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

The claim line hooked the peeled wood beneath Dane’s base and pulled dirty copper against its buried fold below his tongue.

Blank tags battered the responsive coffer’s latch at the same instant. Through stone, rail, and cradle came quick metal pecks, then the heavier knock of six legs correcting their stance. Drawer handles all over the alcove began ticking in their sockets.

Cold residue from Dane’s two unfinished preservation shapes gave the line a path inside him. It slid through torn grain, found the old intake, and worried one blackened coin out of a fold he had never been able to reach.

The false offer woke with it.

His separated left hinge drew tight. Resin pressure covered the open grain in his base. His body remembered how easy F-1 had promised to feel, provided Vera, Brant, Tess, and Holt became four neat routes ending under his lid.

Dane ground his crooked tooth into the root until the promise skipped.

Something scraped in the dark below it. Nate’s belt knife moved less than a handspan. Saint Rust caught the rising coin on the flat.

”Flat, not edge,” he said. ”We need the ugly thing whole.”

The next tag struck the coffer hard enough to lift one side of its latch.

”Quick one first,” Buk said from his litter. Pell’s meal tab clicked between his left claws. ”Can Dane brace latch? One knock yes. Two no.”

One awake worker answered.

Buk repeated the question in the slower rhythm. A second worker knocked once. Behind both answers, four old work-beats continued counting a shift that had already lost its bell.

”Give them the corners,” Brant said. His shield dragged nearer on the strength of his left shoulder. ”I have the middle if the latch comes off.”

Dane pushed out two short rails. They caught the coffer on either side of the latch while his thin open panel met the outer wall. Its six feet shifted under the fixed brace. Each correction pulled sideways through Dane’s peeled base, but the next tag rang off the cold panel and failed to reach the workers.

Inside him, the claim line hauled again.

The coin climbed Saint Rust’s knife and scraped over Dane’s old mouth-floor abrasion. Two grain-widths of scar split open. Heat flooded his tongue, carrying the taste of wet wax and Grib’s hand.

His tongue curled down to hide the copper again.

The knife spine stopped it for one breath.

Ada knelt close enough for rod one to tap his crooked tooth from outside the seam. Blood ran from the two holes in her upper arm and darkened her sleeve.

”Dane, I need the coin, not your keepsakes. Rod one goes through the mouth seam to this tooth, lifts the copper onto the line, and comes straight out. Two knocks and I leave it where it is. Will you let me enter?”

The false hinge settled more cleanly while she spoke. Vera’s route pressed nearest. Brant’s followed, broad and damaged. Tess and Holt waited behind them like meat already sorted.

Dane knocked once.

He lifted his lid one copper-width. Through the seam slid Ada’s brass cap, stopping at the crooked tooth. Another tag kicked the coffer against his fixed rails while his mouth went unprotected.

The coin rolled off the knife flat and struck rod one.

Dane’s intake clenched around it. Heat promised a sound hinge, closed wounds, a better rank—everything bought with four people whose voices he knew. He pressed his bleeding mouth floor against the rod and pushed instead of swallowing.

The copper crossed his lip.

”Line has it,” Vera said. ”Blank tag through the stamp. Three handles before the bend.”

Ada withdrew the rod from Dane’s mouth, but its hooked cap stayed beneath the taut line. Dane closed the seam. Saint Rust’s knife slid back into the deep fold and stopped well clear of the fresh blood.

The clean hinge pressure stretched after the coin.

First handle.

The impact kicked through the line and wrenched rod one across Ada’s palm. She caught it against her knee. A tag struck the coffer panel at the same instant; one front leg slipped, found stone, and shoved back under the latch.

”Second,” Vera called.

This report came with a lower metal blow. The resin pressure inside Dane thinned until each of the four familiar routes trembled.

An iron tube behind the wrapping racks clanged three times.

Tess went still. Her dead collector cord lay against her belt, useless except for the history attached to her voice.

”Outside collection,” she said. ”They enter on the next service count unless I spend the last deferral.”

”How much time?” Brant asked.

”One labor bell. After that, I cannot delay them again. They keep my ordinary debt.”

The rod jumped in Ada’s hand.

”Third handle,” Vera said. ”Coin is at the bend. I lose sight there.”

