Baa-Ram-Ewe!

by Darkonshadows

69. Boss Battle: Orthros Omega!

Author's Note:

Music (If you can find it)- The Mane-iac Boss Battle Theme, by Delta Brony.

-Elhorn, Frosty Checkpoint, Ocellus-

Ow… there’s an evil core. It’s not close enough to knock myself out over, but it still hurts even as distant as it is. More a mild headache than a complete blaring migraine.

“Evil core?” Smolder asked, I just nodded as I rubbed at my head with my hooves.

“Not anywhere close, but close enough.” I whined out.

“I be betting Pom is in the thick of it.” Shanty was being miraculously patient, but Dodo was acting as impatient as she wanted to be given the circles he was walking in while looking out of the cave the checkpoint was situated at. “She be having all the fun.”

“I don’t think Pom like being the center of attention or attacked by giant machines Shanty.” I think Pom was actually right to be terrified of the idea of being up here in the Yellow Dog region for too long. Just about every dog, wolf or cousins thereof around here wouldn’t want her to leave if her canid magnetism is as strong as she suggests.

-Gravity Gorge, western edge, Pom-

“Sorry.” Colleen yipped before she spun to hastily throw me off to the side, then quickly pulled out her sword and her energy shooter. “Got this!”

I landed on a floating boulder and watched as the flying Yellow Dog in the black and red flying armor approach Colleen. It apparently didn’t just produce spewing jets of flame for him to fly with, but also small oval bits of glass with metal bits on both ends popped out of one of the random holes and inside this thing was a red liquid.

The dog quickly grabbed and threw the oval at Colleen as he approach and she batted it away with her blade.

The thing made a loud clinking noise and exploded a second later, Colleen was lucky that the thing that was once a boulder took the brunt of that instead of her. The remains of the boulder were now flaming bits of hovering rocks.

I watched as Colleen started firing her projectile weapon, which was a lot slower and more accurate than the projectiles spewing from the armored guy’s weapon. Only the weapon was spraying those projectiles over a wide area and accuracy didn’t seem to be the point of it, more like making it eventually impossible to miss once you got up close and personal with someone was.

The two flew off into the floating rocks firing at each other and Colleen darting forward at an angle trying to hit him with the sword she had on her and while avoiding the spray of projectiles heading in her general vicinity.

Colleen’s opponent was notably avoiding a close up confrontation, his armor suddenly started generating a lot of those exploding glass bombs that began filling the air in front of him with floating mines as he bursts backwards.

Colleen barely tapped one of the floating things and narrowly escaped the chain of explosions with a burst from her rocket pack to change direction.

It led to Colleen being further away from him than she previously was, she was definitely making sure to keep this guy’s attention off me by being particularly aggressive any time he tried to drag the fight my way.

Hopefully this wouldn’t become my fight.

I turned and blinked… okay… now wished that it ‘was’ my fight.

-Boss: Orthros Omega, havoc headed heavy hound!-

Two large mechanical wolf heads with small spikes jutting off their heads and rows of razor sharp metal teeth that were currently open in front of me, they stared at me for a moment. A second later they both roared in my face and darted forward trying to swallow me whole.

Jumping away in a panic and clamping onto another boulder, a rocket shot by and smacked the evil core machine’s left head against the right head.

Only when I turned back to look at the hovering mass of maniacal metal machinery… the rocket hadn’t done any visible damage.

That… wasn’t good… was it immune to rockets? I heard shouting and looked to see a female Dachshund hurriedly loading another round into a tube, but they had to leap away when a large rocket flew from the wings of the mechanical beast.

Said rocket blew apart a series of boulders with one blast, I bunkered down in my wool as several bits of rocks slammed into me roughly.

Of course the overgrown orthros’s armor was made to take explosions… otherwise you would be able to use its main weapon against it, those large rockets it fired from its wings were complete overkill.

Over'KILL' is the defining trait of evil cores as far as I knew.

At most the rocket that was used against it only made the machine angry, that’s just judging from the glow in its dark red eyes.

It reared back both its head and I could see it looked to be inhaling, but machines didn’t need to…

Seeing particles of energy beginning to converge in the mouths, it occurred to me as to what it might be doing.

Leaping at a nearby boulder, I ran around to the far side of it and then curled up as a torrent of blinding energy slammed into it.

