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

The encounter room stabbed Dane into place before it opened the door.

His base dropped into a stone socket. Iron pins punched up around the underside of his shell and torqued against every attempt to shift. A floor groove circled him at five paces, with a second line running from the front threshold to the left wall.

Behind that wall, Milo Trent’s return charm gave one weak pulse.

The dirty copper beyond Dane’s intake burned in answer. Two dull coppers remained free along the inside of his front lip. Vera’s chalk-threaded fringe stayed pressed to the cracked root, and shattered clean-token pieces ground under the crooked tooth whenever the pins tightened.

Brackenvault polished Dane’s lid until his scratches caught the torchlight. Lure scent pumped from his seams and tagged every involuntary glance as prey attention. Across the lockplate, the dungeon assigned F-2 Storage Mimic Seventeen as Milo’s primary lure. Core charge seized Dane’s reflexes and gave his teeth priority.

The power entered through the brass tag. His split left hinge pulled open a fraction and held there.

The front door unsealed.

Vera crossed first with chalk between two fingers. Brant covered her right shoulder, sword in his right hand and splinted left forearm bound close to his ribs. Holt followed with his prayer mark tied at the belt. Tess came last, already counting the center groove, ceiling hooks, wall seams, and the two coppers she refused to trust.

Stone closed behind them. Above the door, the route seal admitted the rescue signal lay ahead but obstructed, declared the storage asset active, and deferred Pike Unit’s exit until the room judged the encounter resolved. The words `Mercy Under Review` rotated the center groove half an inch, and Vera stopped the party before anyone crossed it.

"Brant covers the mouth. Holt, signal only. Tess, walls before locks."

Holt turned his head left. Milo’s charm fluttered twice, low behind Dane and close enough to pull a white answer from the mark at Holt’s belt.

"Left wall," Holt said. "Weak and stuttering."

Dane pressed his lockplate outward, trying to make one repulsive warning rattle.

Sound Lure caught it.

A single bright click fell from his mouth, the promise of a coin at the bottom of an empty purse. Tess’s gaze snapped to the front lip before anger dragged it away.

Her reaction tightened Dane’s tongue and pulled at the intake. Brackenvault sorted them through his body: Vera’s ribs, Tess’s wrist, Holt across the mercy line, Brant once his sword arm tired. The sequence prepared itself despite Dane’s hatred.

Vera’s chalk hand dipped toward him, then steadied. "There was another sound under the lure. Crooked."

"Crooked still has teeth," Brant said. He set his right boot just outside the center line.

Vera’s attention triggered Reflex Override. The lid and tongue turned automatic; the crooked tooth remained contested; strain ran beyond Dane’s rating. `Bite: Preparing` burned through the brass tag and hauled his lid up.

The left hinge opened late, dragging the split wider while the floor pins twisted his base in the opposite direction. His tongue coiled over the reopened abrasion. Teeth lifted through the polished rim one row at a time.

From the center socket, the tongue shot straight down the threshold line at Vera, who stood half a pace outside the five-pace groove. Its tip opened for the right side of her ribs.

He drove the crooked tooth down on the token shards. Copper bit the cracked root. The pain dragged the tongue eight inches toward Dane’s left, across Vera’s right side.

Brant stepped inward from her right shoulder and entered those eight inches.

Brant angled his right-hand blade from Dane’s right hinge across the tongue, keeping the edge from Vera. The impact shoved him backward along the outer lip of the groove. His boots carved two black tracks. The sword jarred his shoulder, slammed the splinted left arm against his ribs, and bent, but held.

Dane’s tongue slid along steel. Rust and chalk grit rasped through the existing wound. The abrasion peeled open, and the brass tag seared its ownership mark into the exposed channel. Amber-black fluid ran down the blade and smoked where it touched the floor.

"Right side blind," Brant said through his teeth. "Now."

Vera snapped a fistful of chalk into Dane’s lockplate.

White dust burst across the brass tag and stripped the room down to its command routes. The center groove sent stance and balance into Dane’s jaw. The left-wall charm pulled at Holt’s mercy. The seal above the door swallowed defensive mana and returned it as encounter pressure. Core charge ran from the floor pins through Dane’s base, up the split hinge, and into the tongue wrapped around Brant’s blade.

