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

Voss’s hooks scored the right rut. Two strokes came clean; two splinted lengths dragged after them.

”Terms first,” he said. ”I walk where I can watch the chest’s mouth.”

From the left rut came the careful scrape of Kril folding his blade limbs under himself. The people behind them packed the road with shoe leather, tool hafts, breath, and the small shifts of weapons still held ready.

Buk clicked two objects together in his left claws. Broom wood made the duller note. Pell’s brass meal tab answered it.

”Broom proves Kesh road,” he said. ”Third bend has neutral cairn. Tab proves one dead worker kept a name. Neither buys anybody. Buk asks four people with live recovery marks. Each answers.”

”Kril first. Kesh cairn, under escort until third bend?”

”Employer failed to keep up,” Kril said. ”Kril chooses the road it abandoned.”

Voss’s lower splints grated when he shifted his weight. ”Third bend. Rear position. I keep both good hooks and my eyes on the mouth. That’s my yes.”

”Laundry woman?”

Her voice came from beyond Dane’s left front corner. ”Blue missing-shift mark under my ear. Lye to both elbows. If a warden reaches me on a public road, the carrying becomes the fare. I choose Kesh.”

Buk turned toward the adult beside her. ”Laundry man?”

Something broad and flat slapped once against a shirtfront.

”My mark is at the collar. The press took the close from my right hand, not the answer from my mouth. I choose the third bend.”

A bell sounded far inside the pale-stone canyon.

The note traveled down both ruts. Four old work rhythms struck from inside the coffer before anyone had called a shift. The two awake workers hit back out of time, one quick and one slow.

Brant planted the lower rim of his shield against the cradle crossbar. ”That bell is coming this way. Slowest body sets our pace, and the road narrows before the bend. If this column opens, my shield reaches one side. Choose knowing that.”

”Tell them the other part,” Holt said.

Brant’s breath caught against leather straps and a splinted left arm. Silence gave him nowhere to hide it.

”Dane is hungry,” Holt said. ”He kept a breathing adult alive, and it made the hunger worse.”

Several weapons moved. Dane heard metal leave the space nearest his lid. The lye-scarred woman retreated one step, and the shame of that step reached his grain before her heat did.

Voss struck a hook down. ”Now those are terms.”

Vera fed the front guide rope through the right iron eye of Dane’s external cradle. Rope rasped on metal; no pressure touched his living wood. ”Anyone leaving, move before the pinch. Anyone staying, pick a body you can keep on its feet.”

Scuffs and arguments sorted the crowd instead of a single answer. Buk’s litter poles changed to kitchen-carrier shoulders first; wax sweepers moved beside the cracked runner stretcher, then two cellar crawlers claimed its front and rear loops. Around the people with the worst gait gathered broken haulers. The space before Dane’s mouth remained empty.

Ada counted the unconscious adult’s pulse against her own breath. ”Still here. We move them as a patient.”

Buk leaned toward the coffer’s quick rhythm. ”Take this road on six feet until Kesh’s cairn? One yes. Two no.”

One knock answered.

He asked the slow worker the same bounded question. A second single knock came after a pause. Beneath both answers, four scheduled beats kept repeating the far bell.

Voss scraped nearer to the rear. ”Chest. Will you keep your mouth toward the road while I hold behind you?”

Dane knocked once.

”Then I can hate you from a useful place.”

”Rear right,” Brant said. ”Kril takes rear left. Hate has a job now.”

The next bell note reached them before anybody mistook that for friendship.

They left the weigh shelter.

The cellar crawlers kept the two-runner stretcher level when its cracked end clicked. Kitchen shoulders carried Buk ahead of it. Six coffer feet followed their own irregular cadence. Voss’s splints dragged at the rear with Kril’s blades whispering along the opposite bank.

Dane’s cradle struck the first old wheel rise.

The crossbar stopped in Holt’s shoulders. Brant’s shield rim dug into the rear brace. Pain drove from the new thumb-wide gap in Dane’s base up through his crooked tooth.

”Twenty more,” Vera called from the right eye rope. ”Same curve. Less room at every one.”

With Brant’s shield reset against his left hip, Holt slid both forearms beneath the bar and spared his split palms the grip. Their heave met Vera’s pull toward the right rut.

Inside the waxed frame, Dane rounded his two lower corners.

Their push carried one curve over the rise. He balanced on it, stopped the turn before the drop, and felt all three helpers take the captured load.

A strip of living wood rose along his left side until road air reached its top edge at roughly a worker’s knee.

Buk tapped Pell’s tab against his litter. ”Useful ugly.”

The canyon answered close enough to shake the iron eye around Vera’s rope.

”Two wardens at the mouth,” Vera said. ”Left one has square road-shoes locked in the rut and a beam across both lanes. Teeth underneath. Right one has a bell cage grown through the back. The clapper moves when they breathe.”

The breath came in.

Bronze struck between ribs.

The lye-scarred woman choked while her sleeves whipped through a wringing rhythm. Beside her, flesh hammered against a good fist. Kril’s blades scraped short cleaning strokes. Voss’s two hooks buckled; his torso hit stone while both ruined splints beat a hauling rhythm behind him.

Four habitual workers battered the coffer on the bell’s schedule. The quick awake rhythm struck across them. The slow one followed, angry and late.

Tess’s weak left step halted behind Dane. ”Hands out where I can see them, Crowe,” Voss said from the road.