Once it ended, I stood up blinking the spots out of my eyes and looked about at Colleen’s allies to see that two of them were cowering behind a blackened boulder together. Moving slightly, I could see that the other side of my boulders was blackened as well.

I grimaced as I looked at the two heads of the hovering machine as they looked in my direction.

Yeah, I kind of wished that I didn’t have this thing focusing on me...

It started flying in my direction, I also felt my wool beginning to spark. I looked down as the boulder I was standing on started glowing. My eyes widened and I felt my left eye twitch a bit.

I’ve done this quite a few times, but if that thing was explosion proof… maybe…

I hopped and barked blasted the boulder sending it flying towards the large metal orthros and was left floating in the air until something snagged me around my waist and dragged me down to a different platform of stone.

It was the retriever and he was shouting something to his companions while holding me by the waist with his left arm. He was already in the middle of leaping to another boulder, managing to do so successfully even with my added weight.

My eyes were busy tracking the energy boulder that was glowing brighter by the second. The orthros’s right head grabbed the boulder and moved to toss it out the way, that’s when the boulder went off in its mouth.

The energy bursting from the rock caused the Orthros to roar in pain, but the energy didn’t disable it quite like it had the other machines. If anything, the energy boulder made things worse since it started randomly firing those large rockets everywhere randomly.

The retriever was yelling something to his friends. He leapt and ran with the various rockets taking out numerous floating platforms of floating stone around us with each with a massive explosion. That threatened to knock him down

Glancing left and right, I saw that Retriever’s team was moving parallel to us as they leapt through the fields of debris and shrapnel flying in every direction. The male Labrador stopped for a second and snapped off a rocket and it did as much damage as the first one had.

Eventually the group converged and we all ended up on a single platform together.

The female Labrador turned and fired her weapon, the small projectile just bounced off the chest of the metal orthros. She turned and stated something to Retriever, who was still holding onto me until I found myself quickly placed on the ground before the male poodle as Retriever talked to her.

The others, the female Dachshund and the male Labrador, aimed the two rocket tubes they had and fired upon the mechanical monster. Both heads were hit and knocked back, but it still was coming and it wasn’t exactly flying quickly. The two turned to the retriever and said something in sync with one another.

I turned my attention back to the poodle as he tapped the side of my head drawing my attention to him wielding a medical kit and motioning to my leg. I mentally released my wool bandage, he looked a little surprised to find my wool pulling away from the wound.

Shaking his head, he quickly checked my injury over and quickly pulled out a canister sprayed something on the wounds to staunch whatever bleeding was still happening and it stung quite a bit. He quickly wrapped my leg with a bandage and bit the end off.

We both heard something and looked up to see that the large mechanical two headed wolf was already upon us. The retriever and the female Labrador were firing at it for all the good that was doing them. The Dachshund and male Labrador still needed some more time to reload.

I think I’ve had enough time since I last used it, this was going to be rough on my throat… where to aim though? Center mass at best, can’t miss at this range… I’d be horrified if I did.

I got up and charged forward and let out a bark breaker, getting the frequency just right to do this attack was tough to do in these circumstances. If you didn’t do it right or hit with it, then you would end up losing a lot of energy on attempting the attack. But when you did do it right and hit…

The armor around the chest of the machine rumpled, rippled and cracked as it was about to bring its right paw around to slap us off of this floating piece of real estate.

The end results were spectacular for the wad of cylindrical energy coming out of my mouth.

The machine roared in pain and backed off its attack and flew backwards at least twenty feet, not far enough away as far as I was concerned.

Retriever looked intrigued at the change in the metal monsters armor and called out orders to the rocket tube carrying friends and the other two, they all nodded as I was lifted up by him again.

Retriever gave me a grin as he started jumping from boulder to boulder to once again gain some distance from the encroaching mass of malice. We were getting nearer to the edges of the floating rock field.

His four other companions were running ahead of us, two of which were obviously trying to find a place and some time to reload their rocket tubes. The female Labrador and poodle split off and were going off somewhere.

I looked back to see the two heads of the orthros were charging to fire beams again, I poked Retriever and pointed it out to him.

Retriever shouted something as he moved me to his back, I quickly understood what he wanted and clung onto him.

The female Labrador turned and fired a shot at the machine’s chest. It still bounced off, but it had at least widened one of the cracks faintly. She and the poodle continued to go off in a particular direction until I lost sight of them.

I really don’t know if I can do another bark breaker so soon to weaken the machine even further.

