Agent Sweetie Drops limped over a pile of refuse and twisted metal. She gritted her teeth, wincing as she peered across the hazy hellscape.
The ruins of Stalliongrad stretched before her, strewn over with bodies—both equine and otherwise. Limbs lay in tattered remnants of their former glory, and several torsos found themselves impaled on exposed rebar... because why not?
The mare shook, heaved. She heard a distant, wheezing breath. Her head jerked towards the sound. Blinking, she stumbled into a trot, and that trot broke into a canter.
Soon, she was crawling up to where a wrinkled old stallion lay, coughing up blood and writhing in pain.
Gently, Sweetie Drops pulled the cracked, sparkling helmet camera off his skull. She gulped, then spoke in as tender a voice as she could muster. “Hello... hello there, Mr. Top.” She caressed his stubbled chin. “It's... it's me, Sweetie Drops.”
Red Top quivered, blinking into open space. “Agent... Agent Sweetie Drops?”
“That's right, sir.”
“I... I can't see...” He winced. “I think... I think too much graphite got into my eyes.”
“It's... it's the pencils, sir.” Sweetie Drops bit her lip. “In the hooves of professionals, they're harmless. But so many of them in the grip of an army full of green noobies...” She couldn't finish that sentence.
“Now, don't go blaming yourself, Miss Drops,” Red Top slurred. “I've always lived by the pencil...” He groaned in a wave of pain. “I... I-I wouldn't go any other way.”
“Mr. Top...”
“Besides...” He coughed, sputtered. “...the battle is won.”
“But... n-not the war, sir,” Sweetie Drops said, a single tear running down her cheek.
“That's up to you to accomplish now, my dear.” Red Top raised a shaky hoof, clutching a clipboard.
Sweetie Drops gripped it.
“How... h-how many moose counted now... Agent Drops?”
Sweetie looked at the clipboard's rustling sheet, then back at him. “Fifty-Two Moose, sir.”
Red Top nodded, a smile crossing his bruised face. “Bring it up to a hundred... I'm counting on you, Miss Drops.”
“Red Top—!”
“The whole... Canterlot Census Bureau is... k-kaff... counting... on you-u-u-u-uuuuu.” And, with a death rattle, the stallion's body went limp in her arms.
She gazed at him, rested a hoof over his face, then buried her muzzle in his chest. It came out as a slow whimper at first, then morphed into a full-blown wail. Then, back arching, Sweetie Drops hollered her lungs to the sky:
“MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE!”