Sleeve cloth rasped above Tess’s shoulders as she obeyed. ”I used that bell trick when I collected routes. Practiced motion proves a body learned work. It proves nothing about who owns the work. Ask for the debt book.”

”The road keeps its own book,” the shoe warden said. ”Unpaid labor repairs what it uses.”

The bell warden forced out two words with the next weaponized breath. ”Motion is enough.”

Hinges screamed over both ruts.

Brant drove shield and hip into the crossbar. Holt’s shoulders joined him. Vera hauled the rope through the right iron eye. Their force rolled Dane’s rounded corners forward as the toll beam dropped.

He raised the left side between its teeth and the lye-scarred woman’s lye-sour heat.

Before the left side finished rising, three calcite points punched through living wood.

The middle tooth stopped a finger from Dane’s old lid line. The other two spread the blow through his raw base. Road grit entered the thumb-wide gap, and the wound tore one finger-length toward the right rear.

Behind the temporary side, the woman gasped. Warmth and sweat pressed close enough for hunger to find her without sight.

Dane sealed his mouth until the crooked tooth cut his tongue.

Ada’s rod struck iron beneath the beam. Blood from her two reopened tag holes slicked the shaft.

”You two know press pins,” she said. ”Left pin takes forearms. Right pin wants a flat face and a hammer.”

The woman caught the left hinge pin between her scarred arms while the bell tried to wring them away. The man laid his ruined right hand flat against the other pin and struck it with his good fist. Bone hit metal, yet both pins held.

The bell warden dragged in another breath.

Every shiver in the beam reached Dane through the three teeth. The force ran outward into the shoe warden’s iron, down the worked ruts, and returned with a thinner bronze answer from the cage nails Vera had reported. A single installed thing, joined badly enough to hurt everybody touching it.

Dane sent Sound Lure into the nearest tooth.

The ugly knock crossed beam, shoe, rut, and bronze. It reached the cage between the inhale and the clapper’s fall.

Bronze struck bone on the wrong beat, punching a cough from the bell warden and splitting one labor note into two fighting tones. The woman’s arms jerked once, then caught the left pin as her own. Across the beam came the man’s roar and the blow of his fist on the flat hand. Her pin lurched first; his followed with the ruined palm still under it.

Buk struck his litter rail beside the coffer. ”Quick worker. One front foot on the loosened beam when Brant pushes? One yes. Two no.”

One knock.

”Slow worker. Same one-foot load?”

One knock came through four habits still pounding at the broken bell rhythm.

”Now,” Brant said.

His shield and Holt’s shoulders drove the external cradle. Vera shortened the right-eye rope. Dane eased the balance he had been holding, and their force completed the turn.

One coffer leg came down on the beam.

Dane’s low side passed beneath the loosened hinge with all three teeth still through it. The beam twisted around them. Its far end rose under the coffer’s weight while the shoe warden’s left iron square stayed trapped in the rut.

Something hard burst through iron three times.

”Three toes through the shoe,” Vera shouted.

The warden’s scream lost every trace of doctrine. A latch clanged open. Body weight hit the left bank, and the ruined shoe remained wedged beneath Dane’s forward curve.

The bell warden pulled breath through the split rhythm.

”Kril, left bank,” Brant called. ”Voss, right. Cage brace first.”

Hooks bit the right wall. Blade metal climbed the left. Kril’s cut snapped leather behind the bell warden’s shoulder.

Voss swung both ruined splints from the hips while his two surviving hooks held him above the rut.

The splints hit the opened cage and folded bronze with a wet crack. One broken cage rib entered flesh.

”Outer hip,” Vera called. ”Clear of the belly and bell.”

Blood smell reached the road nails a breath later.

Voss collapsed onto his good hooks. Both rigid splints split lengthwise around the legs they still contained.

”My fare,” he said through his teeth.

Metal tore free of meat. The bell warden cursed on one complete breath, clamped the outer-hip wound, and dragged the shoe warden away by the rear harness. The injured warden’s bare heel knocked stone between pulls. Kril paced the retreat with a blade near enough to keep them moving and far enough to leave both alive.

The broken bell gave no second order.

The lye-scarred woman put both forearms around the first calcite tooth in Dane’s side. The flat-handed man braced the next with his ruined palm. Ada called each angle through rod contact. All three teeth came free and struck the road outside him.

Only then did Dane let the knee-high side sink.

Holt pressed an ear to the coffer wall. Six rhythms answered, two exhausted and four still trying to finish a shift. Ada found the unconscious worker’s breath again without moving the linen beyond the airway.

The flat-handed man knelt beside Voss’s ruined pair. ”I can tie this if you quit dragging it away from me.”

Voss’s hooks stopped. ”Tie the splints. Nothing else.”

The knot pulled one split casing against the other. When Voss rose, the repaired drag sounded worse but held.

Kril took the left rear without being asked twice. Voss claimed the right. Beside Dane’s wounded left side, the lye-scarred woman warned him before the next rise while every carrier kept moving.

Brant kept his shield against the crossbar, Holt his forearms under it, and Vera the rope through the external right eye. Their push carried Dane’s two rounded lower corners over the crushed road-shoe. Both curves remained between his raw base and the road as he balanced the cradle at the next drop.

For one breath, only chosen feet and the damaged stretcher moved along the service road.

Then Vera stopped pulling.

”Six black stakes at the canyon mouth,” she said. ”Three in each wall. Three pairs of thread cross the ruts at the height of your curves.”

The stone wind made the fine lines hum.

”They’re turning toward you.”

Dane held the first curve still while Brant’s shield found the crossbar.