Taming SSR And UR RANK Superwomen-Chapter 69 — Hunt Across the Rooftops

Inori opened the door to her apartment. She was exactly what her genes promised: a woman with precise Japanese features, long, straight black hair falling over her shoulders, dark eyes with a quiet depth, and a natural posture that needed no effort to be elegant.

She was wearing comfortable clothes for lounging at home, a white T-shirt and dark shorts, and she held a cup of tea in one hand that was still steaming.

She looked at Selene.

Her eyes traveled over the cosplay from top to bottom with an expression that was not judgment, but genuine confusion.

"Did you come to the wrong door?"

Selene was trembling.

It was not an act. It was real fear, the kind that settles into the body before the mind can process it. Her hands were slightly clenched at her sides, and her voice came out strained, with that unevenness of someone trying to speak while their heart was pounding too hard.

"Someone was chasing me." Her words came out quickly. "I’m scared, I don’t know what to do, I need help, please."

Inori watched her for a second. Then she stepped aside.

"Come in. You can call the police from here."

Selene stepped inside with small steps, hugging herself.

"I can’t call the police." Her voice dropped. "My friend is downstairs too. She stayed hidden. I came out to get help."

Inori frowned slightly.

"Your friend is downstairs?"

"Yes." Selene looked at her with eyes that did not need to fake fear. "Please."

Inori set the cup down on the small table by the entrance. Then she stepped out into the hallway without hesitation. Her fervent desire to become a future heroine drove her to resolve this kind of situation.

◇◆◇

They went down the stairs in silence. The ground floor of the building was dimly lit, with only the cold light of a flickering lamp illuminating the entrance hallway.

Freja was curled up in the darkest corner, her knees drawn to her chest and her head slightly lowered. Her green hair fell over her face.

Selene and Inori approached her.

Freja lifted her head when she heard them. Her eyes widened with fear that was not entirely acted either, because Freja had never been a good actress and knew it, so she simply let her nervousness do the work.

"They’re here!" she exclaimed in relief.

Inori crouched slightly toward her.

"Relax. You’re safe. With me here, no one will hurt you."

Inside her mind, a reimagined version of herself appeared, with her eyes closed, a huge smile, and flushed cheeks as she thought:

’Kyyaa! I always wanted to say a line that cool!’

Freja held out her arms toward her... and then the tentacles came out. Not gently. With calculated brutality, with the speed of something that did not want to give her any time to react.

Three pink tentacles shot out from her back and wrapped around Inori’s body in an instant: one coiled around her torso, pinning her arms to her sides, another bound her legs together, and a third covered her mouth before she could make a sound.

Inori’s eyes flew open.

’A trap?!’

Freja ran toward the building’s door. Her feet slammed hard against the floor, and then, when she reached the sidewalk, her legs bent and she jumped.

The jump was enormous, disproportionate, the kind of leap that only made sense when the body did not operate under the same rules as everyone else. She landed on the roof of the building across the street with a dull thud.

The civilians walking down the street stopped and looked up. Freja was already running across the rooftops, with Inori held between her tentacles like a package that could not move.

Inori processed the situation in seconds. Trap. Decoy. Two women. One with tentacles. Her feet were not touching the ground. She was lying on her back over the tentacles, looking at Ark’s night sky passing above her while Freja leaped from roof to roof.

She activated her gift.

From the shadows of the roof, from the dark edges of the ledges, from the small portals she opened with a precision that needed no concentration because it was as natural as breathing, the whips emerged.

Dark, thin, and fast. They shot toward Freja from multiple angles at the same time. Freja saw them coming and reacted on instinct: she jumped toward the next roof, twisted her body, and put Inori between herself and the whips.

But Inori had already redirected them.

The whips curved through the air as if they had a will of their own and caught Freja by the wrists, ankles, and waist. Three more emerged from small portals that Inori opened directly in the space in front of Freja, coming at her from impossible angles.

Freja was immobilized in midair for an instant. She was surprised. Then she smiled.

"Well, well."

She covered her tentacles with more layers. She thickened them, multiplied them, tightened them with more force. The pressure increased exponentially. Inori’s whips creaked under the strain.

Inori squeezed one eye shut. She’s really strong.

She pushed from the inside. Her whips expanded from within her own body, emerging from her skin like extensions of shadow, and began to push outward like a wall that refused to give way. Freja’s strength was enormous, but Inori’s precision was something else.

The tentacles gave an inch. Then another. Freja grunted with effort, adding more layers and more pressure. Inori looked at her unprotected face.

She opened a small portal, the size of a fist, directly in front of Freja’s eyes. Two thin whips emerged from it and drove into them.

Freja’s scream tore through the night.

It was not a battle cry. It was the involuntary scream of a body receiving pain in a place it did not expect. Her hands let go at once, flying to her face. Her posture collapsed forward, hunching in on itself.

Inori fell.

She landed on the roof with the soles of her shoes skidding backward, absorbing the impact with bent knees. She straightened up in a second.

Freja was on her knees, her hands over her eyes, her body folded forward. Inori did not wait. Her whips shot out in every direction at once.

One wrapped around Freja’s ankles. Another wrapped around her knees. Another her elbows. Another her wrists. Another her neck, with just enough pressure to immobilize without suffocating. All at the same time, with a synchronicity that was not speed, but absolute precision.

Freja was lifted two meters into the air upside down. Her skirt fell with gravity, revealing her black lace underwear. Down on the street, several civilians stared up with their mouths open.

Freja tried to move. Her tentacles responded, but she had too many critical points restrained at the same time. Wrists. Elbows. Knees. Ankles. Neck. There was no way to generate force without another point giving way first.

’If I hadn’t been left defenseless by that attack to my eyes, she wouldn’t have been able to catch me.’

Inori held her position, then felt something behind her.

A hand closed around her throat from behind, quick and firm, with the precision of someone who knew exactly where to grab so the body could not turn.

It was Seraphine, and from the other side, Evelyne appeared. Her metal prosthetic gleamed under the city streetlights. She flexed her fingers once. Then she closed them into a fist.

The vibrations began.

They were not visible. But they could be felt. A frequency transmitted through the air and the concrete of the roof, entering through the feet and rising up the legs like a current that did not burn, but destabilized, that left the muscles unsure of which command to follow.

Inori felt her knees weaken. Her whips lost tension for a second, but that was enough. Evelyne extended her arm.

Her metal fingers approached Inori’s face with surgical precision, the vibration already active in the prosthetic, ready to transmit the moment contact was made.

A portal appeared. Small. The size of a fist. Directly in front of the blonde’s face. The whip shot out of it at a speed that gave her no time to process it; even so, Evelyne moved her head.

A minimal movement, the kind made by someone who did not dodge out of fear, but out of calculation. The whip grazed her left cheek and kept going, leaving a thin line of blood that took a second to open across her cheek.

Evelyne’s pupils dilated when she felt the cut.

’How fast was that?’

It was not a rhetorical question. It was genuine. She had noticed the portal, she had noticed the movement, and even so, she had barely dodged it.

Behind Inori, the whips came out of her back. Not toward Evelyne, but toward Seraphine. They shot out in a fan, seeking to wrap around her, restrain her, and immobilize her.

Seraphine stepped back. One step. Another. Another. Her feet found the edge of the roof and she stopped, dodging each whip with short, precise movements, without wasting energy, without losing her balance.

Inori turned toward Evelyne. She was already moving, but Inori was faster. A whip emerged from the rooftop floor, coiled around Inori’s torso, and launched her away.

’I can’t fight three of them in close combat. I don’t know who they are or what they want, but I have the advantage if I run from here. I already etched their faces into my memory. First, I need to get help.’