Mithra Buzzsaw adjusted his glasses and squinted at the canned goods aisle, searching for a very specific label.

Green Feather’s Corn Truffles — huitlacoche in vegan broth.

This would be his third research trip camping in Green Feather’s huitlacoche cornfields, and he had yet to actually taste the stuff. A professional oversight, frankly. As Professor of Mycology and Botany at Peach Grove College in Scissors, he had lectured extensively on the agricultural symbiosis between Ustilago maydis (corn smut, to laymen) and the fungal bioeconomy of Cheesau.

Fieldwork demanded immersion—cultural, biological, and yes, sometimes culinary.

He grabbed two cans and placed them carefully in his basket.

"Huitlacoche and... fudge," he murmured, scanning the next aisle for the confectionery section. "Peanut butter swirl is the best."

For the bait. Not for himself.

The skyfolk—whatever intelligence lingered over Cheesau’s farmlands—had shown an undeniable preference for sugar. Mithra lacked peer-reviewed data (for now), but informal reports and his own observations consistently linked extraterrestrial phenomena with fudge. Especially the artisan varieties from the eastern Dime Markets.

He grabbed two packages.

On the way to checkout, a bright splash of yellow caught his eye:

the Scissors Sentinel tabloid rack.

Half the cover screamed:

ALIENS CAUGHT OVER DAIRY FARM!

Beneath, a blurred photo of a luminous, hovering object.

The other half showed a man Mithra recognized instantly—Cid Shmal, owner of Elephant Acres, mid-fist shake beside a Blue Line milk tanker.

"Former Grade A Dairy Reduced to 'For Pet Consumption Only' — CID SHMAL BLAMES LEGISLATION, CORPORATIONS, AND ALIENS."

Mithra sighed. "Oh, what’s he bitching about now?"

He tossed the tabloid into his basket. Research materials.

---

Cid Shmal leaned against the porch rail of his office trailer at Elephant Acres.

The Blue Line tanker backed up to the loading dock, beeping like a sick robot. A trail of blue milk dripped behind its wheels.

It was supposed to be Grade A elephant milk.

Now it was pet food.

For Pet Consumption Only, the new labels read. As if the milk he’d built his life on—the milk his elephants had earned with every swing of their trunks—was somehow dangerous.

Dangerous? No.

Unwanted. That’s what they wanted people to believe.

That meddling Professor Buzzsaw most of all.

The driver didn’t bother exiting the cab anymore. Just flipped a switch, and the hoses hissed to life. Blue milk surged through the pipes into the belly of a system Cid had spent his entire career trying to avoid: corporate agriculture.

At his feet, a Ham Dandy—one of the half-pet, half-livestock micro-elephants the syndicates had ruined with their genetic gimmicks—nuzzled his boot. This one was Syrup. Born underweight, nearly culled. Cid had saved her out of spite.

"You’re worth more than that whole Blue Line rig," he muttered, scratching behind her oversized ear.

His old friend Vesh, head of the Dairy Preservation League, had begged him to sell. Go underground, Cid. Exotic milk still fetches top credits if you know where to sell it.

But Cid wasn’t a criminal. Not yet.

He stared across the fields where his stoop elephants grazed quietly beneath a fungal-spotted sky.

"They can dye the milk, Syrup," he said, "but they can’t dye the soul."

---

Far across Cheesau’s fungal fields and milk roads, two men—one scientist, one dairyman—stood on opposite sides of a conflict neither fully understood.

Mithra Buzzsaw, professor of mycology and botany, now orchestrating the rise of Yellow Cow Dairy’s synthetic milk empire.

And Cid Shmal, stubborn steward of Elephant Acres, who fought not just for milk but for a way of life slipping into blue-stained obsolescence.

The Blue Milk Act.

The syndicates and their zombie drivers.

The fertility crises no one dared name.

The silent hunger of the skyfolk.

All of it threaded into a larger web neither man yet perceived.

The Dairy Wars had begun as policy.

Now they were prophecy.

---

Later that evening:

"We had to cut out the competition," Mithra whined to his girlfriend, Dar. She was prepping her version of a bagel lox (he thought it was lox).

DING. The toaster oven chimed.

"No judgment, Mitty-poo," she replied affectionately, biting into her meat-laced bagel with a flurry of rapid, voracious chomps.

"You eat like a pirate, Dar."

Dar winked. "Argh."