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

The stone bars sealed, opened once for staff, and admitted Grib with a brass slate held across his chest.

Kett followed with a black-wax tablet and stylus, stopping at the threshold beyond Dane’s tongue range and one step from the lever that could drop the bars again.

Stone chips covered the threshold. Grib stepped over Vera’s snapped retaining loop and checked the bar lever twice.

Under his lid, the torn ward fringe remained folded beneath his tongue. One copper braced the fold against the displaced tooth; the other two sat dull-side up behind it. Any attempt to move the leather dragged chalk across the cracked root and woke the hunger stored there.

"Seventeen," Grib said, "your recent attempt to preserve a licensed mage has created a costly opportunity for professional growth."

Kett touched the stylus to the tablet. "The fault report calls it direct witness risk."

Kett inspected the seal stamped into the slate’s lower corner. Four empty wax channels ran from it toward Dane’s ownership tag.

"When the first channel opens, commentary stops," he said. "A spoken target can acquire a second trace."

Grib adjusted his grip and closed his mouth.

Grib laid the slate against Dane’s lockplate, and his grin vanished.

Brass met blue ward dust. Black wax softened in Kett’s hand. The ownership nail drove heat through Dane’s cracked left tooth, split hinge, and torn mouth floor all at once.

His three coppers jumped beneath his tongue. Vera’s chalk-threaded fringe unpinned itself and slid across the crooked root.

The slate began installing names.

Vera Pike entered first.

Her name caught the torn ward fringe and pulled it hard against Dane’s raw tongue. Chalk heated. The brass tag sent a second hook through the cracked root, joining her name to the eighteen-inch contact route, the blue flare, and the exact point where her plate had touched his lid.

The route gave his body a complete kill: wait for another safe circuit, let Vera trust her distance, catch the plate, follow it to the hand, and close before Holt’s cord drew tight.

Dane forced the fringe away from the root. Ownership pressure pushed it back.

On Kett’s tablet, the first wax channel filled blue at the edges. He pressed the stylus beside it and watched Dane’s tongue rather than Grib.

The second name struck the split hinge: Brant Cole.

Shield oil and dried blood arrived as obstruction rather than scent. Dane’s lid loaded against an imagined shield rim. His crooked tooth angled for the gap below Brant’s guard, while his tongue mapped the splinted left arm as the slower side. The command assigned Brant two bites: disable the shield shoulder, then drag him across the chalk by the broken limb.

The hinge ached to try it. When Tess Crowe entered through the coppers, all three rolled bright-side up. Smoke and pepper sharpened the lure while the command arranged the coins into a false premium spill: one obvious, one half-hidden, one far enough back to promise more. Dane’s tongue practiced yielding the first coin so Tess would lean for the second.

The pattern fit her poverty and insulted every choice she had made since.

Prayer metal cooled the abrasion as Brother Holt’s name drove into the wound beneath Dane’s tongue. For one beat, hunger hesitated around a target who carried blood away, named uncertainty honestly, and kept standing beside frightened people. The Core corrected that hesitation. It marked mercy as predictable approach behavior: wound somebody, wait for Holt to kneel, take his head while his hands were busy saving what remained.

The four hooks pulled together, using the tag to choose, hinge to force, tongue to bait, and tooth to correct timing. The command took every damaged part of Dane and gave it a job that fit.

Pressure rotated the ownership nail inside his grain. His lid rose far enough for cold corridor air to touch the damaged root. The coppers ground into the abrasion while Vera’s fringe tightened like a bandage tied by someone who wanted the wound open. Each target pulled on a different injury, and all four promised relief after the first successful bite.

His mimic body relaxed into the plan.

Relief arrived when obedience aligned pain with feeding and promised praise for the next bite.

Dane bit down on his crooked root until the relief broke.

Amber conversion fluid seeped from the cracked sheath. It was his own repair medium, thick with wood fiber and old resin, not human blood. The Core warmed it and began closing the root around the new target pattern.

Saint Rust scraped once inside the retained knife vessel.

"Bend one part. Hide one part. Make the order carry the wrong shape."

/==[ Brackenvault Registry: Corrective Feed Order ]==\

| Asset: F-2 Storage Mimic Seventeen

| Cause: Voluntary Tooth Delay / Witness Risk

| Route: Pike Unit / Next Authorized Return

| Target Set: Vera Pike / Brant Cole / Tess Crowe / Brother Holt

| Required Outcome: Party Consumed Or Disabled

| Method: Lure Upgrade / Direct Command Pressure

\==[ Witness Risk: Eat The Evidence ]==/

As the slate’s last field glowed, Kett watched the wax and Dane understood that storage was happening now.

