Guiding Light

Having been thrown into the wall and being caught between it and the door that had followed him, Wolf barely hung on to consciousness. He slid down to the floor, fell onto his side, then dropped face first onto the floor. The door tipped forward and fell to the floor as Wolf dropped to the floor as well. The wall had an indentation from where Wolf had crashed into it.

The raccoon had been knocked out by the blast and his landing. Flame and Wolf's food was gone, scattered in small pieces all around the area. The other people staying in the motel, who hadn't been too shaken up by the blast hurried outside to take a look around, but were hesitant to actually go do anything.

About a minute after the blast, the coyote from earlier drops down from the roof of the motel. He'd actually been lying in wait on the roof of an adjacent building waiting for his trap to be sprung.

He still looked like an absolute mess from his encounter with Flame earlier. His clothing was ripped and torn badly. His fur and clothing was covered in blood and dirt. But none of that seems to matter as he rushes across the motel lot headed straight for the doorway of Flame and Wolf's room.

"If you value your lives, leave now!" he says to the onlookers.

Flame idly heard the sound of Wolf collapsing and the door falling against the floor and other debris in the room. It was loud enough and close enough to give her a start and force her eyes to open, then blink several times. Her vision was blurry, but not as bad as it could've been. She found herself staring under the bed, at least somewhat as the covers for the bed extended almost all the way down to the floor.
Despite being sore all over, the particular hurting of her arm made her shift to get her weight off the pounding limb and she groaned softly again as her body certainly protested the movement.

Her ears perked up again as she heard a voice shout from somewhere outside. It made her quills start to bristle and her paw clenched tighter around her phone for a moment. She slid her thumb to the button below the screen and held it down until she heard a soft sound prompting her to speak. "Send... location.. to Snoophog," she muttered out tiredly. The device beeped in reply and a digital voice replied, "Ok, I'll send it."

Flame let out a breath. She had to get herself back up as quickly as she could, but that seemed to be quite the task at the moment. Her left arm braced against the floor as she shakily began to try and push herself up. For now, though, it was slow going.

The coyote steps in through the doorway of Wolf and Flame's room. He quickly surveys the damage that he did and spots Wolf lying on the floor. He looks around, but doesn't see Flame anywhere. He holds his paws out in front of him, ready in case he's attacked, and also prepared to strike if Flame makes her presence known.

The sound of footsteps approaching made Flame pause in her attempt to get up. She heard them slow and then quiet upon reaching the doorway. Unable to see under the bed, the hedgehog turned her head to look towards the wall across from the door. Her eyes widened as she finally spotted Wolf and the door there. More alarmingly, however, was a shadow contrasting against the bright sunlight coming into the room now.

Flame held her breath and hunkered down against the floor, hoping to remain unseen until she could try and attack. What she didn't realize, however, was that when she turned her head, her tensed out quills likely would have been briefly visible from behind the bed...

The coyote steps almost silently into the room. He continues to glance around as he walks. He steps towards Wolf which allows him to walk along the end of the bed. He stops as he spots part of the fallen form of Flame. Considering that she hadn't moved, there were two options. She was hurt or she was waiting to ambush him.

He's not too far from Wolf at this point. He keeps one paw pointed at him, and then crouches down, pressing his other paw to the floor as he had done earlier. There is a crackle of energy that runs across the floor and under Flame. It wouldn't hurt her, but then the floor beneath her would glow, the prelude to another of the coyote's blasts. Moments later it would go off. It was strong enough to hurl Flame up and against the ceiling if she was still on top of the blast, and it would lift the end of the bed, but not tip it over, and it would knock the end table over.

Flame could see the coyote's shadow moving farther into the room. She'd let go of her phone, leaving it beneath the bed, and was positioning her paw to be ready to give the coyote a fiery explosive attack the moment he came into view.

Unfortunately for her, she was spotted first. Her eyes narrowed when the shadow moved as though to crouch. She knew if she moved, though, she'd be heard. By the time she noted the energy spreading out underneath her, it was too late to try and escape. The hedgehog only had the chance to go wide-eyed and start to curse out loud before the attack sent her up into the air and colliding against the ceiling. She came crashing back down just as quickly, landing hard on the carpet, just a little closer to the bathroom now.

Each impact had knocked the wind out of her once again and she was more than a little dazed this time, lying still on her front again. Her bristled quills had relaxed a bit as she found herself struggling to regain her senses once more.

As Flame flies into the air and lands hard, the coyote gets to his feet and quickly moves over to where she was. He grabs hold of her under the arms and begins to try and pull her up to her feet, so that she'd be upright in front of him while he holds onto her.

Flame was too out of it to respond to being lifted up. She exhaled a little, but otherwise was dead weight as the coyote tried to move her. Her head lulled back, digging slightly tensed quills into the fur and clothing material on her back.

The coyote struggles a bit to get Flame upright. He shifts her so her back is towards the nearest wall. He then lowers one paw down to her midsection, supporting her with his other arm. He'd then release one more blast against her midsection. She'd feel like she was punched by three people at the same time.

The blow brought forth a strained and choked out cry from the beaten hedgehog. She groaned heavily after and slumped over forward in the coyote's grasp. Otherwise, though, she fell silent and showed no attempts to move or respond any further.

The coyote catches Flame as she slumps against him. He then turns with her towards the bed and then lifts her and tosses her backwards onto the bed. With her dealt with the coyote then moves over to Wolf. He none too gently kicks him over onto his back and is rewarded with a groan from him. The coyote smirks slightly.

