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

The retrieval chain had Tess by the left ankle, and Dane’s mouth knew how easy justice could taste.

Iron rasped over outer-drain stone. Each pull tightened the wax route at her waist, crushed the collector cord deeper into her coat, and brought blood close enough for his tongue to sort it from the wet air. The ring around her ankle had already folded the joint. When her injured left arm struck the service groove, pain broke across the failing Party Link without shape or explanation.

Dane’s lid opened wider.

Let her reach the teeth. Let the dangerous one become meat. Brackenvault pushed the answer through him as calmly as a hand closing a cupboard.

Vera’s burned right hand stayed in the iron loop. Her wand remained outside his mouth.

”Dane. Stamped link,” she said. ”Bite that.”

The chain jerked. Tess lost a breath and came nearer.

Brant’s boots scattered two coins across stone. His wounded right hand caught Tess at the wrist; her jolt struck him through the link. His splinted left arm never left his ribs.

”Right leg,” he said. ”Find the cracked tile. Ada, stop the groove. Holt—”

”I know what a second line is.”

Prayer cord rasped over stone. A fresh pull drove Tess’s shoulder into the groove hard enough to turn her answer into a raw cry.

Fear flooded the link, stripped to the bodily panic of capture.

His hunger approved.

June had once pushed the last dumpling onto his plate after he claimed he was full. He had wanted her to take it and wanted credit for surrendering it, which was how he made one small kindness irritating to both of them.

She had broken it in half with her chopsticks.

Do the expensive thing, Dane.

In memory she sounded tired, not holy.

Vera pulled the handle outward as the chain crossed his feeding reach. Her grip returned him to iron, torn tongue, and Tess’s blood in the air.

Dane threw his damaged weight sideways.

His teeth closed on the chain.

The first custody stamp struck his lip and translated itself through black wax.

RETURN.

Its raised edge opened him to the gum.

CORRECTION caught the broken tooth and drove the loose root through a white burst of pain.

ACCEPTED LOSS rolled onto his tongue, and he bit until the letters filled with blood.

The floor pulled through the chain while Tess’s weight fought back through Brant. Between those loads, Dane’s torn left corner ground against stone and Vera kept the right handle angled away from his mouth. The loose hinge pin scraped deeper each time the iron advanced.

Holt reached him before he found a prayer. His hand struck intact wood beside the left hinge, then followed the tear down to the prayer cord.

”Under him,” Holt said. ”Lower. If I use the split, it will finish splitting.”

Rod one stayed cinched at Dane’s tag. Rod two held the lower hinge route against the borrowed shield. Ada drove the already bent rod three into the groove ahead of the next link. The metal-shod end chipped stone and kicked back into her shoulder.

”Pull is below us,” she said. ”I can foul it. I cannot match it.”

”Foul it,” Brant said.

With two answering fingers on his right hand, he trapped Tess’s wrist and belt against the same forearm. His blood slicked her sleeve. The splinted arm remained folded clear while the chain dragged him to one knee.

Holt passed prayer cord around the exposed chain and beneath Dane’s lower left hinge. Seven knots became teeth in the wounded wood. The smallest cut through fresh flesh, and the strain almost pried Dane open.

One released jaw offered a clean subtraction: Tess under the wall, one betrayal gone, Vera’s hand freed from a mouth she had trusted for one lift.

Tess’s coat tightened at her throat.

”I kept a buyer,” she forced out.

”What?” Brant’s grip slipped, caught again.

”For the link. If you sold me first—”

The groove took another handspan. Her next sound had no sentence in it.

”Save the defense,” Brant said. ”Push with the free leg.”

Her heel scraped twice. The cracked tile caught it on the third try as Dane crushed the custody bead between his molars.

A pulse ran through teeth, chain, and floor, snuffing ward heat along the outer drain. The groove doubled its pull.

Rod three bent farther and split along the gate damage. Holt’s smallest knot snapped. Brant’s right knuckles opened against Tess’s buckle. Two fingers’ worth of ground vanished beneath them.

The shifted hinge pin plowed through living tissue. Iron tore Dane’s tongue wider and sprayed the next stamp with his blood.

Vera kept her body beyond the teeth and torqued the handle outward.

”Across the link,” she said. ”Turn it the way you turned yourself.”

Dane rolled both free coppers to the right. His tongue barely answered, but he pinned them against his inner wall. Crude Drag found no forward ground. It gave his ruined left corner enough purchase to tilt.

The broken bead scraped sideways between his teeth.

He caught its edge beneath one tooth and twisted his whole frame.

The chain’s patient rhythm stuttered. Brant felt the slack through Tess and dropped his right shoulder. Ada kicked rod three deeper as its split widened; Holt pulled until another prayer knot began to fray; Vera held the offered angle.

Tess shoved off the cracked tile. Her boot tore at the heel, and the chain ring took leather and a strip of ankle skin before slipping free.

Brant and Tess hit a stack of copper bowls hard enough to flatten the pile. Their linked pain arrived with the crash. Rod three struck stone beside them. The chain whipped past Dane’s teeth, slapped the groove edge, and snapped under the floor with black wax hissing after it.

Dane closed on empty air.

Tess was still breathing.

Vera’s fingers left the handle as soon as the final link went under.

