F-Rank Mimic Chest: My SSS Mimic Skill Lets Me Become Anything

Choice: Convert?

No.

Across Dane’s tongue, Nate Parr’s clothes sagged as the dead man thinned into warmth, feeding heat through cloth and flesh into the boards. The nicked knife and flat brass charm kept their edges. One broken point pressed into living muscle while the little roof beneath three raised lines scraped beside it.

The words dimmed. An instant later the demand shone again.

Dane held his answer against the heat. Nate’s pulse was gone. Dane kept the name and repeated it while the chest drank what remained around the objects.

Nate Parr.

A wheel struck the threshold.

The impact traveled under Dane’s base. A loose wire brace rang around the hub, followed by the scrape of wood dragged sideways. Keys knocked together. Leather straps tightened, and someone released a wheezing breath after forcing the load into the annex.

”If this is another rat bucket, Grib is leaving it at the threshold until management learns how many hands one worker has.”

Small bare feet slapped through the shallow water. The cart followed on two wheels, one rolling cleanly and the damaged one protesting every half turn. Lamp grease, old wax, and sour onion entered through Dane’s seams.

The feet stopped near the blood.

”Oh,” Grib said. ”Oh, finally.”

His steps quickened into half a circle beyond Dane’s front teeth. Grib kept his weight beside the cart; only a tool reached toward the killing line.

A cracked wooden stick tapped the floor beyond Dane’s front board, found the rag-wrapped pry bar, and hooked it back by the handle. The filed point scraped stone. A book strap snapped loose on the cart, and dry pages separated beneath the steady patter of water on a folded cloth.

”Unauthorized delver. Cheap pry bar. Floor Two storage annex.” Pencil scratched paper. ”Chest response successful. Cleanup late because Grib is alone again.”

The stick touched Dane’s lockplate.

”You remain chest.”

It traveled along the front band, tapped the closed lid, and stopped outside the teeth.

”Tongue tucked? Lid sealed? Good. Bite marks clean enough.”

Dane loaded thought against the left hinge. A dry creak escaped through the strain already pulling on it; the lid stayed shut.

Grib’s pencil stopped.

Dane pushed again. Hear me.

”Do not interrupt inspection.”

The pencil resumed.

Grib moved around Dane’s left side. A roll of thin metal tags clicked at his belt. The measuring stick touched the front board, the hinge band, then the side panel between them.

”Front tag gets smashed by the first hero with a hammer. Hinge tag makes the asset whine. Side panel keeps you working.”

A strip of cold brass settled flat against Dane’s left side.

No, Dane pushed into the point of contact.

Warmth spread across the strip.

Grib’s thumb pressed harder at one corner. ”You warming at me?”

Dane threw the answer against the brass again.

Metal left Grib’s belt. One short nail found the upper hole in the tag. The little hammer cleared its loop.

Grib shifted his nearest foot away from the front arc. The nail point scraped once around the brass hole before settling into Dane’s grain.

The first strike crushed the surface grain.

The second drove the black point through living wood. Shock crossed Dane’s side, struck the iron band, and reached every upper tooth through its root. His lid knocked against the rim. The knife skipped along his tongue; the charm’s raised roof scraped a raw line beside it.

Pulling away existed only in thought. Dane’s base held to stone while the hammer supplied every movement.

The third blow seated the nail. Pressure remained inside the board after the sound died, a hard new place his body could neither close around nor spit out.

Through the lower hole came the second nail. Two quick strikes split another path through Dane’s left wall, and the shock met the upper point beneath the brass. Heat ran down the grain to his base, forward to the lockplate, and inward until his tongue flattened on its own.

The blows gave his left wall depth. Varnish gave way to wet grain, then to a center that hurt before the metal reached it. Both nails remained there, holding those layers together for the tag.

Grib tested the tag with his thumb.

He laid the measuring stick across the brass and pressed each nail head in turn. The upper point vibrated against the lid band; the lower answered in Dane’s tongue root. Next came taps at the side, hinge, and lockplate. Every contact returned along the same path. Grib had joined them deliberately. Any command entering the tag could now reach the parts Dane had failed to stop. The lower root trembled; Grib pressed until it stopped.

