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

Dane heard the ward plate fail safely against the corridor wall.

Brass struck stone. Three smaller joints folded after it, quick as knuckles giving way. A cord snapped taut at Vera’s belt. Her boots slid half a pace and stopped.

”Again?” Holt asked.

”No,” Brant said. The splint buckle clicked when he shifted his weight. ”It folded. Save her shoulder for the real pull.”

The four of them had returned through the cleaver gate. Brant’s uneven step still carried the torch handle and the brass Dane had torn from his own mouth. Tess’s hook scraped to the rear of the group. Holt kept the withdrawal line. Vera brought the cold ward pressure.

Inside the sealed room, three coppers rested beneath Dane’s tongue. His mouth-floor still hurt where the conversion root had torn. Tess’s pepper-scented token waited beyond his reach.

He had rehearsed this.

Keep the teeth inside.

Holt drew the belt cord back through his good hand. ”First flare and you move. I won’t wait for an answer.”

”I don’t want one while my hand is attached to the question,” Vera said.

Leather tightened at her belt.

Brant set the shield near the lower service gap with his right hand. ”Plate folds toward the wall. If it fights the pull, I break the last joint. Tess keeps our way out.”

The hook butt struck once behind Holt.

Vera’s knees settled outside Dane’s feeding angle. Her chalk crossed the hall stone. Ward pressure ran through the mark, through the lower gap, and stopped at the inside mouth of the eighteen-inch tunnel.

”One contact,” she said. ”Upper lid board, a palm above the lock. Brass crosses. My fingers stay here.”

She waited.

Dane answered with the only handle he could reach.

He pushed all three coppers behind the shallow slope, laid his tongue over them, and settled his lid against the rim. The plate could touch the point she named once. Nothing living could follow it. If the ward changed, Holt would pull.

That was what Dane allowed.

”If you understand,” Vera said, ”keep it shut.”

Jointed brass entered the stone tunnel.

Each fold scraped, straightened, and carried ward cold nearer. The last piece turned upward inside Dane’s room. It touched his front lid board one palm above the lock.

Mage heat entered through the metal.

Dane’s mouth treated the plate as a hook attached to warm prey. His tongue wanted to catch the last joint, drag leather through the tunnel, and discover what part of Vera came after it. Teeth pressed their gum slots. Ownership heat moved from the nail toward the contact point.

He held the lid down.

Blue ink marked the side of June’s thumb.

She stood across their restaurant table with the wet receipt under her hand. The cook slammed the freezer door. Their soy sauce bottle slid, and Dane caught it before it fell.

”How many Saturdays?” June asked.

Heat in the brass nudged one copper from beneath his tongue. Dane pinned it before it reached the lure slope.

”Two,” he told June.

”Which?”

He had explanations ready. Raymond’s sick kid. Mark covering last time. The car belt getting louder.

June set her chopsticks parallel on the napkin.

”Which two?”

”The next two.”

She folded the receipt lengthwise, opened it, and flattened the crease with her inked thumb.

”The second one is ours.”

Ward pressure climbed around the brass joint. Dane’s front teeth eased upward. In the hall, Holt’s cord took a little weight.

At the table, June turned her work phone facedown. She pushed half the last dumpling onto Dane’s plate, then reached across the damp receipt and put her thumb against his knuckle.

”I had you beside me and missed you anyway.”

Dane turned his hand beneath hers. The receipt lay between their wrists while he held on.

”I should’ve told you,” he said.

Still holding his hand, June looked toward the rain.

Against the present lid, the live plate pulled harder. His split hinge took the strain through its crooked pin. Pain stayed inside the old damage. The raw mouth-floor pressed against three copper edges without tearing again.

Outside the restaurant, rain shone on the sidewalk. June bumped Dane away from the curb. Two blocks ahead, their car waited in the cheap lot.

A plastic cup skittered from a pack of students. June caught it under her shoe and dropped it into a bin. Dane clapped once.

She caught his wrist before the second clap.

”Don’t.”

Her grip stayed until the next curb cut.

The ward plate flared through Dane’s body.

”Pull,” Holt said.

