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

Brant’s shield scraped farther down the corridor. Holt was telling Toma to keep his left hand above his heart when the hooked knife stopped ticking against stone.

”Wait.”

One boot came back toward the threshold.

The shield rim struck grout across its path. Holt caught cloth at Toma’s uninjured elbow.

”Stay with me,” Holt said. ”Hand up.”

Toma’s breath snagged, then steadied. ”My glove is still in there. There’s a ring inside it. Mine.”

”You got your hand out once,” Brant said. ”I’m not giving you room to spend it twice.”

”I don’t need room. If we turn the glove over, the ring should fall free.”

Inside Dane, the blood-stiff leather lay across his tongue. The uneven weight in its palm had shifted when the party started away. He had known it only as something harder than leather, warmer than the coins.

Vera spoke from beyond the dry chalk scrape. No mana touched Dane’s lockplate. ”Is it plain, or enchanted?”

”Plain. Brass, mostly.” Toma tried to take another breath through the pain and lost some of his practiced carelessness. ”Jessa made it fit.”

Holt’s bandage cloth creaked beneath a sudden clench.

”Open the fingers,” he said. ”Both of them. Slowly.”

Toma obeyed badly enough for his breath to shake.

Vera let the quiet last. ”If Brant shifts that shield, are you going after it?”

The hook ground once against the floor. Toma gave her no answer.

Brant leaned more weight into the shield; Dane felt the stone take it. ”Then the shield stays.”

”Put the ring down separate from the glove,” Toma said. ”Whatever you call what I did, make that part clear.”

Tess’s pencil resumed behind Brant. A short scratch, a pause, then another. ”Plain brass ring. Claimed by Toma Reed. Still inside the live hazard.”

”And the other entry?”

”Still yours too.”

Toma let out a breath through his nose. The hook stopped scraping.

Vera spoke into the gap. ”Nobody crosses the chalk. The guild can send sealed tongs and a witness. Until then, the ring stays where your hand left it.”

”If the chest eats it—”

”You will have a hand to point with when you complain. Move.”

Holt tugged Toma away by the elbow. ”Your fingertips are cooling. Jessa can shout after I save them.”

Toma’s hook dragged off to the right. ”She’ll ask about the ring first.”

”Then you should practice an honest opening sentence.”

Brant withdrew in short shielded steps. Tess followed without writing; Holt kept Toma’s uneven pace between them. Each set of boots curved around the chalk boundary instead of scuffing across it.

”Nobody comes back alone,” Vera said. Her steps followed the others. The leather loop at her wrist creaked once. No mana returned to Dane’s lockplate.

His lid stayed open after the last boot faded.

Toma’s glove pressed his fading tongue cut. The scarf scrap remained hooked beneath one tooth. Five ordinary coppers rested in the shallow front gutter. Deeper inside, the thin silver and square-holed coin with red string lay beyond his precise reach. Nate’s rain-over-roof charm and nicked belt knife remained hard and whole.

Conversion heat gathered around the weight in the glove.

The torn palm softened. Beneath it, contact mapped a narrow warm circle.

/==[ Brackenvault System: Conversion Offer ]==\

| Item: Plain Brass Ring

| Source: Toma Reed / Left Glove

| Market Value: Low

| Personal Value: Unrecorded

| Yield: Trace Metal / Bond Residue

\==[ Choice: Convert? ]==/

Jessa made it fit.

The heat became the metal door of a dryer under Dane’s hand, years before the crash.

Every chair in the laundromat held somebody else’s basket, so June sat on a machine with a blue pen through her hair. One dryer had begun thumping as if a boot were trapped inside. She ignored it and worked a bent quarter out of the washer slot with her thumbnail.

Her wedding band lay on the dryer beside her. The vibration walked it to the edge.

It dropped, struck the tile, and rolled toward the drain.

June stopped it beneath her sneaker.

Dane had already come halfway out of his chair.

”Stay there,” she said.

”I was getting it.”

”I know. Stay anyway.”

She left the ring pinned while she tried the quarter again. The washer rejected it with a hard clack.

Dane sat. His hand went over the rent notice on the basket between them.

June heard the paper move. ”How many hours did you pick up?”

