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One Moose2,828 words
Two Moose1,415 words
Three Moose1,096 words
Four Moose446 words
Five Moose1,136 words
Six Moose837 words
Seven Moose522 words
Eight Moose378 words
Nine Moose420 words
Ten Moose908 words
Eleven Moose1,910 words
Twelve Moose838 words
Thirteen Moose295 words

Twelve Moose

Some years later...

SCHLUNKKKK! The moose in a police uniform impaled Lyra's shoulder with a spiked hoof.

"Aaaaa-aaaaugh!" Lyra wailed, penned against the side of the metal foundry catwalk.

The police moose stared emotionlessly into her writhing face. "Call to Bon Bon," he droned.

"Nnnngh..." She spat, seething with pain. "Go to Tartarus."

"Call to Bon Bon," he repeated, icily. He enlarged the size of his liquid metal spike.

"Ungh--guh! Aaaaugh!" Lyra flinched, whimpering.

The moose prepared to skewer her neck with his other limb...

...when a peach-coated figure in a dirty tank top appeared from the far end of the catwalk. "Hey! Flankhole!"

Schliiink! The moose cop instantly sheathed his impaling spike. He turned to face the agent...

Frowning, Sweetie Drops pumped a shotgun and fired a round at the creature. POW!

A splatter of liquid metal appeared across the moose's chest. He stumbled backwards.

Gritting her teeth, Sweetie Drops fired round after round of lead shot at the artificial monster. POW! POW! P-POW!

Bleeding, Lyra scurried over to Sweetie Drops' side, dodging sparks and bullet sprays.

Meanwhile, the moose cop lurched closer and closer toward the abrupt edge of the catwalk behind him... which loomed just above a gigantic vat of molten metal.

"Bon Bon!" Lyra whimpered.

"Grrrghh!" Eyes aflame, Sweetie Drops pumped the shotgun one more time and pulled the trigger. Click! She panted, eyes filled with bright white panic. She pulled the trigger again and again. Click click lick!

The moose cop loomed just inches from the platform's edge. Leaning forward, he took a breath, and the bullet holes in his chest healed themselves, expelling the shotgun pellets from his frame. His head tilted back up, framed by intimidating antlers. He bore the evilest of grins, waving a "naughty" hoof at the two mares.

Panicking, the two ponies spun around to run toward the far end of the catwalk.

But...

Just then...

A cyber-moose with half his skin and coat peeled away rode up the revolving end of a gigantic cogwheel. In his metallic hoof was a grenade launcher. A glowing red eye peered at his target beyond the mares. "Get down!" he gargled in a thick accent.

Lyra and Sweetie Drops dropped to the catwalk floor.

Pftooom! His gun lobbed one grenade across the way. It blew a massive hole in the cop moose's chest.

The police officer looked at his new orifice, then gaped in surprise at the cyborg.

The hero squinted his glowing eye and fired again. Pftooom!

This time the grenade exploded, shattering the cop's torso to an inconsolable mess of liquid metal patchwork. The villain teetered, teetered, then fell down into the fiery vat, upon which he shape-shifted into several shrieking pony effigies before finally dissolving to nothingness with a mute scream.

The cyborg slumped to the ground, only for the other two ponies to help him up. "One Hundred Moose," he slurred, his artificial voice barely disturbing the rising red mists of the foundry around them.

"Then that's it...?!" Sweetie Drops stammered, tossing her sweat-soaked mane. "The Count is over?"

"No... for there is yet one moose left to count." The cyborg pointed past his shattered antler and at his skull. "In here."

"No! No!" Lyra--a sobbing wreck--nuzzled his peeling chest closely. "You can't be serious!" She looked up, eyes puffy. "Even if you were a dastardly creation of Skynuck turned into a protector of equinity's last hope, it doesn't mean you have to sacrifice yourself like this! I forbid it!"

Tenderly, the half-android moose wiped away her tears with a metal hoof. "I know now why you cry, bud," he spoke. "For it is something that I can never do, eh?"

Lyra merely cried, standing there, shivering.

With noble grace, the cyborg moose climbed out and grabbed ahold of a dangling length of chain. He nodded to Sweetie Drops, and the agent nodded back. She pressed a button that lowered the hero into the vat of molten metal. He caught fire, his lower body melting to bits, and then his torso. At last, all that was left was a metal hoof, which he stuck straight up into the air... for... n-no apparent reason.

At last, the dead was done. Sweetie Drops let go of the button as she leaned against Lyra, her eyes plastered to the glowing vat. "... ... ...One Hundred and One Moose."

Lyra sobbed, burying her face deep in Sweetie Drops' fuzzy chest.

Sweetie Drops held her close, looking off with a hundred mile stare.

"The unknown future rolls toward us. I count the days for the first time with a sense of harmony, because if a Capreoline, a moose, can learn the value of equine life, maybe we can too."

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