For one breath, nobody asked the rescue to mean anything.

Brant breathed through his teeth. Tess coughed against the loosened coat. Ada tested rod three by knocking its new bend against stone. Holt’s thumb shook as he counted knots.

Vera’s released handle stayed empty. Dane ordered his lid down, waited through the delay, and felt it settle.

A damage notice scraped through his cognition: tongue response reduced; lid response delayed; claimed-coin value docked; physical inventory retained; inspector review pending.

Both free coppers remained against his right wall. The dirty one still burned below intake. Every breath near him smelled of blood, wax, and wet leather.

Skarn’s pole struck the sealed gate three times.

Four active chains answered. One of the downed lengths scraped once and stopped. The other gave no sound.

The service wall beside Tess knocked from within.

”Bind her,” Vera said. ”Fast.”

Brant found Tess’s belt end with his right hand and his teeth. He cinched it around the torn left boot while she sucked air through her nose.

”Too tight,” Tess said.

Brant pulled another notch with his teeth. ”That’s swelling. Tell me if the toes go cold.”

”Now he worries.”

The belt cinched harder. ”About carrying you,” Brant said.

Vera tore a clean strip from the sheared edge of her sleeve and wrapped Tess’s reopened left forearm, nudging the split palm away with her wand shaft when Tess tried to help.

Holt wound spare cloth around Brant’s right knuckles. The cracked sword at Holt’s belt knocked his hip whenever the service wall tested its inner latch. Against Dane’s left base, the borrowed shield still held rod two in the hinge route while rod one remained at the tag.

Ada used rod three’s bent tip to fish between the stones beside the groove. Metal touched metal. Tess’s fallen knife came out riding the rod.

The recovered knife rang against stone. Brant’s wrapped fingers tapped beside it.

”All of them. We’re out of surprises.”

”We’re being hunted through two walls.”

”That was true when you cut us.”

Another inner latch clicked.

Tess exhaled. ”Four picks. Two wire hooks. Glass cutter. Needle-button. Folding saw.”

”Where did you put them?”

She told Vera. The tools came free one at a time while Brant kept pressure on the ankle wrap: picks from the sleeve seam, hooks from her belt lining, the cutter beneath her collar, the button where a button ought to be, and the saw inside the surviving boot. Ada added the recovered knife. Holt rolled the lot in the torn strip of Tess’s coat and set the bundle against the shield, beyond her reach.

Ada wound the collector cord’s slack once around rod two. The black fiber stayed intact. The bead at Tess’s waist kept ticking.

”I meant to sell the pattern,” Tess said.

Brant tugged the ankle wrap. Her teeth clicked together.

”Not tonight. Before. Enough of the link to buy an exit if your exit shut on me.”

”You cut while my hand was on him,” Vera said.

The locking bead clicked at Tess’s waist. Black wax tightened; her next breath snagged.

”I cut the silver. I did what Ada said.”

”You kept the road.”

Tess started to answer. The service wall knocked again in the middle of it, harder this time.

She swallowed whatever defense had come first. ”I called it a reserve.”

Brant tightened the final knot. ”Call it from farther away when we live.”

”Treachery,” Tess said. ”There. Happy?”

Brant shoved one wrapped finger beneath the ankle binding. ”Wiggle your toes.”

Leather creaked inside the torn boot.

Three scratches whispered open beside the wall seam. Tess heard them and shifted before pain pinned the injured ankle.

”Those are collector marks,” she said. ”The left one opens first. Grib’s crews fake the middle so you brace the wrong stone.”

Ada left rod three in the groove and tapped the wall with rod one while keeping its cinch on Dane’s tag. The answering hollow came from the left.

”The hollow is on the left,” Ada said.

Brant kept the tool bundle under his boot. ”She names the mark. Someone else holds the tool.”

”I understand,” Tess said, her voice dropping close to the stone.

”I don’t believe you yet.”

”I understand that too.”

Holt crouched at Dane’s left hinge and pressed two fingers to intact wood beside the cord trench.

”He chose iron,” Holt said.

Ada struck the wall seam twice with rod one. ”With Vera on the handle and the link falling apart. Keep those conditions.”

”I said what he did.”

”You were about to say what it makes him.”

Holt removed his fingers from Dane’s wood. ”I was going to say it matters.”

Dane’s split tongue lay slow and swollen between those claims.

Tess spoke toward the sound of his delayed hinge. ”I don’t know what to say to you.”

He tried to move his tongue. It flopped against his lower teeth.

Tess breathed out. ”I’ll wait.”

The collector bead clicked against rod two.

Heat drove from Dane’s tag through the ownership nails and gathered behind his lock. Brackenvault opened its answer inside him.

/==[ Brackenvault System: Mercy Record ]==\

| Category: Mercy

| Status: Contested / Logged

| Asset Logic: Incomplete

| Party Effect: Debt Created

| Body Demand: Carryable Frame

| Sealed Skill Response: Pattern Noted

\==[ Next Shape: Listening ]==/

His wounds stayed hot. The lid still lagged. The wall had already begun to work its next latch.

Behind his lock, a narrower weight pressed back. Longer handles. Straps rooted where a room-bound chest had never needed them. A body meant to leave before the stone opened again.