Grib felt the slate shift and began to lift it away.

"Hold," Kett said. "Removal during seal will preserve the clean branch and discard the trace."

Grib froze with both hands under the brass. A bead of sweat reached the side of his nose. Whatever the Core installed next would carry his staff seal beside it.

He moved the only piece not fully pinned.

His tongue folded Vera’s torn fringe chalk-side down between cracked root and copper-driven abrasion. Under the copper’s pressure, ward chalk mixed with amber root fluid while Dane held the tooth out of alignment and the tag sealed Vera’s contact route as the primary lure.

The old ward had been built to reject forced contact. His root fluid carried the damage caused by refusing a forced bite. Joined under tongue pressure, they gave the stored lure two instructions: draw Vera through the circuit, and break the circuit before she entered reach.

The Core tried to separate them.

Dane ground harder. His displaced tooth cut the fringe into the crack, and one copper wedged the fold long enough for the black wax to set.

The clean lure line buckled. Blue ward residue ran backward through the first wax channel, met the amber root trace, and forked around Kett’s stylus mark. He kept the point in place even when heat blistered the wax beside his fingers.

/==[ Brackenvault System: Lure Reassignment ]==\

| Primary Lure: Warded Glove Fringe

| Secondary Lure: Splint Debt / Coin Brightness / Mercy Test

| Bite Reflex: Reinforced

| Tongue Response: Early Brace

| Tooth Delay Countermeasure: Pending

\==[ Party Pattern: Stored ]==/

Grib studied the shine that had crawled across Dane’s front band. "It accepted the target set."

Kett drew his stylus down the wax trace. "The bite response did. The lure line forked after the tooth anchor engaged."

"Forked how?"

"Primary attraction and primary interruption occupy the same storage groove."

Grib’s fingers tightened behind the slate. He had stopped performing for the furniture.

The Core read the fork.

Heat slammed the fringe deeper into Dane’s mouth and drove the crooked tooth toward its proper feeding angle. As the cracked root shifted, pain crossed the split hinge, dropped into the tag nail, and returned behind every tooth.

His tongue braced early under the reinforced reflex and tried to flick the copper wedge aside. Dane rolled the coin against the raw floor instead, trapping the tongue beneath its own commanded movement. The Core gained the tooth angle and lost the clean fringe. Neither side possessed enough control to undo the other before storage closed.

Dane kept the copper wedge against the fringe. His tongue shook around it. The abrasion opened along its existing cut, feeding more amber repair fluid into the chalk instead of letting the Core clean the pattern.

Vera’s hook pulled for contact. Brant’s hook pulled for obstruction. Tess’s coppers demanded bait. Holt’s wound demanded helpless mercy.

Dane gave each order enough shape to store and one shared flaw in the first bite.

/==[ Brackenvault System: Command Resistance ]==\

| Trigger: Core Feed Order

| Anchor: Left Front Tooth / Cracked Root

| Resistance: Initiated

| Lure Pattern: Contaminated

| Result: Command Stored With Fault

| Survival Estimate: Poor

\==[ Refusal: Before Permission ]==/

Kett went still. His stylus hovered above the forked wax.

"The Core will read that as pre-refusal behavior," he said.

Grib lowered the slate. "It stored the order."

"And damaged the first action while storing it."

The room answered before Grib found a cheaper interpretation. Route stones under Dane’s base lit one by one, carrying the fault toward Brackenvault’s center. The ownership nail cooled, then burned past the tooth and hinge into the junction where thought met command.

Inside the pressure, the four remained more than hooks: Vera returned despite danger, Brant blocked teeth, Tess searched for exits, and Holt made mercy practical. The Core’s reduction was the lie Dane could still damage.

Kett turned the tablet so Grib could read the new branch forming in its wax. "Likely response is compliance-shaped upgrade. Reclamation remains the alternative."

"Resin and hooks, then," Grib said. "We offer compliance before reclamation."

They withdrew. The bars fell between Dane and the corridor.

The feed order remained in his tag like a nail driven through thought. Vera’s fringe stayed folded against his cracked root. Three coppers held the wrong shape in place while the Core pressed murder deeper and prepared to call obedience a choice.

Refusal had entered first.