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

The knife’s last word tightened Dane’s tongue.

Nate’s blade rode the muscle as it contracted. Its flat scraped living flesh; its edge remained turned into the inner wall, one bad twitch from the fading cut.

Hunger pulled everywhere at once. Toma’s glove softened near the front gutter. The scarf scrap warmed against a tooth. Five ordinary coppers offered five small mouthfuls. Deeper inside, the thin silver and the square-holed coin with red string pressed beyond his control. Nate’s return charm lay beside the knife, dense with conversion heat. Toma and Jessa’s brass ring rested where resin grit and old blood had stopped it.

Dane tightened his front rim.

Two coppers skittered. One clipped the return charm and knocked it into the knife.

Sour heat crossed from brass to steel. The nearly healed cut burned open in Dane’s body map, though no flesh split.

"If that was an answer," the voice said, "improve it."

Dane drove a thought through the metal touching his tongue. *Move away from the charm.*

"You moved the charm toward me."

The knife slid back until its spine met wood. Conversion warmth stretched after it, thin as a thread and growing hotter.

*Name.*

"Saint Rust. A priest chose the name; he lied often." The blade shifted its edge away from Dane’s cut. "I am currently wearing Nate’s knife."

A private panel opened behind Dane’s lockplate.

/==[ Brackenvault System: Object Sentience ]==\

| Contact: Nate Parr / Belt Knife

| Voice: Saint Rust

| Category: Responsive Object / Unregistered

| Risk: Conversion Cross-Talk

| Advice Quality: Hostile / Useful

\==[ Objects Wake Where Use Leaves Teeth ]==/

The heat thread thickened between knife and charm.

Dane selected the copper that had caused the collision. He reversed it, caught the charm’s rim, and pushed. The coin did the work; the charm slid a finger’s width over his tongue and broke contact with the blade.

The sour ache faded. Hunger answered by dragging the glove toward the hot fold.

"Keep them apart," Saint Rust said. The levity left his voice. "If conversion takes that token while it touches my vessel, I may go with it. I may also wake tangled in a rain charm. Both outcomes offend me."

*The warning protects you.*

"Partly."

The knife settled with its flat against the inner wall. "I felt a judgment scrape my steel. I heard risk. Your other thoughts remain mercifully private unless you press them through contact."

The glove moved again. Its torn palm approached the ring, then slid past as appetite drew leather toward the back of his mouth. Dane compressed the right front rim against the uneven flagstone. His fixed base stayed planted, but the shallow gutter changed slope.

Leather traveled over resin dust. The glove draped across the brass circle.

Dane moved two coppers. One caught the cuff seam. The other pressed the torn palm against the gutter. Between them, the glove covered the ring without either coin touching it.

Three coppers remained for the charm, the knife, and a tongue that still wanted to feed.

"You defend property with loose change," Saint Rust said.

One pinning copper jerked at the insult. Leather lifted. The ring’s weight drew a sharp response from the lure route.

Dane forced the copper back against the cuff.

"That one cost you," the blade said.

*So did the joke.*

Saint Rust let the point pass. His knife vessel shifted farther from Dane’s cut instead of offering another line.

*Nate carried you.*

"Nate carried this steel. Before him, other edges carried me."

Dane pressed the thought harder. *That still avoids what began speaking.*

The blade’s flat tapped wood once. "Metal that noticed. I cannot tell you which blow did it. Priests supplied explanations afterward."

He claimed an altar spike, a court blade, a soldier’s spare, and a widow’s kitchen edge before hunger pulled the scarf loose from its tooth. Dane caught the wool with his tongue. Pain flared at the last crossed-cut edge and faded too quickly; the handle was almost healed away.

Saint Rust stopped his history while Dane worked.

The contraction shifted the thin silver deeper. The square-holed coin knocked against it, red string dragging over wood. Neither answered Dane, and the knife stayed near the wall despite the open path.

*You judged the people outside after minutes.*

"Yes. Poor first guesses keep an object alive in a new room."

Hunger tightened the glove cover. Saint Rust spoke while Dane drove both copper pins deeper into leather.

"The wounded thief reaches before permission; the shield man breaks what might bite. Fingers come before doctrine for the healer. Easy risks."