Vera saw the same lines. "The room is feeding his property mark. Tess, stay outside the circle. Holt, cut your answer."

The return charm pulsed before Holt could close his fist.

White cord flashed from the mark at his belt to the left wall. It hauled his hips one pace across the floor. His heel reached the center groove and caught there while stone teeth rose on either side of his boot, crushed the sole, and stopped against leather.

The charm supplied an image through the cord: a hand beating weakly against stone, then darkness. Holt’s vow answered the possibility of a living person before judgment caught up. Brackenvault spent that fraction of mercy like muscle.

Holt drove his prayer mark against his buckle and stopped the second step. "It is pulling on the rescue vow."

"Then make it pull you sideways," Vera said. She hooked chalk around his ankle without taking her eyes off Dane.

Tess moved counterclockwise along the outer groove. Her pry hook stayed in her right hand; black thread uncoiled from her left. She passed behind Vera, never entered Dane’s reach, and set her body between a ceiling hook and the seam in the left wall.

"Hinge line under the mortar," she said. "No collector bracket. The wall opens for rescue."

Brackenvault rotated the groove beneath her.

The floor snapped her right foot forward and dragged the left backward. Tess dropped before the stone could split her stance. She threw the black thread over the ceiling hook, caught both ends, and let the rotating floor launch her around Dane’s left side.

Her boots cleared the center line. The swing carried her shoulder-high toward the false wall, pry hook extended.

Tess’s weight bent the ceiling hook, raining mortar into Dane’s tongue wound. The cough became a wider Core-forced gape, and an iron shaving dropped from his splitting left hinge.

Dane’s pinned body tracked her heat.

His mouth received a butcher’s diagram. Bite through the wrist. Pop the joint. Pull the hand in first so the forearm followed. Tess remained a living adult in Dane’s thoughts while Brackenvault converted her into pieces that fit.

Dane crushed the token shards harder.

The cracked root tore another thread. His lid dipped, spoiling the first bite angle while Tess’s hook struck the left seam. Stone broke outward. A blue return charm flashed through the gap.

Holt’s belt mark answered it with Milo’s license pattern.

"Live signal," Holt said. "It is him."

"The chest is the lock," Vera said.

The room changed targets. Rogue contact burned over the brass tag and snapped the hinge against its widened split.

Its center groove reversed. Holt’s trapped heel jerked right, tearing Vera’s ankle ward out of shape. The route seal drank her next chalk arc. Dane’s tongue released Brant’s blade, crossed his open mouth from right to front-left, and struck toward Tess as she reached the high point beside the false wall.

Brant drove off his right leg. His sword caught the underside of the tongue two feet short of Tess’s wrist, but the lunge twisted his torso around the protected left arm. Pain broke his breath. His edge only slowed the strike.

Steel opened Dane’s tongue wound to the lockplate. Chalk grit entered it. The brass tag flared against raw flesh, and Core charge turned every scrape into a command to close.

Coiling around the sword, the tongue ripped it from Brant’s hand as Tess kicked off the false wall. Her hook tore down the seam, widening Milo’s air gap, while black thread drew tight enough to sing above Dane’s lid. She swung diagonally from the left wall toward the doorway, passing over Dane’s front-left corner with her left arm leading and the pry hook flattened along her right palm.

When the command chose the leading wrist, Dane ground the crooked tooth sideways.

One clean-token shard drove under the root. Another cut his tongue. Pain detonated through the hinge and brass tag. The tongue missed Tess’s skin by two fingers and struck the black thread.

The thread snapped when Tess hung above Dane’s front-left lip.

Her right boot dropped onto the rotating center groove. Stone threw the foot toward the doorway while her torso kept falling toward Dane. Tess turned, kept the hook flat along her right palm and away from Vera’s throat, and brought her left forearm across her face.

The mismatched vectors folded her waist over Dane’s front rim.

His floor pins torqued until the socket crushed a strip from his base. The split hinge widened. Tess’s left forearm crossed the rim and struck Dane’s wounded tongue.

Skin remained whole as Rogue Contact triggered Bite Resolution, suppressed mercy interference, and forced every reflex around the resisting crooked tooth. Feed remained pending. `Jaw: Closing` sent Core charge through root, hinge, and every rising tooth.

Her pulse hammered against the mouth that had already classified her as meat. Brackenvault folded the first row of teeth around her arm.