The collectors knocked again, closer together.

Vera kept both wrapped hands away from Dane and watched the line. ”We still don’t know if Pell’s joint will take it.”

”Waiting won’t improve the price,” Tess said.

She crawled to the service tube on her good ankle. Brant shifted his shield between the brass mouth and Buk’s litter, though nothing had entered yet.

Tess put her lips near the tube.

”Tess Crowe. Final delivery dispute. Spend the held commission, burn my priority, close my account, and hold outside collection for one labor bell.”

The tube bit a strip of wax from the air in front of her mouth. Two words blistered across it.

ACCOUNT CLOSED

The wax burned against Tess’s knuckles. She held it there until the three collector knocks stopped.

”They’ll come for the debt when the bell ends,” she said. Her voice came back rougher through the brass. ”Until then, they use another door.”

No one thanked her. Brant lowered the shield only after the service tube went quiet.

The line snapped rigid.

Rod one drove into Ada’s knee. The force ran from its cap through her good hand, across the cradle, and into Dane’s two fixed rails. Somewhere beyond the bend, iron took the copper.

”Caught,” Ada said. ”Hold the brace.”

Twice, the coffer’s latch hammered against Dane’s rails. From inside came two awake answers, sharp and separate; four slower blows dragged behind them.

With the pull deepening Dane’s mouth wound, one heavy impact ran back along the claim line and twisted the rod cap a quarter turn. Inside him, the false hinge folded and stopped fitting his grain.

”One bend in the coin,” Ada said through her teeth.

A thinner crack traveled through all three drawer handles. Then another, a fraction behind it. The single pull divided into two discordant vibrations.

”Two pieces,” she said.

The broken bell began to grind.

It was not a clean cut or a distant flash. The noise came home through the line in bursts, each one shaking dirty heat out of Dane’s old intake. The two small metal voices flattened, scraped, and vanished beneath a sound like teeth chewing gravel. Ada’s rod bucked until Brant trapped its lower end with the edge of his shield.

”I have you,” he told her. ”Keep the cap on.”

”Don’t pin my wrist. Pin the rod.”

He changed the angle without arguing.

The final grind tore the heat out through Dane’s widened abrasion.

His left hinge sagged back into its real separation. Resin withdrew from the peeled wood. Vera, Brant, Tess, and Holt ceased to feel like directions his mouth could take. Grib’s copper had kept the space beneath Dane’s tongue burning since the coerced offer; now it cooled.

Hunger filled it immediately.

Ada listened through rod one until the last vibration died. ”Nothing whole answers. Neither piece can hold a stamp.”

The Bay Three bell stayed silent.

Pressure escaped through a lower route. Iron boomed behind the wrapping racks, followed by a rush of air that carried wheel dust, old mule sweat, and the mineral cold of a road cut deep under stone.

Holt sucked in a breath and laughed once, too tired to make it cheerful. ”That smells awful.”

”Two wagon ruts,” Vera said. ”Rectangular iron throat. No drawer faces beyond the first turn.”

Buk lifted his head from the litter. ”Wide for coffer. Down road. Mule old. Air moving.”

For one breath, nothing tried to take the opening away.

Dry cold passed through Dane’s broken mouth and settled where the dirty copper had burned. Six coffer feet stood steady beneath his rails. Somewhere beyond the service throat waited a road built for wheels instead of bodies in drawers.

Then a bone runner snapped above Brant.

”Stack is leaning,” Vera said. ”Six high, coming over the coffer.”

Brant rammed his shield under the falling edge. His dead right arm stayed bound; his left shoulder and both knees took the load. The shield rim bowed with a long iron groan.

”Move the feet!” he shouted.

The coffer stepped sideways beneath Dane’s fixed brace. A second runner tore free. The impact drove splinters of stone through the alcove and burst the lowest drawer open.

A wrapped body struck the floor beside the coffer.

”Adult,” Vera said. ”Maintenance coat. Inventory linen from throat to ankle. Chest is moving.”

The coffer lifted its front pair, stepped over the breathing worker, and planted all six feet beyond them. Two knocks sounded under the latch. Four work-beats followed while Buk held Pell’s tab tight enough to mute its ring.

Another row of runners cracked overhead.

The next stack started down.

”Six breaths,” Vera said.