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

Stone ground above him.

Each climbing bar struck through Dane’s base to his split left hinge and the cracked root beneath his lid while, under his tongue, Vera’s torn fringe shifted, chalk dragged across the root wall, and three coppers knocked together as he pinned the leather before the lure folds could spread it.

The route opened.

Grib’s uneven step crossed first. Brass rang against his belt buckle, too broad and heavy to be one of his ordinary tools. Kett followed at a measured distance, carrying the burnt-sweet smell of black wax. His stylus scratched once. The lever beside the route clacked back into its armed position.

”Before you put that slate on him,” Grib said, ”the tooth broke under a Core order. My seal covers the filing. The Core owns the crack.”

Kett’s stylus stopped. A claw touched brass near Dane’s lockplate.

”Keep that hand still,” Kett said. ”A second staff trace gives the Registry two causes and leaves you attached to both.”

The claw withdrew. Grib’s next breath traveled through his teeth.

”I was pointing.”

”Point from farther away.”

The heavy slate settled against Dane’s lockplate. Its lower rim covered the chalk residue from Vera’s plate, and the weight pressed his lock brace into the living grain behind it.

The ownership nail turned. Grib’s next breath snagged, and no one spoke.

Heat speared through the lockplate, split around both nail heads, and met inside Dane’s cracked tooth. His lid jerked. The three coppers jumped beneath his tongue. The fringe tore free of his hold and cinched around the displaced root.

Kett spoke the first name.

”Vera Pike.”

The fringe went hot enough to sear his tongue. Chalk found the old contact route and pulled from root to lid, tracing the same eighteen inches the jointed plate had crossed. Dane’s teeth lifted to catch brass that was no longer there. His tongue hooked behind the leather and rehearsed the rest: seize the plate, haul until sleeve became glove, keep pulling until the hand reached him.

Vera’s permission had ended. His body ignored the boundary and prepared for her return.

Dane shoved the fringe away from the root.

The nail turned. His tongue flattened, and ownership pressure dragged the leather back into the crack harder than before.

”Brant Cole,” Kett said.

The name struck the split hinge. Recent shield impacts returned through the damaged pin, along with the slower rhythm of Brant’s splinted left side. Dane’s lid loaded against an absent rim. One bite would knock the shield wide; the next would turn beneath the injured arm and use Brant’s own brace as a handle.

Letting the hinge take that solution eased the pain. Across the room, the stylus cut another line through wax.

Three coppers rolled toward Dane’s front rim before Kett said, ”Tess Crowe.”

The command remembered every coin she had tested and the pepper-scented token she had risked the cleaver route to leave behind. One copper stopped close enough to take. Another settled past it. The third waited behind both, promising the first two had been careless scraps. Dane’s tongue shaped a shallow ramp and practiced surrendering the nearest coin.

The false pile rang once against his brass band.

”Brother Holt.”

Prayer metal entered through the mouth-floor wound. His body supplied a kneeling shape, both hands busy on somebody else’s blood while the cord and prayer case blocked Holt’s quickest retreat. Hunger hesitated at the memory of hands that closed wounds.

The Core pressed through the hesitation. Dane’s tongue rose beneath the imagined throat.

The command built a rehearsal from the recent pressure left in him. A phantom ward plate struck the inner lid. His tongue hauled the real fringe, feeding leather through his teeth until the contact route tightened toward a hand. Shield force crashed into his right rim a heartbeat later. The left hinge twisted around the remembered drag of Brant’s splint, and the crooked tooth stabbed toward the gap the movement created.

The coppers scattered. One rolled to the lip as Tess’s first temptation; the second stopped beyond it; the third cut a new path across the existing abrasion to make the hidden pile sound deeper than it was. Prayer cold entered last. His mouth opened wider around the place Holt would kneel.

Dane’s teeth closed on an empty tunnel. The impact drove the displaced root into his tongue and slammed the split hinge against its pin.

Brackenvault ran the sequence again before the pain settled.

Plate. Shield. Coin. Kneeling throat.

This time the four pressures arrived together. The hand drew close because Brant held the shield line; Tess crossed behind him for the spilled coppers; Holt bent over the first body to fall. One bite created the next three.

The crooked tooth seated closer to straight, the split hinge stopped grinding, and Dane’s tongue quit shaking around the coppers.

For one hideous moment, nothing hurt.

The mouth knew exactly what it was for.

Dane drove the cracked tooth sideways.

The root walls ground together. Relief broke into pain, and amber repair medium beaded from the sheath in thick threads of wood fiber and old resin. Automatic heat gathered it toward the split while the ownership nail tried to force the tooth back into feeding alignment.

From Nate’s retained knife vessel, Saint Rust scraped once.

”Bend one part. Hide one part. Make the order carry the wrong shape.”

