and head sunk into his increasingly round body, eventually forming divots.

The blueberry bun kept growing up and out until his sides hit the foam pads on top of the glass walls. At that exact moment, juice stopped flooding his system. The pads locked him comfortably in place.

"You're looking ripe and ready for harvestin', berry-bun!" Shinespark pleaded internally with Marcus, please don't say it, please don't say it, please don't say it-

"Time for you to let out a little wine!"

Shinespark cursed to himself as Marcus hit a button. He wished he could scream at the wolf, "THE WINE JOKE'S ABOUT GRAPES, NOT BLUEBERRIES, YOU IGNORAMUS!" But even if he could speak, he knew letting out his anger would just get him in trouble.

Even so, as the hose inside his navel started draining the juice out of him, the blueberried rabbit couldn't help but think up potential plans for revenge. Maybe he and Marcus could swap roles for a day...