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

Through blue dust on Dane’s lockplate and the pale crescent above it, Brackenvault received Vera’s acknowledgment before her breath ended, while her ward glove rested against her thigh and Holt held the withdrawal cord clipped to the back of her belt.

"Shield right. Hook rear." Brant planted himself between Vera and the service gap with his splinted left forearm pinned to his ribs. Behind the chalk, Tess held the hook where its shaft could catch either a falling body or a dragging line.

Heat struck Dane’s ownership nail.

It raced through the brass tag, climbed the lockplate, and entered the crescent Vera’s glove had left behind. As the three flat stones across her knuckles flashed, the measured contact point became a hook and the withdrawal circuit pulled the wrong way.

The brass tag forced that answer through Dane. Heat spread from the nail heads into his grain, traced the split hinge, then pressed behind each front tooth in sequence. His body recognized the route before his mind did. This was a feeding command wearing the shape of Vera’s precaution.

"Pull," Vera said.

Holt was already moving.

The Core unfolded the jointed contact plate against him.

Brass shot from beneath Vera’s palm and vanished into the service tunnel. The chalk-threaded leather sleeve along its underside caught at the first hinge and dragged taut. Vera drove both boots backward. Holt hauled on her belt line. Brant wedged the shield rim behind her right hip and used his whole body to add another step without freeing his injured arm.

The plate kept going.

Eighteen inches of stone separated Vera’s glove from Dane’s room. Her fingers stayed outside the tunnel. The last brass joint reached the inside opening and snapped upward toward the chalk crescent.

Inside Dane, the command arrived by pieces: loosen lid, brace tongue, raise teeth, take the mage hand.

His split hinge opened under ownership pressure. The raw floor of his mouth clenched around the three coppers and shoved them forward as lure shine crawled across his brass bands. His tongue flattened beneath them, ready to launch through the gap and hook the ward plate back toward his teeth.

Within the hunt supplied by the command, stone obstructed, brass tethered, leather carried scent, and Vera waited beyond as a meal. Brant, Holt, and Tess became later bites arranged by distance and resistance.

Dane reached for the split hinge. Hurt first. The Core already had it. Hold failed before he began, forcing him to find another part to move.

His lid lifted. Teeth unfolded from the rim. The crooked left front tooth scraped the inner board, an old defect Grib had filed into him because even a mouth built for murder needed cheap maintenance.

The scrape gave Dane one part the command had failed to align.

He drove every fraction of his permanent control into that tooth.

The rest of his mouth opened. The left front point pushed the other way.

His 0.08 percent governed one tooth while the rest of the bite obeyed.

Its point caught under the lid’s inner lip. Dane drove upward against the command until root wedged against wood and the bite jammed on his own body for one pulse.

Pain burst through the tooth and tore along the left hinge. His tongue kicked hard enough to drive one copper into the raw mouth floor, splitting the abrasion wider. Metal filled his body-map with a bright edge, and hunger tried to chew that pain as prey.

Fibers peeled around the trapped root while the lid gathered force. Dane had grain, iron, and conversion tissue instead of a jawbone; the Core began routing repair pressure toward the bite before the root finished cracking.

Dane pushed the repair away. A crooked tooth was useful only while it stayed crooked.

The ward plate scraped across the crescent.

Blue light filled the service tunnel. Its leather underside bunched at the final brass joint, close enough for Dane’s front teeth to catch. The glove itself remained outside with Vera’s hand.

"Again," Brant said.

Vera stepped back. Holt hauled. Tess dropped the hook shaft across the withdrawal cord behind Holt’s boots, turning it into a low brace instead of letting the pull take him toward the chalk.

Brant drove through the shield rim with his right shoulder and hip.

Vera’s step recovered the first joint. Holt’s cord dragged the middle joint past the hall opening. Brant’s shield shove pulled against the final length still inside Dane’s room.

Dane’s tooth root cracked.

The sound came through him as a wet snap trapped inside wood. The point shifted sideways but stayed lodged under the lid. His mouth slammed around it. Teeth struck brass, then slid off as Vera’s plate cleared the room.

The impact drove the broken root wall into his tongue. He held the tongue there anyway, using its trapped muscle to keep the tooth from folding flat. Hunger poured over both injuries and found the chalk-threaded sleeve between them.

One narrow strip of chalk-threaded leather tore from the plate’s underside.

Dane bit the fringe.

His tongue punched into the empty tunnel after the withdrawing brass and smashed against its stone floor. Hunger ordered him farther. The crooked tooth held his lid out of sequence, and that ruined timing let Brant, Holt, and Vera win the last forearm of distance.

The jointed plate folded beneath Vera’s palm with every knuckle stone whole. Her glove stayed on her hand. A seam along the plate sleeve hung open where the leather strip had torn away, but her skin showed no cut and no blood.

Dane forced his lid shut around the displaced tooth. The cracked root seated crooked, one hard point against his tongue. The three coppers rolled behind it. Vera’s torn fringe landed among them, bright with ward chalk and ownership heat.

