It had started simply enough. The nights were cold and the days were sweltering. A warm cup of milk, or a chilled one would hit the spot.

It took a while to get enough blood veins of the right sizes to form a condensing coil, plus she needed to upgrade the Milk Box to produce a super-freon. Blood obviously wouldn't work for a temperature control as all the red and white blood cells wouldn't change to a gaseous state.

Er, all the white and white blood cells. Terminology was strange.

Water technically could've worked, but the boiling point was too high. What she needed was a liquid that required less energy to evaporate and condense. It also needed to do so based more on pressure than heat. It also needed to not rupture the blood vessels.

Or, super-freon vessels. She couldn't really call them blood vessels when they weren't transporting blood.

However, strengthening all the super-freon vessels by hand would take FOREVER... so she would need to make a hardening agent that she could pump through them to enhance them all at once. In fact, that would be an addition to the super-freon gland. The Milk Box might get damaged, and it would need to be able to repair itself.

Within reason. She shouldn't get distracted from the goal.

Ideas bounced around in her mind as she made all the modifications. A tail was the best heat-expelling segment. The super-freon would absorb heat from within a section of the Milk Box as it turned to gas. The super-freon vessels in the tail would allow the thermal energy to disperse as it circled the outside layer. The insulated center would then allow the liquid super-freon to flow back to the body of the Milk Box to continue the cycle.

The end result? Areas that the milk could flow from the bladder through to heat it or cool it before it was expelled.

Success!

...But why stop there?

...Why make normal-flavored milk?

There were some lovely red berries that kinda tasted like strawberry-cherries. More importantly, they had sugar. An awful lot of sugar. It would take some work to upgrade the digestive track to separate that out, but once she'd done that, it wasn't hard to add it back in with the twist of a 'knob'.

Sweet cool milk!

Flavorful hot milk!

...But she could do more.

More flavors! More colors! As they moved through the lands, she made modifications to sort the Milk Box's food by color. She also stockpiled all the biological material she'd ever need!

White! Red! Pink! Blue!

...Not black. That wasn't cute or appetizing at all. Not to mention the toxicity.

The final upgrade was simple enough: Ice Cream.

What was ice cream but frozen milk that was stirred and whipped to emulsify? Add sugar and flavoring... Presto! A treat her friends had never tasted!

...Okay, that one of her friends had never tasted. The other was from Earth and knew what ice cream was already.

Ice Cream made everything better! So when they finally left the wilderness and came across a city, she knew how to make money. A rare delicacy that only she could provide? That was a monopoly!

...Now she needed a name.

Her brother had always flaunted copyright law. This was a new world. She could name her business whatever she wanted. She thought about it before she made her choice.

[Dairy Queen]!

What could be more fitting?

Money flowed in, and people tried to strong-arm her. She knew how that worked. They'd rob her shipments and intimidate her employees! She had to expand.

[Royal Dairy Knights] took up her cause of frozen conquest! Her friends became the [Royal Dairy Explorer] and the [Dairy Baroness]! Her [Dairy Warriors] marched en-mass to deliver her treats to the farthest lands.

Probably.

She wasn't exactly sure how far the farthest lands were, but they were definitely expanding.

Little did she know, that the reach of the [Dairy Queen] was beyond even her imagination. Across the ocean, a [Lady] enjoyed her imported snack. The ice cream of the [Dairy Queen] was the best! Her devotion was acknowledged, and the first [Dairy Princess] was created!

Other people who'd tried to copy her success were destined to fail.

They didn't have a legion of Milk Boxes that could work twenty-four hours a day. The only limitation was bio-mass, and well, the people that opposed the rule of the [Dairy Queen] had to be put to good use somehow...

Everything was going perfectly... until the revolution.

She didn't know how it had started. A rogue Milk Box that gained sentience? A disgruntled employee who had accepted a bribe? A component that was cursed? The origins of the outbreak were a mystery, but the results were not.

[Dairy Revolutionaries].

They did not listen to their [Dairy Queen] because she wasn't a [Queen] in truth. And what happened when there was no [Queen]? A [Princess] was elevated. By now there were seven [Dairy Princesses] across the land, but the curse reached them and they became wicked.

The [Dairy Princess of Vanilla] became the [Dairy Princess of Stagnation]. She no longer enjoyed the most basic flavor of ice cream, instead she hated the other flavors!

The [Dairy Princess of Chocolate] became the [Dairy Princess of Overpowering Taste]. Her flavor muffled every other flavor out. There was no room for them in her kingdom.

The [Dairy Princess of Butter Pecan] became the [Dairy Princess of Sugar]. Flavor was lost in her kingdom, only sweetness mattered.

The [Dairy Princess of Sorbet] became the [Dairy Princess of Spice]. Where her people had once enjoyed a unique dish, sugar had been eliminated in exchange for more and more heat.

The [Dairy Princess of Strawberries] became the [Dairy Princess of Blood]. The sweet, red juice she once enjoyed was replaced with an entirely different scarlet liquid.

The [Dairy Princess of Neapolitan] became the [Dairy Princess of Naples]. Instead of the ice cream combination that had been popularized in the Greek city, she now only produced ice cream that had another traditional Greek flavor. Olives. Which, honestly, wasn't that bad.

The [Dairy Princess of Rocky Road] became the [Dairy Princess of Rocks]. Who needed teeth to eat ice cream?

The [Dairy Princess of Cookies and Cream] became the [Dairy Princess of Cookies]. The less said about her, the better.

One by one, they were corrupted by the ice cream that they had loved.

The battle lines were formed as other lines were crossed. Subjugation followed, and with it a horrible new class.

[Dairy Slaves].

Those that toiled without the reward of the ice cream they helped create. They were not the worst off. This world had dark magics. Magics that were unleashed by the most evil [Dairy Princess] - the [Dairy Princess of Cookies].

[Dairy Zombies].

They swept across the land like a plague. The corruption of the Milk Boxes were complete. They'd grown intelligent. They knew how to produce an ice cream that not only would control those who consumed it, but would consume them in turn.

After all, every person had the potential to be a Milk Box with the proper work.

You could identify them by their milky-white eyes, but by the time you saw that, it was too late! They held you down as they vomited soft-serve into your mouth. Then, you became one of them...

Riley woke up with a jolt!

That had been the strangest dream. She looked at the 'nali-stick' Pinky had given her. It was sweet. Super-sweet. Sweet in a way that reminded her of the processed foods back on Earth Bet. It had obviously triggered something in her subconscious.

She lay back down and tried to fall asleep.

Ice cream wasn't a bad idea though. The super-freon and tail would definitely work...

Author's Note: Credit to Vabbie for the idea of the [Dairy Queen].