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

Brant shifted the hook, and Dane’s new split answered with a slow grind around the crooked pin.

The bitten glove rested between the inner mark and outer arc. Tess tightened the intact cord; leather dragged across stone, and the buckle knocked inside its palm.

”One scan, Pike,” Brant said.

His rear boot pressed into the floor seam. The hook settled hard enough over Dane’s lid to make the damaged left side throb.

Vera stood beyond the outer arc. ”Lockplate to split hinge. If the lid rises a thumb or the crystal kicks, take my sleeve and pull one full step. Tess cuts the cord on the same movement. Holt calls what moves first.”

”If your hand stops working, I pull anyway.”

”Pull first. We can argue after.”

Dane’s lid shoved against the hook. The split pin scraped; Brant ground his rear boot into the seam until the pressure stopped rising.

Tess’s knife scraped against the cord. ”The glove is already dead. I won’t risk a live hand to recover it.”

Holt’s prayer beads clicked once as he took position. ”Witnesses make a lie harder. They do not make the teeth kinder.”

”Then watch the teeth,” Vera said. ”Leave my theory until we’re outside.”

Knowing why each of them stayed should have helped. Instead, Vera’s pulse sharpened beneath her cuff, horribly edible in Dane’s prey sense.

The loose cuff thread still carried her soap against his gum. His tongue pressed toward that trace while the hook kept the lid shut and the ownership tag waited in his side.

Saint Rust’s knife vessel shifted behind Toma’s glove remnant.

”Grib joined lockplate to hinge with his resin, cupboard. If her spell enters the brass, it will reach the split.”

The split stayed fixed beneath its brass band.

Chalk grated over old ward salt. The sound traveled from the outer arc toward him and stopped before his lockplate.

”Path set,” Vera said. ”No contact. Starting now.”

A low vibration entered the stone.

It climbed through Dane’s base and heated the lockplate. Both black ownership nails burned as Grib’s cured resin carried the spell along command routes: plate to rim, rim to band, band to hinge, hinge to mouth.

Mana tasted like a copper coin held too long against a cut.

Five shallow coppers jumped. Deeper, the uncontrolled thin silver struck the square-holed coin on its red string beneath Toma’s scarf and Nate’s return charm. Saint Rust’s knife knocked the inner wall. Everything stayed inside.

His teeth dampened. The cut through his tongue tightened.

Above the lid, hook metal trembled under the first upward pull. Brant’s boot held the seam while Vera’s pulse stayed beyond both marks.

Vera’s pulse sharpened from a location into a target.

The tongue chose her.

The lid had not followed yet.

Dane drove his 0.08% interval into the hinge. The pin rolled in its torn channel; resin edges rubbed; his rim pulled right while the lid strained left beneath Brant’s hook.

The old split ground without giving another grain.

”Tongue first,” Holt said. His voice came faster than his usual careful measure. ”Lid rising. Still under the thumb mark.”

The mana pressure moved left.

At the hinge, warmth tried to press torn wood closed for the next command. Cold traced it as a defect; the ownership nails tightened; the lure pulled his coppers toward exposed resin as bait.

Four answers for one injury. Every answer wanted to use it.

Dane folded around the last place the spell had not reached. The effort felt like closing a bleeding fist before anyone could ask whose blood it was.

Cold pressure entered anyway.

The brass beneath him became a bathroom faucet under his human palm.

The fan ticked. Blood feathered through sink water. Dane wrapped his other hand in the dark towel, but drops still led in from the kitchen.

June followed every one.

The warped cabinet door rested against her knee. The ruined can opener lay on the counter with one stripped gear; the butter knife sat in the sink beside the open beans.

June took his wrist before he could turn the cut away.

”Hold still, if you can.”

”It’s shallow.”

”Then it will still be shallow after I clean it.”

He reached for the towel. June moved it out of reach without releasing him.

”The opener broke,” he said.

”That explains the knife. Why was the bloody towel in the hamper?”

Water struck the basin between them. June turned his palm into the light and picked one wet thread from the cut without letting him hide his hand.

”I was going to tell you.”

”Dane.” Her grip loosened enough to offer him a choice and stayed firm enough to make the choice matter. ”I shouldn’t have to find blood before I’m allowed to help. Sit down.”

He sat on the closed toilet lid. June knelt with the first-aid box between her feet, angry and frightened and still holding his wrist while the faucet ran.

The memory shuddered.

