Lucy slowly lowered her leg, her gaze sweeping across the remaining masked men with quiet a terrifying composure. The cheerful, soft-spoken girl who had been sitting with them all night and laughing had vanished.

If someone had told anyone in Ironhold months ago that Lucy Hartwell the same gentle, well-mannered granddaughter of Mr. Hartwell was capable of sending a grown man flying through the air with a single kick, they would have laughed themselves to death.

She would have laughed thinking about it too, but all that changed after that incident.

She still remembered clearly the night the mountain bandits had taken her. The helplessness of it. How she had not been able to do a single thing for herself and had ultimately needed to be saved by Alex.

She had decided that night that it would never happen again.

After being rescued, she had gone straight to find Jacob and begged him to teach her.

She had trained relentlessly every single day.

Her progress had shocked even Jacob. In just a few short months, she had absorbed the basics of close combat and made rapid progress in martial arts. Her body, though still petite and graceful on the outside, hid underneath it the toned muscle and explosive power of a martial artist.

In her own world, it might not have meant much against hardened bandits. But here?

It was more than enough.

The masked attackers recovered from their initial shock. Seeing their companion groaning on the ground, rage replaced their surprise.

"Get that bitch!" one of them roared.

Three of them charged at once.

Lucy moved to her left, letting the first man’s momentum carry him past her entirely. Her elbow came up sharply as he passed and connected with the back of his neck. He went down hard, face-first onto the pavement.

The second man grabbed for her arm.

She let him take it, then twisted inward instead of pulling away, using his own grip as leverage. Her free hand drove upward into his jaw. His head snapped back as his knees buckled.

The third reached her before she had fully reset her footing.

He was bigger than the others and led with his full weight, wrapping both arms around her from the side in an attempt to simply pin her down by size alone.

For a moment it looked like it might work.

Then Lucy dropped her weight sharply, wrenched her shoulder down and forward, and the man found himself flipping over her hip and landing on his back on the asphalt with a crack that made everyone watching wince.

Riya was the first among the girls to snap out of her daze.

The moment the third man hit the ground she already had her phone to her ear, speaking rapidly into the receiver.

In this busy, high-end area of South Mumbai, she knew that patrol units were never far.

"Hello, Police. There is an attempted kidnapping outside Zenith Club. Multiple attackers. We need urgent help right now."

She kept her eyes on Lucy while she spoke.

The remaining two men did not charge immediately. They had watched three of their own go down in under a minute and had grown cautious. They spread apart instead, trying to come at her from two sides at once.

Lucy turned slightly, keeping both of them in her field of vision.

The fourth man managed to land a glancing blow to Lucy’s shoulder. She winced slightly but used the momentum to drive her fist straight into his nose. Blood burst across his face as he howled in pain.

The fifth, seeing that they could not overpower the petite girl with their hands and feet alone, reached into his jacket and pulled out a knife. The blade glinted under the streetlights.

Lucy’s eyes turned ice-cold.

As the man lunged with the knife, she caught his wrist with terrifying speed, twisted it brutally, and slammed her knee into his elbow. The man screamed. In one fluid motion, she reversed the knife in her hand and pressed the sharp edge against his throat.

"Lucy! Stop!" Riya shouted. "Don’t kill him!"

The sharp cry cut through the haze of battle.

Lucy stopped.

This was not her world. Here, killing someone carried consequences she could not afford. She could not act as though she were still in the lawless mountains of Ironhold.

The cold killing intent in her eyes flickered and slowly receded. The man beneath the blade collapsed the moment she released him, his legs giving out entirely, his face white, terrified after brushing past with death.

The driver, who had stayed inside the van, saw the complete disaster unfolding and panicked. He had been watching from his seat the entire time and had apparently decided that whatever he was being paid was not enough.

He slammed the gear into reverse, tires screeching against the asphalt, and pulled away without a second’s hesitation, leaving his five companions behind on the pavement without so much as a backward glance.

Only then did the sound of police sirens finally fill the air. Two patrol cars arrived within moments, their red and blue lights flashing brightly across the scene.

---------------

By the time the officers stepped out of their vehicles, all five men were down. The driver was gone.

"What happened here?" the first officer asked, taking in the scene with obvious confusion.

Everyone looked at Lucy.

The officer took a second look at her, then at the men on the ground feeling confused but decided that full picture of the incident can wait for now.

"Everyone alright?" officer took a second look at her before briuhing it as shock of the ladies asked instead.

"We are fine," Riya said, stepping forward. "I am the one who called you, officer."

She glanced sideways at Lucy as she said it, her expression carrying a clear message to let her handle it.

The girls gathered around her one by one, their eyes shining, looking at her as if knowing her for the very first time.