The coyote hauls Wolf up to his feet and then gives him the same treatment as Flame, hitting him with a blast in the midsection. As Wolf collapses forward, the coyote drops down and hoists him up over his shoulder.

He takes a couple of steps towards the door with Wolf like that, then adjusts his grip on him. He then pauses to take another look towards Flame.

Flame flopped back onto the bed limply, clearly not a threat anymore at this point. As the coyote turned his attention to Wolf, she remained motionless and silent.

Outside, however, someone else was slowly approaching the open doorway of the motel room.
About twenty feet away and coming in from the direction of the street, a hedgehog covered in dark, dark purple fur was listening on full alert. Her pink-colored eyes scanned the window, still covered by heavy curtains that now shifted in the breeze, and the door.

The coyote exits the room and glances around. People are still scattering from other rooms in the motel and heading for their vehicles or are leaving on foot, just to get away from the coyote. He sees the dark purple hedgehog, seeing as she was the closest one to him, but he pays little attention to her, even though he's walking in her general direction has he heads for the street with Wolf over his shoulder.

As the coyote appeared in the doorway, the hedgehog stopped. She eyed his beaten and bloody form, noting an unfamiliar wolf draped over his shoulder. Her eyes narrowed, but she elected to not move any closer to him.

Instead, she stepped to stay out of his path and more towards the middle of the parking lot. Her gaze left him and also went to the open room. She seemed to be looking for something or someone, but he was apparently not it. For now, she intended to go around him and check out the damaged room.

The coyote pays no attention to the hedgehog once he moves past her. He had what he was after, now it was time to leave.

Once past the coyote, the hedgehog glanced back at him. She glanced around herself for a moment before noting a stone on the pavement of the crumbly parking lot. It was almost the size of a fist and she leaned down, plucking it silently from the ground. Her eyes returned to the coyote and she drew her arm back.

She gave the rock a powerful throw, sending it whizzing through the air at a surprisingly high speed, the result of the hedgehog's super strength, no doubt. She'd aimed carefully, looking to hit the coyote on the left side of his back and not crack open the unconscious wolf's skull on accident. At the speed it was going, it was highly likely to heavily bruise the coyote's ribs, if not potentially do worse. But then that was only if it hit, too.

The coyote is caught unaware as the rock strikes him from behind. He lets out a breath sharply, as there is a loud crack from the impact. He staggers forward, dropping Wolf in the process, and tries to regain his balance.

The hedgehog snatched up another couple of rocks in one paw once the first hit its mark. That paw then promptly burst into flames, engulfing the stones with it. Her arm drew back again and she threw a now-flaming stone. As her arm started to swing back from the first throw, she released the second one, aiming both for the coyote's torso. The last wasn't as properly aimed as the previous two, however.

"Y'know, you'd better hope that when I walk into that room over there, I find my kid still alive," she commented, both paws now ignited in front of her, "'Cause if not, I'm gonna do a lot worse than just break some ribs and both your legs."

...Well, from the sound of that, one might be able to assume that this was the so-called 'Snoophog'.

The coyote turns and lets out a choked off cry as the first flaming stone slams into his left side with another loud crack. He stumbles away and falls to the ground as the remaining stone sails wide.

The flames of each stone diminished on impact, the first against the coyote and the other tumbling across the ground far off into the distance.

The hedgehog watched the coyote fall, then turned and started to close the remaining distance between herself and the motel room. She watched him out of the corner of her eye, though. "Don't go anywhere, you hear me?" she called to him. She didn't expect a reply.

She continued on to the doorway, noting that the door was completely gone. "Flame?" the hedgehog asked, starting to peer inside. She easily spotted the teen still sprawled out on the bed and her eyes narrowed and then glanced back at the coyote again.

The coyote struggled to master his pain. The blue hedgehog hadn't hit him this hard with her explosions earlier. He was pretty sure he had broke bones at this point... again. Not too often that happened twice in one day.

He reaches up with his left arm, sliding it into his shirt through a tear along the front. He clenches his paw into a fist and grits his teeth as a dark glow forms around his paw.

Oh, well that was suspicious. The hedgehog squinted as she could see the coyote reaching into his shirt. From this distance, it was hard to tell but... was his paw glowing? She looked back towards Flame again. She could see the navy hedgehog's chest rise and fall as she breathed and there was no blood gushing from anywhere, so that was good at least.

The hedgehog turned away from the doorway and started back towards the coyote. The flames still lingering on her paws intensified briefly as she approached.

After a few moments, the coyote withdraws his paw from his shirt and slowly stands back up. He looks towards the approaching hedgehog.

"You know... this didn't involve you." he says.

The hedgehog stopped once the coyote started to stand. She was about ten feet away from him by this point. She looked fairly unassuming, dressed casually in jeans and a sleeveless shirt. Average height, but decently well-muscled. From the looks of it, perhaps she was in her early 30s or so. The expression on her face, though, made it clear that she wasn't happy with Flame's condition.

"The moment you hurt my kid, it very much involved me," she replied, adjusting her stance slightly to better brace herself. "But you can run off now and I won't break you any further."

The coyote lets out a breath, which draws a wince from him. He looks back at the hedgehog as she lays out her offer to him.

"Very well." he replies.

He steps over towards Wolf.