”Just Saturday.”

She looked at him then, not angry yet. That was worse. ”We were going to decide together.”

”It was one shift.”

The thumping dryer completed another ugly turn. June held out her hand without answering him. Dane bent, freed the ring from beneath her shoe, and rubbed the grit away with his thumb.

The cheap band caught at her knuckle when he tried to put it back.

”Slow,” she said.

He eased it over the swollen joint. ”Sorry.”

June kept her hand in his. ”For which part?”

He gave a small laugh. She let it hang between them.

”Saturday,” he said.

”All right. Start there.”

The ring settled against the pale groove at the base of her finger. She turned his hand over and snapped his looser band once with her nail.

”Next time, wake me up and tell me before you volunteer us both.”

”You’ll be mad.”

”Probably. Tell me anyway.”

The washer spat the bent quarter into the return tray. June put it in his palm, closed his fingers around it, and kept hold of his hand.

Heat tightened around Toma’s glove.

The laundromat vanished before Dane could answer.

Hunger pulled the leather toward the conversion fold behind his tongue. The brass circle came with it.

Dane refused.

The remaining edge of Toma’s crossed cuts still gave him one weak address in the muscle. He pressed through it and tried to lift the glove. His tongue caught the scarf instead. Wool stretched; the torn palm slid closer to the hot fold.

The cut tightened as it healed. His second attempt had less pain to work with.

A sideways drive sent the torn palm into an inner tooth. Leather caught, stretched, and split another fraction, releasing the ring into the shallow gutter with a small brass knock.

Dane’s iron-banded base stayed planted on the uneven flagstone. He forced weight into the left front rim until living wood compressed against the floor. The gutter changed angle by less than a finger’s width.

Gravity took the ring. It rolled once, bumped a copper, and stopped where resin dust and old blood dragged at its edge.

The lure route swelled around the newly exposed metal. His teeth wanted the lid brought down. Conversion heat opened beneath the glove again, ready to take leather if brass remained out of reach.

Dane held the rim pressure and kept the ring in the dirty front gutter.

/==[ Brackenvault Registry: Conversion Refusal ]==\

| Item: Personal Ring

| Conversion: Denied

| Feed Credit: Withheld

| Hunger Debt: Increased

| Behavior: Inefficient / Repeating

\==[ Record Closed ]==/

Emptiness formed behind the lockplate and pulled in several directions at once. Glove leather softened against his tongue. Scarf fiber tasted faintly sweet. Each copper warmed like a bite already chewed; the thin silver pressed cold and rich from deeper inside. The red-string coin offered metal and old cloth together. Nate’s charm carried the dense heat of a promise the dungeon had tasted before. Rust on the belt knife turned sharp enough to sting.

The glove crept toward the charm when Dane’s body contracted. He caught the leather on a tooth. The scarf tugged toward the conversion fold instead, and the fading cut barely slowed it.

A private layer opened beneath the Registry record.

/==[ Brackenvault System: Memory Fragment ]==\

| Trigger: Ring Refusal

| Anchor: June / Laundromat

| Integrated Choice: Preserve Promise

| Control: 0.04% -> 0.05%

\==[ Integration Complete ]==/

The change settled into the routes between his front rim and the five ordinary coppers.

Dane chose one. It rolled left while the other four stayed where they were. He reversed a second beneath the lid gap without flexing his tongue.

He pressed the same narrow intent toward Toma’s ring.

The brass stayed still.

The glove and scarf remained at the front with it. All five coppers stayed shallow. The thin silver and square-holed red-string coin remained deeper, beyond the rule. Nate’s return charm and belt knife lay separate and unconverted.

The belt knife lifted.

Its flat slid away from Dane’s tongue and nudged the return charm aside. The brass tag stayed cool. No pressure passed through the rim.

Dane released the two coppers. He let the front board settle, stopped pushing through the fading cut, and left every route he could control slack.

The knife kept moving. Its flat touched the healed side of his tongue while its edge turned into the wooden wall, clear of living flesh.

A dry voice came from the metal.

”Sentimental cupboard.”

The knife shifted once against Nate’s charm.

”You refuse metal with a story, but swallow blood with a receipt. New to being used, are you?”