In Brackenvault, Vera’s crystal struck its wrist strap.

”Hold still, if you can,” she said to the bucking spell.

June’s thumb had been warm against Dane’s pulse. Vera’s words reached him through salt, stone, brass, and two ownership nails. The rhythms belonged to different women; ownership resin forced both through the same wound.

Apartment soap flooded Dane’s mouth.

The property tag seized the exposed shame and fed it to his lure. His five coppers surged. One flipped upright beneath the tongue and rang against a tooth. The mouth filled with the remembered salt of his own palm and the present heat of Vera’s wrist.

His tongue lunged.

The lid jerked after it.

Dane caught the interval before they became one movement. He forced the front rim against the lid and ground the split around its pin. Pain bit from hinge to lockplate. Teeth rose into the gap, wet and ready, while the hook fought them from above.

”Tongue,” Holt called. ”Lid under the mark.”

The mana route kicked backward.

Vera gasped. Crystal struck strap again. Brant seized her sleeve and pulled; one boot hit stone, then the other landed a full step farther away. Tess’s knife sawed once through the cord. The cut end snapped across the floor.

Dane’s teeth closed on empty air.

The false glove stayed between the two marks, its buckle outside his mouth. Tess’s severed end of cord dragged back toward the wall.

/==[ Mana Reaction ]==\

| Refusal Heat: Shame

| Anchor: June / Bathroom Sink

| Compatibility: Unstable

| Name: Withheld

\==[ Trace Retained ]==/

The panel vanished. Its withheld name remained Dane’s alone.

Vera’s crystal touched down on stone with a hard click.

”Pike,” Brant said.

”The scan is closed.”

”Your hand. Open it.”

Her glove leather creased, stopped, then creased again.

”Again,” Brant said.

The fingers opened with five soft pulls against leather. ”Cold. Pressure through the strap. No burn.”

Brant kept hold of her sleeve until both boots stopped sliding. Only then did his grip ease, while the other hand maintained the hook between Vera and Dane.

Holt’s beads moved nearer, then stopped. ”The lid stayed below the limit. His teeth closed after the spell recoiled.”

”Cord is cut,” Tess said. Her breath came too quickly for the steadiness she put into the next question. ”Can another crystal do that to its mage?”

”I don’t know,” Vera said.

The answer left Tess with cord wound across her glove. She unwound it slowly, breathing until the leather stopped creaking.

”Then the warning goes on the crystal before anyone handles one.”

Silence held until Tess’s boot shifted sharply away from the stone.

”Vera. Don’t tighten the strap.”

”What changed?”

”The glass is clouding from the center. There’s something beneath it.”

Holt moved close enough for his prayer case to brush his coat, then stopped before the crystal.

”Five blunt whorls,” he said. ”They form a thumbprint.”

Brant kept his body between Vera and Dane. ”Which side of the glass?”

Holt took long enough that Tess’s cord went still.

”The wrong one,” he said. ”The print is inside.”

Vera’s next breath broke halfway in. ”I never touched that face.”

Dane received the scan’s residue through their voices and the strap tremor reaching the floor. His split hinge answered with its own dry grind.

Vera spoke toward Holt’s slate. ”Record shame-like recoil around the damaged route, an attempt to conceal the wound, delayed mouth response, and an unstable retained trace. I will not write sentient. I will not write safe.”

Pressure lifted from Dane’s lockplate as Brant moved the hook toward the weakened left side.

”Write adaptive,” Brant said. ”It hid the place we’d strike. That makes the trap worse.”

”It also used that place before the bite stopped,” Holt said.

”The teeth still closed.”

The hook scraped across Dane’s lockplate and shifted its pressure toward the split. His crooked pin clicked beneath it; Holt’s prayer beads went quiet.

”After the delay. Break the hinge and you erase the only order we can prove.”

Tess let the severed cord fall. It struck the stone between her boots.

”If that print reaches a collector before a hazard seal does, the next party brings hands instead of a hook.”

”More hands are a reason to end this now,” Brant said.

”Same danger,” Tess replied. ”Different answer.”

The hook’s notch left Dane’s lid. Relief lasted less than a heartbeat. Brant’s rear boot loaded the floor seam, the haft cut the air, and the weapon rose toward the split left side.

Without the hook’s weight, Dane’s crooked lid shifted. His hinge ground around the pin.

Vera’s crystal knocked once against stone.

”Then we vote,” she said. ”Containment, or a broken hinge.”