/==[ Brackenvault Registry: Corrective Feed Order ]==\

| Asset: F-2 Storage Mimic Seventeen

| Cause: Voluntary Tooth Delay / Witness Risk

| Route: Pike Unit / Next Authorized Return

| Target Set: Vera Pike / Brant Cole / Tess Crowe / Brother Holt

| Required Outcome: Party Consumed Or Disabled

| Method: Lure Upgrade / Direct Command Pressure

\==[ Witness Risk: Eat The Evidence ]==/

Slate heat sank deeper into the lock brace. The black-wax smell thickened. With each degree the ownership nail turned, the fringe drew tighter around Dane’s root and the coppers pressed harder into his torn mouth floor.

One more pull would close the storage branch.

Brass shifted against his lockplate.

”Hold,” Kett said.

The slate stopped halfway through Grib’s lift. Its edge trembled against Dane’s grain.

”Removal during seal keeps the clean branch and loses the fault trace,” Kett said. ”If you want your staff mark to agree with the Core’s, leave it seated.”

Grib lowered the slate. The impact was gentler than his shaking claws.

Dane moved.

He folded the fringe chalk-side down against the cracked root. One copper rolled onto it and trapped the leather against the existing mouth-floor cut. His tongue bore down on the coin while the tooth stayed crooked. Amber from the root sheath soaked into ward thread, wood fiber, chalk, and the same pressure that had broken Vera’s stolen circuit.

The lure pulled his tongue toward the imagined plate.

Ward stitching snapped the leather back before the imagined glove could follow.

Hunger pulled again. The fringe recoiled again. Each reversal dragged the copper over Dane’s wound and worked the root medium deeper into the thread while the slate tried to store one clean motion.

Kett’s stylus scratched, caught, and tore a short groove through soft wax.

”The primary line forked,” he said.

Grib kept both claws under the slate. ”Did the order take?”

”The target set did. The lure is drawing inward and breaking its own route.”

/==[ Brackenvault System: Lure Reassignment ]==\

| Primary Lure: Warded Glove Fringe

| Secondary Lure: Splint Debt / Coin Brightness / Mercy Test

| Bite Reflex: Reinforced

| Tongue Response: Early Brace

| Tooth Delay Countermeasure: Pending

\==[ Party Pattern: Stored ]==/

The Core attacked the fork before the last field left Dane.

Ownership heat hammered the tooth toward a straight bite. The fringe drove deeper into his mouth-floor cut. His tongue braced early under the reinforced command and shoved at the copper holding the leather in place.

Dane gave the tongue room to obey.

It surged beneath the coin, trapped itself against the raw floor, and rolled the copper edge into its own muscle. The root split opened along the same crack. Fresh amber crowded under the fringe while the commanded brace pinned every part of the fault tighter.

As the contact route cleared, the ward pulled smooth from root to lid, ready to take Vera’s plate without resistance.

Vera had said it while the bars fell: ”Distance stays mine.” Dane forced the tooth sideways once more, snapping ward thread against the inward pull and breaking the clean route at the point before flesh.

The pressure shifted to his split hinge, then the ownership tag, then the junction where command entered thought. He held the copper down until his tongue shook too hard to move it.

/==[ Brackenvault System: Command Resistance ]==\

| Trigger: Core Feed Order

| Anchor: Left Front Tooth / Cracked Root

| Resistance: Initiated

| Lure Pattern: Contaminated

| Result: Command Stored With Fault

| Survival Estimate: Poor

\==[ Refusal: Before Permission ]==/

Kett’s stylus went quiet.

Grib’s claws still shook beneath the slate. ”Is my seal on the damaged branch? And did the order hold?”

”Your seal never left,” Kett said. ”The order is active. Its first shared lure-and-bite route carries the interruption; later commands remain clean.”

That answer gave Grib no place to hide. He lifted the slate only after Kett scraped a closing mark through the wax. As brass left the lockplate, Dane’s lock brace sprang back and sent pain through the cracked root.

The fault traveled out through his base in a sequence he could feel: front stone, left channel, deeper junction, gone. Brackenvault had received the damaged order.

Kett shut the tablet. ”Direct correction follows. Compliance-shaped upgrade first. Reclamation if the trace survives it.”

Grib’s buckle rang as he backed toward the route. ”Controlled confirmation between them. I know the branches.”

The stylus scratched once more. ”You asked me last time too.”

Their steps crossed the threshold. The lever dropped. Bars ground down between Dane and the corridor until three final impacts sealed the room.

Behind the sealed bars, the named order kept his split hinge reaching for Brant’s shield while hunger pulled Vera’s fringe toward the contact route. Three dull coppers remained beneath his tongue, one braced against the chalk-threaded fold at the cracked root.

Beyond the bars, Grib lowered his voice and failed to lower it enough.

”Bring the brown resin,” he said. ”And both hooks.”