54 Not Exactly "Fairly Easy"

"Break us out....?" The girl looked confused first, before her expression morphed into shock. "Break us out?! There's no way anyone could do something like that...."

"Well, if no one could do it, just how did we get here?" Michelle gave the girl a playful, yet encouraging smile.

"Anyway, we've introduced ourselves, how about you?" Duke looked curiously at the girl.

"Um, I'm Carina..." The blonde girl said shyly. The other girls all murmured to themselves before muttering out their names. They seemed pretty frightened.

"Well, Carina. We've got to get you and your friends out of here, so if you're ready, why don't we head out?" Michelle said, before leaning down to help Carina up.

"I guess so, are you sure its safe...? I mean, can we trust you?"

"You don't have much of a choice right now," Sable chimed in.

"And while safe is not exactly the word I'd use to describe it, we will get you out of here unharmed. Ok?" Duke gave Carina a reassuring look.

"Ok." Carina's face hardened into determination. "Then, lets go." She paused for a moment before speaking again. "And by the way, we're all tougher than we look. We can help protect ourselves."

"Hmm... a friend of ours had a similar thought. Well, with that, let's leave." Sable turned towards the door and began to walk out. Glancing at each other with a shrug, Michelle and Duke quickly helped the remaining girls to their feet and escorted them out the door.

While they were walking, Duke tapped his earpiece and phoned in to the others.

~"Hey hey hey, everyone. Just tapping in to let you know we've got the girls on the other end. Heading over to bring them out now."

~"Copy that, Duke. See you soon."

~"Yep. Hopefully, the rest of this will go fairly easily."

To say it bluntly, the rest of the trip did not go fairly easily. For right about when Duke said this, they turned a corner to be met with an irritated group of about 6 guards that no one had apparently seen or heard coming.

"Oh shit..." Michelle muttered under her breath, almost subconsciously. The guards turned toward them, their faces quickly twisting with surprise and anger.

"Hey! Those must be the assholes making a commotion around here!" One man spoke.

"And they've got the girls."

"Well, guess we'll just have to take those lovelies back, huh?" The guards all turned towards them and tensed up, ready for a fight.

"Now, now boys. We don't really need to do th-" As Michelle halfheartedly tried to reason with them, the man had already swung a fist toward her face. And with that, the onslaught began.

Quickly, light shot out of the ground, causing most of the men to groan in pain. There was a lot of them though, so Sable couldn't use much power on each. Duke quickly dashed forward and sent a hit toward one man, landing it square on his jaw. He was out immediately. However, he was only able to land another hit on one guard's stomach before the man stumbled back up. He clapped his hands in front of him and a powerful wave of energy sent Duke flying backwards and crashing into the wall behind him. He groaned, and as he tried to clamor to his feet the man approached again, landing a square kick on Duke's stomach. He coughed as he felt his breath leave his body. But before the man could land another hit on Duke, the decaying leaves and flowers scattering the ground rose up and spun around the man in a flurry. He stumbled backwards, trying desperately to wave them out of his face, but ended up tripping on the debris and falling to the ground. Now, it was Duke's turn to kick the man in the gut. After a few solid kicks to the stomach, he stomped on the man's face and the man fell unconscious. Duke turned to see that Carina stood concentrating on the leaves in the air, and deduced that she was, in fact, the one controlling them.

Before Duke could comment on Carina's help, he narrowly leaned out of the way of a hit from another man. Snapping back into concentration, Duke swung his leg up and slammed his knee into the man's gut, before a chair smashed over his head and he fell to the ground, unconscious. Duke looked to see a girl holding the legs of the now broken chair, staring down at the man's body with a look of satisfaction. She gave Duke a small smile, and then dashed back out of the action.

Meanwhile, Michelle had barely dodged out of the way of the first man's hit. She parried his blows for a decent amount of time, before swiping up with her hand and leaving claw marks trailing from the man's lower abdomen up across his face. The man howled in pain and stumbled backwards before Michelle struck him across the jaw, knocking him unconscious. Michelle glanced around to see two other men struggling with the girls, Sable attempting to fight them both off at once. Michelle carefully waited for the right moment, and then swung her hand in an arc, sending slices flying through the air toward the men. They mostly caught one guard, and he cursed as he stumbled back. Sable took the opportunity to send a spike of light through his body, and while he was mostly disabled, she hit him square in the temple with a roundhouse kick and he collapsed on the ground.

Duke had knocked out three guards with the help of a couple girls, so Michelle and Sable turned to the last guard, only to see him restrained by the girls. He cursed as the four remaining girls held him down.

"Well well well, not so tough now, huh?" Michelle smirked and the disgruntled man.

"Screw you. You're gonna pay for this. Just wait till Thesk gets his hands on you. Then it's all over for you."

"Thesk?" Sable looked at the man with an expression that could cut stone.

"Y-Yeah, he's top dog of Ebony... he'll mess you up real time."

"You mean that Tesla guy Waze was talking about?" Duke glanced at his teammates for reassurance.

"Oh yeaaah.... Tesla..." Michelle nodded her head, then glanced back at the guard. "Anything else you can tell us about him?"

"Only that he's powerful enough to annihilate all of you in one blow. And eventually, thats what its gonna come to."

"Well, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it." Duke grinned. "Knock him out, girls." The girls gave each other satisfied smiles before one of them hit him square across the face. With another couple hits, he was unconscious.

"And with that, let's get going," Michelle said.