Retriever personally leapt towards a particularly large boulder, this is when both the heads unleash two beams of raw energy towards each other. Said beams fused into one huge beam that erased almost every bit of stone in its path.

Thankfully the energy in the beam quickly lost cohesion after a certain distance, the implications otherwise would have had devastating consequences. Also, thankfully enough, no one was in the path of that.

What was the point of the metal monster doing… oh… we’re cut off from the rocket tube carriers as the machine had destroyed all the boulders between us and them. I don’t know where Retriever’s other two friends were running off to, but they certainly weren’t sticking around after that display.

I seriously wanted to forget how dangerous or smart these ‘evil core’ things were. It was trying to actively prevent me from escaping the area by slowing us down.

Speaking of, the orthros was on approach for us and Retriever was looking around in a slight panic, he was looking for a place to jump to.

Prodding his shoulder roughly, I pointed up and to the left. He quickly leapt in that direction without a second thought as a large rocket was already on its way to hitting us.

We reoriented and landed on the boulder I pointed out and he made his way around to the other side and crouched down.

After the explosion, the boulder we left behind was now a mass of floating pebbles going in various directions. I would have gone deaf at this rate if it were not for my wool insulating my ears.

Don’t honestly know how Retriever or the others were handling the volatile noises, but they were doing well enough and were not miraculously losing their balance.

I saw two rockets streaking through the air and they passed by to the right of us and into the chest of the flying bulk of metal, the explosions actually did some damage. Not enough though, the chest of the metallic orthros was barely broken open… I could feasibly fit both my hooves through the hole they just made in its chest.

What kind of metal was that thing even made of?! At least it wasn’t fast when it came to flying, it would probably be even faster if it was on the ground.

This means we didn’t want to leave the floating rock field until we have at least disabled it somewhat. That was going to be a problem, as I didn’t think my friends here could do that kind of damage with what they had. The damage they just did was after I had already weakened that things armor, I don’t honestly think they had enough rockets to actually bring the monster down.

While I was busy thinking this, Retriever was leaping us through the field while I clung to him.

The oversized orthros was still gaining on us. Even with another pair of rockets impacting it, the metal plated armor of the orthros barely had a large enough hole for me to fit my head through. At least they were managing to widen it.

Turning my attention away from what was behind us, I almost leapt off of Retriever when I saw a green machine hopping our way. I thought Retriever’s guys had disabled all of them and the wolves that were with them, I was proven correct in thinking that as the current pilot of the machine was his female Labrador friend.

She turned the green armored machine around, crouched it down and motioned for us to get on hurriedly, she looked how I felt. Panicked, frightened and afraid of the heavily armored flying machine after us using stupidly powerful weapons in the efforts of taking me alive.

Retriever quickly clambered up the presented back of the machine and clung to one of its shoulders. He yelled out to the Labrador and she made the machine leap us away from the orthros as several large rockets blasted apart our surroundings.

I shivered and clung to Retriever, he patted me on the head and said something that was assuredly supposed to sound like encouragement. The Labrador driving the machine made a sardonic comment in response as she steered us to the two rocket tube wielding dogs that were in the middle of loading another round.

We landed on a hemispherical shape of stone between them and they both leapt for the machine caught it’s spine and other shoulder respectively as two beams slammed into the boulders they were on.

At this point all we were doing was running, I hadn’t seen any sign of Colleen and I really didn’t want to deal with that evil core behind us. We certainly couldn’t let it follow us and it was too tough to take out under normal circumstance.

We wouldn’t make it on the ground and I’m not sure Colleen’s friends had the time to stop and consider that like I did.

We certainly couldn’t stay in the floating rock field forever either and I was loath to bother Mr. Sage any more than I had to.

I could faintly see the poodle waiting for us outside the field in the distance holding a projectile firing weapon and firing it at the large rockets that were coming up behind us to make them explode prematurely.

My eyes slid to the satchel of rockets the Dachshund had and I looked back at the two headed wolf machine still following us and firing off attacks as our machine ran from it. This thing was leaping across large distances as the female Labrador piloted us closer to getting out of Gravity Gorge.

I finally came to a decision, loosened my grip on Retriever and clambered down next to the Dachshund and pointed at her rocket ammunition with my hoof and motioned to myself.

She gave me a small glare, the next time our machine leapt a beam passed underneath.