The cuff seam stretched. Dane released a fraction before the copper tore through it.

"The writer listens for price. She may call a cage recovery if the commission is good enough."

The brass ring pressed up beneath the glove and stayed caught in grit. Dane kept his intent on leather and coin.

*And Vera?*

Saint Rust took long enough to answer that the charm began creeping back toward his vessel. The separating copper caught its edge before contact returned.

"The mage stopped the thief. She left the goblin a road. She also reached for a rule before she reached for you." The knife’s point lowered into the wooden wall. "A lawful form can become a fine pair of tongs. I would watch what she files."

*Those are guesses.*

"They are. Keep the two acts you witnessed. I heard no allegiance."

Hunger seized the two free coppers and pulled the glove toward the back of Dane’s tongue, dragging the torn-palm pin half its width and warming the leather over the ring.

Saint Rust could have cut the glove open.

His edge stayed in the wall.

"Eat the ring," he said. "When your copying skill wakes, make another circle. The husband sees brass. Your hunger eases. The dungeon receives what it wants."

The hot fold opened before Dane chose.

Leather softened. The glove cover drew tight over the ring. His tongue rose automatically, trying to lift both into conversion. One copper sank into the cuff; the other began sliding off the torn palm.

Pressing through the last pain sent a weak smear to the tongue root. Healing had nearly erased the address.

The charm-spacer copper tipped. Nate’s return token struck the knife again.

Cross-talk flashed sour and hot.

Saint Rust remained still.

Dane drove his front rim into the flagstone. The property tag heated along both nails. He reversed the slipping copper, caught leather short of the ring, and shoved the charm away with the spacer at the same time.

His tongue fought both motions while teeth lowered toward the glove and scarf fiber stretched into the fold. Deeper, the silver and red-string coin promised enough metal to ease the emptiness for a while.

*No.*

The word went into the knife because Dane had nowhere else to put it.

Hunger held for one brutal beat. Then the hot fold narrowed. The glove remained over the ring, leather edges pinned. The charm stayed separate. All five coppers remained in the shallow gutter, though three had changed positions. The two deeper coins stayed beyond reach.

Saint Rust backed his vessel away from the charm and laid the flat beside the healed side of Dane’s tongue.

"I needed to know whether hunger would make you feed me the next thing with a story."

*You used their ring to find out.*

Saint Rust’s flat pressed wood. "I did."

The knife lay quiet through the silence.

Dane eased one copper away from the knife. *Calling it bad advice changed nothing.*

"It told you what I was doing. The choice stayed filthy."

"I stayed still," the blade said. "A chest that eats every voice makes poor shelter. My interest is not charity."

Dane kept the copper between knife and charm. *You know ways to survive owners.*

"Sometimes."

*Give me one method. I decide whether it enters my body.*

The knife scraped once against the inner wall. "Make the next hand hesitate before it touches you."

The property tag warmed.

Saint Rust felt it through the lockplate route and shifted his vessel away. "Your dungeon stores what obeys. It drags what performs into more work. When something behaves wrong, it sends a closer hand. Those are different rooms. None has an unlocked door."

Milo had stopped outside Dane’s bite line when the chest, coin, and hinge failed to behave like a clean lure. The boy left alive. Grib came later with resin because the same wrongness had become a maintenance problem.

A flaw could buy a pause. It could also summon tools.

*I need the pause.*

"Then choose damage a stranger understands. Keep enough function that Brackenvault leaves you in service."

Dane pressed along his left hinge without changing its shape. The new resin line carried pressure too smoothly from front rim to side board. Beneath it, Grib’s crooked pin pulled a fraction toward the tag whenever the lid took load.

He followed the strain rather than an imagined surface. Resin, pin, iron band, lockplate. A narrow place above the repair carried too much trust and too little give.

The sealed skill behind his lockplate remained quiet. No panel opened. The grain held.

Saint Rust rested his flat against Dane’s tongue, clear of the fading cut. The glove still covered Toma’s ring. Two coppers held leather, one kept Nate’s charm away from the knife, and two waited free. Hunger pressed on all of them.

Dane marked the weak place in his body map and left it unchanged.

"When you are ready," Saint Rust said, "find the crack that makes the hand hesitate."