The belt line struck tight. Vera’s boots dragged back. Brass began retreating joint by joint, scraping the stone tunnel while Dane held the lid against the heat it left behind.

The crosswalk counted down from fourteen.

A delivery van waited at the red. Its driver sat crooked, one hand pressed to his forehead. His head sagged toward the wheel and jerked up without focus.

”Dane.”

”I see him. Wait.”

The white walking figure appeared. June took one step with the students while watching the driver.

The van’s brake lights went dark.

The last brass joint cleared Dane’s room.

”Plate clear,” Holt said.

The engine roared.

Dane seized June’s sleeve above the elbow and pulled. The seam tore in his hand. His shoe slipped off the curb. Her weight came toward him, her fist knotting in his coat while the receipt collapsed inside his other hand.

June’s mouth shaped his name.

The van hit below his ribs. White windshield burst across his sight.

Dane’s lid bucked against empty stone.

Vera’s flesh was already outside the tunnel. Her heat remained in the chalk and brass dust on his lid, and his body opened for it anyway.

He ground the split hinge against its pin, kept his tongue over the three coppers, and crowded his front teeth beneath the rim. The old abrasion screamed under the coin edges, but the old injuries bore the strain without widening. The lid stopped below one finger.

Then Dane forced it shut.

/==[ Brackenvault Registry: Contact Reaction ]==\

| Contact: Warded Mage Glove / Lid Surface

| Memory Anchor: June Rook / Final Handhold

| Hunger Response: Critical

| Restraint Cost: Hinge Damage

| Identity Conflict: Active

\==[ Name Pressure: Contained ]==/

Only Dane received the names.

The folded plate knocked once against glove leather in the hall. Holt kept tension on her belt line. Brant’s shield edge stayed planted between the service gap and the place her boots had stopped. The hook butt remained behind Holt.

”Lid moved after the plate cleared,” Brant said. Pain shortened the last word.

”And stopped below your mark,” Holt answered. ”I pulled on the first flare.”

The shield edge scraped closer. ”A shut mouth can still take a hand.”

”I know.”

Vera’s voice had lost its field-command smoothness. She flexed the ward glove; leather and brass whispered against each other.

Tess asked, ”Whose grief came through it?”

Vera took one breath before answering.

”A receipt. Rain. A man trying to pull a woman away from a vehicle.” The glove joints clicked as she folded them flat. ”I felt her hand twice. I can’t prove the memory began inside the chest.”

The belt clasp clicked as Holt eased the line. ”What can you prove?”

”Contact caused critical hunger. Withdrawal worked. The lid stayed shut at a cost.”

Brant’s splint buckle ticked when he shifted behind the shield. ”That goes first.”

”It goes first,” Vera said. ”The people in the memory do not go in the report. No names.”

Tess moved the hook farther from the chalk. ”Because you don’t know them?”

”Because the ward gave me pieces, and pieces are enough for someone else to build a cage.”

Holt started to answer, stopped, and shut the prayer case instead.

The glove settled against cloth at Vera’s thigh. ”No second contact,” she said.

Dane kept the lid shut. June’s inked thumb, her hand around his wrist, and her fist in his coat remained separate from the warm plate that had carried them. He moved nothing until Vera’s breathing steadied.

Then he chose one copper.

His tongue lifted it from the other two and guided it along the established shallow groove. The coin climbed the inner lock brace, struck the back of his own lockplate once, and fell beside the pair it had left.

The note crossed brass, stone, and the lower gap.

Brant’s shield rose. Holt’s belt cord tightened. Tess’s hook scraped forward, then stopped at the chalk. Vera kept the glove against her thigh.

Nobody named the sound for him.

”I heard you through the lock,” Vera said.

The three coppers settled together. Holt left the line clipped to Vera’s belt. Brant kept the shield in his right hand and his broken left forearm straight against Dane’s buckle. Tess returned the hook to the rear.

Chalk grit from the single contact pressed a crescent into Dane’s upper lid board and dusted the lockplate below it. He felt the ownership nail warm before Vera’s last word finished crossing the gap.

Brackenvault had heard her too.