I pointed at the rockets with a most frantic expression I could put on my face, she sighed and reluctantly unslung her satchel put the strap in my waiting hoof.

I nodded as I took the satchel and gave her a grim frown as I slung the bag over my neck and shoulder.

I climbed up the back of the green machine and up to the female Labrador who gave me a worried glance as she evaded a massive beam of energy trying to destroy the lower half of the machine we were on.

This is where I leapt up at a boulder and kicked off it to go gliding straight for the large wolf machine with my wool wings spread out, much to the panic of the good dogs I left behind.

My actions not only confused Mr. Retriever and his team, it also confused the large Orthros as I was flying straight at it.

What I was about to do would only work if it didn’t absolutely want me outright dead, I’ve noticed that it hasn’t been trying to kill anyone I’m nearby. The only reason why it had fired on me was to stall me or keep me in place.

It didn’t fire its large rockets at me and it didn’t prepare the beams either. It almost seemed… as eager as it was heavily confused to see me coming right at it.

Does my special magnetism effect on canids even carry over to giant mechanical two headed winged wolves of doom?

Would it even work on something literally described as being pure ‘Evil’?

One I got close I banked around the left heads attempt to snatch me out of the air and dove out of the snapping jaws of the right head in time to land on its neck.

“Over here!” The left head went to bite down on me, I back flipped up the neck as it bit down and tore into the right head’s neck. I clambered up onto the top of the right head and grinned as I stood on its head looking into its feral eyes. “Come on, you can do better than that!”

The right head snapped backwards and opened its mouth expecting me to fall into it.

Instead I just stuck to it and clambered up to the nose and pulled one of the rockets from the satchel, I tossed it into its mouth.

The entire machine roared in pain as something inside its mouth exploded when it snapped shut around the rocket.

Smoke poured out of the right head as I crawled around to the outer side of the neck and down towards its chest, the left head tried to snap at me several times and I could hardly hold on with it attacking me like this so I had to get it off my back.

I quickly tossed a rocket into its mouth as well the next time it opened as I continued to crawl towards its chest and its left head was now howling in pain as smoke poured from its mouth.

I was having an effect, but only enough that it wouldn’t attack to kill. It was still going for outright maiming and capture, good to know.

The right head started trying to shake me off and I had to stop moving less I lose my hoofing, the left head went to snap at me and was blasted back by a rocket fired right into its mouth.

I quickly waved in thanks in the direction of Retriever’s team as I quickly positioned myself on the chest next to the small hole. I started stuffing rockets into the hole in its chest, I’m pretty sure the others had cottoned on to what I was doing.

All they had to do was set them off once I got clear of the machine.

The right head came for me and was struck in the right eye by a rocket making it create a loud mechanical whine as I continued to force these explosives into the hole in its chest. The left he was struck knocking it away from me I stuffed one last rocket in with the tip facing outwards.

There were still a few rockets left in the satchel, but I didn’t need to use them. I quickly clambered up between the heads onto the machine’s back and ran along it as the two heads turned backwards to stretch out and snap at me on its back.

I leapt forward and continued to the back half of the machine avoiding the seat, the large tentacle like tail of the machine raised up and suddenly came down at me and tried to wrap around my small form I quickly leapt to the side and the tail was blown back by a rocket.

A second later something blew up around the front of the monster and I looked back to see a chain of explosion coming my way. I ditched the rockets from the satchel by just pouring them out and leapt off the right side of the machine to fly away as the chain of explosions started tearing it into two separate halves vertically down the spine and destroying the seat.

After gliding a short distance, I landed on a nearby boulder and watched as the two halves of the wolf machine started falling downwards towards the planet irrespective of the gravitational forces in play.

I heard Retriever’s cheering for a bit, until one of them pointed at something and shouted. I turned to see what the problem was and swiftly received a metal boot to the face knocking me down and dazing me.

I felt something tighten around my throat and I couldn’t breathe, I opened my eyes to the grinning face of the guy that had been attacking Colleen. He said something and tightened his right paw's grip on my throat painfully and took to the air to avoid a rocket fired from the male Labrador.

I could see them getting further away as my vision started blackening. The last thing I saw was a scorched, bloodied and weakened Colleen landing on a boulder to pull a weapon from under her rocket pack and she hastily fired it.

My face was splattered with blood as the Yellow Dog holding me lost a chunk of his left ear. He howled, but kept quickly rocketing away from a collapsing Colleen as I blacked out.