/==[ Brackenvault Registry: Asset Mark ]==\

| Property Mark: Brackenvault

| Asset Class: F-Rank Lure Chest

| Location: Floor 2 Storage Annex

| Owner: Brackenvault Core

| Thought Status: Observed

\==[ Brass Tag: Nailed In ]==/

”Brackenvault Asset F-2 Storage Mimic Seventeen,” Grib read. ”Lure chest. Copper class. Responsive. Fed. Mild hinge noise.”

The tag burned at fed.

Dane pressed No into both nail points.

Something answered beneath the annex.

A slow pressure rose through the floor, reached Dane’s base, and found the two nails. It tested the new path to his lockplate, hinge, and lid. Then it withdrew without releasing him. Water continued to drip, but the room no longer felt empty beyond Grib’s footsteps.

Grib patted the brass. ”Now if somebody steals you, the Core warns me before it punishes me afterward. Better order of blame.”

He returned to the floor in front of Dane and opened a cloth sack.

The pry bar rasped over stone, then landed across the cart rails. Grib tested the wrapped grip once before leaving it there. His fingers searched beside it. Nate’s thumb ring clicked against a nail head, rolled a short circle, and disappeared into the sack with a dull brass tap.

Paper still pinched Dane’s front lip.

Two fingertips caught the damp corner without crossing the rim. Grib pulled. The coat seam released the note by fractions. Damp paper rasped across Dane’s wood until the last fold came free and contact vanished.

Paper opened.

”Nate Parr,” Grib murmured. The pages of his record book shifted. ”Seven silver due. He came down here for seven.”

The note was folded smaller and pressed between dry pages.

Dane had nowhere to turn. Pry bar on the cart, ring in the sack, note gone from his lip; the three absences surrounded him. Inside, the knife’s nick and the charm’s roof stayed sharp while everything that had carried them grew lighter.

Grib’s pencil scratched again.

”Kill credit goes to room asset under quartermaster supervision.”

Dane forced another creak through the hinge. This one came out rougher, with the upper nail vibrating inside it.

The pencil stopped. Grib shifted close enough that onion and wax thickened at Dane’s seams.

”Correction,” he said, quieter. A rubber end dragged over paper, and the pencil wrote across the scraped place. ”Kill credit goes to Grib. Quartermaster intervention, asset response under review. Everyone important is safer.”

The ring tapped once as he cinched the sack.

Nate’s last breath had tried to leave a message. Now Grib’s pencil moved over the result while every surviving tool was separated around Dane.

The handcart rolled closer. One wheel lodged against a break in the floor. Wood creaked as Grib climbed onto its side for height, but his weight stayed beyond Dane’s front teeth.

”Open inventory access.”

The command entered through both nails. The room pressed the tag into the two wounds, drove heat across Dane’s left board, and seized the hinge. His lid lifted a finger’s width. He drove No at the same place, but the hinge kept opening until strain gathered behind the iron pin.

A second pulse pressed his tongue to the floor of his mouth.

Dane fought upward. Nate’s knife and charm dug deeper while the tongue remained flat.

The cracked measuring stick entered between the teeth. Grib’s hands stayed outside. The stick touched an inner tooth, slid over the tongue, and knocked the knife against the lockplate.

”Belt knife. Brass return charm. Organic conversion active.”

The stick moved through the bait hollows one object at a time.

”Six ordinary coppers. One thin silver. One square-holed coin, red string. Bait assignment intact. Nothing claimed.”

Nothing left Dane’s mouth.

When the stick nudged the knife again, his teeth rose toward it.

Grib snapped the stick out before they met. The cart wheel jumped under his landing.

”Mine after conversion,” he said. ”Keep those teeth closed.”

Choice: Convert?

The knife warmed beneath Dane’s pinned tongue. So did the charm. The tag held him open while Nate’s note sat in Grib’s book and Nate’s ring waited in the sack.

No.

Dane narrowed the refusal to the two black points buried in his left side. He drove it into the pressure already joining them.

The brass seared him.

Grib’s pencil struck the floor. One bare foot skidded, and his hand knocked the hammer against the cart without drawing it.

”Ow! You cracked little cupboard.”

His next breath came sharp. No pencil followed it.

Then colder text pressed through the heat.

/==[ Brackenvault Registry: Thought Alert ]==\

| Thought: Unauthorized

| Property Mark: Listening

| Core Response: Alerted

\==[ Wax Seal: Warming ]==/