Special Promotion Part 1 (Patreon)

Last month it was voted that we should do a sequel to Free Donuts (found here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/14449330 ). There were many ways this could go, I hope you enjoy where I started! I plan on having our mouse employee doing a lot of interaction with our blob fennec Katie ;u;

Sifton Inc belongs to Almeric, too! 

Hope y'all enjoy <3

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Special Promotion – that's what they call it.

Rows of conveyors chugged slowly along, pumping out pastry after fresh, warm pastry. Just yesterday the diminutive mouse in glasses had been standing beside the head of the company, tablet in hand, ready to change the world. She'd been staring at that grossly fat fennec fox, the mound of wheezing, panting blubber who had somehow let herself gain so much weight she could barely move in just a matter of months.

“That was faster than expected,” she had noted aloud while making adjustments to her tablet's calculations. The wolf beside her, sharply dressed, sharper of gaze turned his head in her direction.

“Do you doubt our product, Miss Koda?” His voice was like the moon, it felt like both the only light in a dark room, and a cosmic force beneath which she could be crushed.

“N-not at all sir! S-sifton's work is too amazing to be doubted!” It was the company line and it spilled from her lips before she could stop it.

The wolf grinned in response, his teeth almost glowing in the light of the computer consoles before them. “Good. Now let's initiate phase three on our subject here. Oh, and Miss Koda?”

Jenny's heart had caught in her chest, for a moment it felt like the world stopped spinning.

“Sign yourself up for testing our latest batch. Can't have our own employees doubting what we can do, now can we.”

The mouse's world had started moving with a lurch, right towards the executioner's axe. It was at that moment she realised her career at Sifton was dead, or as good as. Taste Testing. Her Special Promotion. A hole she would never be able to crawl out of.

And so, standing among the lines of newly made jam donuts, Jenny found herself looking once again at her contract, signed and dated. She could have rejected it. She could have found herself another job. But something defiant had flared up in her. For all her work, she would not be buried. Not so easily. She would do her job, and she would claw her way out of product testing, straight back to the top. Jenny took a deep breath and for a moment, she even believed it.

BEEP

Overhead a light flashed red and the mouse gave a startled squeak, recalling at once where she was. Sifton experimented a great deal with formula, they had massive factories set up just for experimental batches, which of course Jenny thought was a huge waste of time and money. Especially considering the success of the existing formula. But it was one of these massive factories that Jenny found herself now standing in. The product of the week appeared to be jam donuts and she could see every stage of production, from the massive mixing vats which raw ingredients were poured into, to the commercial fry vats which would churn out the finished product. In between she could see some kind of nozzle which pumped the donuts plump full of jam and for some reason her thoughts wandered back to Katie, the lard whale of a fennec fox. Jenny could imagine the fennec laying on the conveyor belt, mouth open to be pumped full of jam, pumped until her plush rolls smoothed out and her stomach was stuffed and bloated, rising into the air like a newly baked loaf of bread.

BEEP

The light ahead flashed again, and someone picked up a microphone in one of the offices. “Miss Koda, we’re not paying you to look at the process, we’re paying you to test it.” An irritated voice filled the factory, forcing Jenny’s thoughts away from the fennec and back to the present. “Consume the donuts, and mark your tablet accordingly.” The voice continued before the microphone was switched off.

Jenny looked down. Held to her chest was her tablet; she could see at a glance what was being asked of her, but she didn’t necessarily understand. There was only one product to be tested today: jam donuts. There were fields where she could write about her experience with the taste of them, the texture, mouth feel, all of that. The strange thing was, instead of asking her to try a variety of donuts, she was being asked to report how she felt about the jam donuts after 1, 10, 20, 50, 100. 100 donuts?! They had to be joking. It had to be some kind of cumulative thing. Maybe after a week she could eat 100 donuts.

Her ears folding, the mouse realised she still hadn’t eaten a donut. Unwilling to invoke the wrath of the buzzer once again, she tenderly reached out towards the conveyor belt to which she had been assigned. Her fingers clasped gently around the first jam donut, it was massive and bloated with jam, which was just the way she liked it. She could feel the sugary dusting on top and regretted instantly wearing her work shirt for this. It would only get messy. Mouth open, the mouse bit slowly into the confection and readied herself to record its taste.

Its taste.

Its taste was...

Its taste was perfect! The pastry was still warm, it was fluffy but still thick, the jam squirted into her mouth but didn’t burn her. The flavour combination was perfect - it was all just... perfect. She scrambled to input her thoughts in the tablet with one hand, while the other kept pushing the donut into her mouth until it was nothing more than a bulge in her throat. And then... she reached for the next.