/==[ Brackenvault System: Bite Interruption ]==\

| Trigger: Mage Contact Echo

| Controlled Part: Left Front Tooth / Partial

| Control: 0.08% / Local Application

| Delay: Half Breath

| Cost: Root Crack / Hunger Spike

| Target Hand: Withdrawn

\==[ One Tooth: Out Of Line ]==/

Brant kept the shield across Vera while Holt checked the belt cord and Tess returned the hook to her side of the chalk.

"Hand," Brant said.

Vera opened and closed every finger. She turned the glove palm-up, then palm-down. "Uncut. Ward stones intact. Contact sleeve compromised."

Holt passed a weak gold prayer light over the leather without crossing the chalk. The spell found ward residue, strained thread, and the point where the sleeve had torn. It found no blood path for the Core to follow.

Brant watched Vera’s fingertips regain their color. Only then did he ease the shield rim away from her hip. The movement pulled at his splint; a dark spot spread through the old dressing near the bracer, small but fresh. He ignored it until Vera saw.

"Your arm."

"Still attached. We audit the hand that almost wasn’t."

"The room pulled first," Holt said. One of the white marks around his wrist had reddened under the withdrawal line. "The mouth opened second. The crooked tooth jammed before the plate cleared."

Brant looked at the closed lid. "Record the teeth before the reason."

"Critical bite response through a forced ownership circuit," Vera said. "Withdrawal succeeded. A local interruption bought the half breath. Cause unknown."

Tess crouched without approaching the chalk. "Front-left copper moved when the tooth cracked. Same place as the lock answer."

Dane pressed the crooked root until his tongue shook. One coin scraped a short line against it, then fell back among the other two. His mouth had no room for a second answer.

Vera saw the copper stop. Her gaze moved to the bent tooth, the shut lid, and the torn seam in her glove.

"Add that the interruption occurred before the target entered reach," she said. "Keep restraint and trained baitcraft as competing causes. Put the distinction under my seal."

Brant’s mouth flattened. "That ties your license to it."

"It ties my license to what we witnessed."

As field lead, Brant could have reduced the record to an attempted bite and ended the distinction. Instead, he shifted the shield until it covered Vera and the sealed room equally.

"Danger goes first," he said. "The interruption stays. Any return uses a breakaway circuit with no leather path to the hand."

Holt repeated the order word for word, binding both halves into the later report. Vera accepted it without bargaining for another contact.

Tess heard a different cost. "If the dungeon reused her ward, the clean-hand argument is dead."

"It was never clean," Holt said. "Now it is documented."

Vera kept her attention on the lid. "And now the dungeon knows documentation changes us."

The ownership nail burned deeper.

/==[ Brackenvault Registry: Fault Escalation ]==\

| Asset: F-2 Storage Mimic Seventeen

| Fault Source: Voluntary Tooth Delay

| Witnesses: Licensed Party / Mage Contact

| Feeding Result: Prevented

| Corrective Review: Core Direct

\==[ Tooth Refusal: Recorded ]==/

The private panel vanished; the room delivered its consequence.

A slit opened above the far door and breathed cold mineral air. The exit lock clicked once. Then twice.

Brant turned at the first sound. "We leave on three. Tess, mark nothing. Holt, keep Vera on the line."

The third click struck.

Stone bars began descending inside the wall channels.

The first bar struck a guide tooth and shed a fan of stone chips across the threshold. Tess kicked the largest piece clear before it could jam the door half-shut. Holt’s belt line caught on the planted hook; she freed it with one knife stroke through the cheap retaining loop, preserving the cord attached to Vera.

Brant counted the remaining drop by sound. "Six breaths to waist height. Three to lose the shield."

Tess moved first with hook low and knife sheathed, clearing the doorway for Holt to back through with the withdrawal cord in his good hand. Brant kept his shield toward Dane and followed, splinted arm fixed against his body.

His boot slipped on the stone chips. Vera caught the back of his belt instead of the injured arm and kept him upright. The wounded shield went out, the mage stayed last, and nobody traded one rescue for another fracture.

Vera went last.

She stayed beyond the chalk and lifted the glove only high enough to show the torn contact sleeve.

"The next question gets a circuit Brackenvault cannot reuse," she said. "If I return, distance stays mine."

The promise belonged to Vera Pike, not to the rain memory the ward had shown her. Dane held the distinction even while hunger ground her leather fringe against his cracked tooth.

Brant caught Vera’s shoulder with the edge of his shield and guided her through the doorway before the first bar cleared its recess.

All four sets of steps crossed the threshold.

The door shut. Stone bars dropped behind it with three impacts that carried through Dane’s base.

He remained alone with a worsened split hinge, a torn mouth floor, three coppers, one crooked tooth cracked at the root, and the chalk-threaded strip his body already wanted to arrange as bait.

He pinned the fringe beneath his tongue instead.

Brackenvault finished reading the interruption.

/==[ Brackenvault Registry: Core Review Accepted ]==\

| Asset Deviation: Confirmed

| Witness Risk: Active

| Route Reset: Pending

| Next Command: Drafting

\==[ Feed Order: Preparing ]==/

Heat left the tooth for one merciful pulse.

Then the command routes opened beneath him, and the tooth waited for whatever name the Core sent next.