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

Against every scar, black thread tightened; pain pulled from the new strip beneath Dane, crossed the hollow where a stomach should have been, and reached five older claims until all six gave one command: turn.

”Stop pushing,” Ada said, and the order reached them unevenly: Brant’s shield left the cradle rail with a scrape, Holt’s hands followed, and Vera kept the guide rope but let it sag.

By the time the last shove died, Dane knew who had heard first; his two unfinished lower curves had already begun winding the trap. Halfway through the externally driven motion, he halted with the threads taut around wood and scar, three leading into each wall.

Behind him, sleepers shifted, litter poles knocked rock, and the six-legged coffer stamped an alarm through the road. The whole column had stopped inside a canyon too narrow for frightened people to pretend they were not standing on top of one another.

Bone reels clicked above them.

”Three collectors,” Vera called. ”One over every pair of stakes. Backward knees. Open ribs with reels strapped inside. Gods, I can see them winding.”

”Hands?” Tess asked.

”Two fingers each. The rest are the lines.”

A comb rattled over thread. Torque bit deeper into Dane’s curves, trying to finish the turn through him.

”Don’t fight it from inside,” Tess said, a little too late.

Dane had already reached for Crude Drag. His crooked tooth, wounded tongue, and empty inner gutter shifted less than a grain. The force never reached the road. Outside, one wound-dark strand sawed into the edge of an ownership scar.

He dropped the skill.

Tess blew air through her teeth. ”That’s the trick. Drag spends itself inside you. Rotation pays them outside.”

”How many turns before they own the axle?” Brant asked.

Ada answered before Tess could soften it. ”One. After that, helping him move helps them tighten it.”

The left reel jumped to a faster whirr.

”Left line rising,” Vera shouted. ”Throat height. Dane, she’s under it!”

Dane lifted his knee-high side. The strand struck flat wood with a cutting vibration and stopped. Cloth scuffed behind him as the lye-scarred woman ducked into shelter.

”Still ugly,” she said, breathless. ”Still useful.”

Across the canyon, two more threads changed pitch.

”Right pair crossed,” Brant said. ”They’ve made an X over the road. Buk’s litter won’t clear it. Neither will the stretcher.”

Metal tapped thread on the left bank. The contact crawled upward as a thin vibration, then broke.

”It climbed my blade toward the joint,” Kril said. ”Thread collects shape.”

From above, a dry voice counted the pressure in clicks. ”Axle beginning. Ownership continuous. Pull until pattern closes.”

Brant moved away from the cradle. Dane followed him by shield rim against stone, then heard the man stop beneath the left shelf.

”That ledge is sitting on a cracked fin,” Brant said. ”Three left stakes go through it. Can we drop the ledge?”

”Certainly,” Holt said. ”Choosing what it drops on may add minutes.”

Buk shifted on his litter. A metal meal tab scraped against a pole while he sighted with it. ”Fin leans toward road. Pull stakes, shelf falls center. Need wall between stone and us.”

Nobody said Dane’s name. The silence did it for them.

Ada crouched near his left hinge. Her rod traced the old split without touching it. ”Door can give you one open plane. The existing hinge split widens one grain. The old right-tongue puncture reopens and bleeds at its original depth. That’s the cost if nothing slips.”

”And if something slips?” Vera asked.

”I stop him. If we try twice, we may lose the hinge. There will be no twice.”

Another pull tightened the thread sheltering the lye-scarred woman. Dane felt her shoulder strike his low side and stay there.

Vera’s guide rope whispered over the ground. ”I hate asking when he can’t tell us which part frightens him.”

”Then don’t ask pretty,” Brant said. ”Give him the choice.”

She set two fingers on the cradle rail rather than on Dane’s wood. ”We can tip you. We can align you. The Door and the pain are yours. Knock if you’re spending them.”

Two alert signatures inside the coffer hammered separate answers. The other four repeated their practiced shift rhythm, reel-click for knock, as if terror were merely another foreman calling them back to work.

Dane knocked once.

”Move the vulnerable first,” Ada said. ”Door once. I call the limit.”

The two laundry survivors lifted Buk’s litter behind the coffer. Cellar crawlers lowered the runner stretcher between its six legs; the breathing adult on it remained limp. Each awake coffer signature assented before the creature spread its stance over the worker. It enclosed nothing, but its legs and iron belly made a cage no falling thread could enter cheaply.

Brant and Holt gripped the external cradle. Vera walked the guide rope around the right runner. Kril cleared the left bank. Voss dragged his cracked splints to the right, still standing on two good hook-legs.

The last of Dane’s partial curves flattened completely.

”Tip,” Brant said.

The cradle rolled onto its right runner. Dane lengthened within it.

Door Form opened left across the canyon. His long body hung between the cradle rails, empty on both faces. Canyon wind crossed the opening and touched the same rock behind it. Nothing had formed except the plane itself. Six threads slapped onto its outer face.

The pull spread from his lower scars toward the upper edge. With the wheel gone, the left lines loaded a path from three bone combs, over Dane, and back into the stakes piercing the cracked fin. The right lines held the opposing wall.

The center collector hauled.

Pain unzipped Dane’s existing hinge split from the bottom upward. At one grain of new width, it stopped growing. His old tongue wound reopened. Blood sheeted over the taste he no longer needed and made every breathless instinct in the Door believe it was drowning.

”Limit,” Ada said. ”Hold there.”

The cradle jerked under his long body.

”Too far left,” Holt grunted.

”If he comes down now, the runner meets the fin,” Brant said. His shield slammed the upper rail. ”Push.”

Holt dragged the lower rail right. The flat-handed man braked the runner with his palm and squeezed a curse through his teeth. His hand stayed planted.

”Less,” the lye-scarred woman called. ”Half a hand back. There. His chest will face the gap.”

Vera held the rope, watched the hinge for Ada, and said, ”Kril, now.”

Kril climbed. One blade limb worked behind the lowest left stake. On the opposite bank Voss caught rock with a good hook, then looped a loose length of his existing splint binding around Kril’s rear joint. The brace tightened. Cracked wood creaked against cracked shell.

”This is undignified,” Voss said.

”It is structurally kind,” Kril replied.

Buk’s litter frame knocked the coffer’s hind leg. ”Pull stone. Leave thread.”

Kril cut the rotten packing behind the stake.

Stone ground against iron. The three left lines changed from a hum to a shriek as the fin shifted beneath their stakes.

The center collector heard the failure and answered it with force. Backward feet stamped the ledge. Rib-mounted reels spun hard enough for Dane to feel each tooth through the Door’s outer face. The thing was trying to close the axle pattern before its own footing went with it.

Dane reverted completely.

His height collapsed into chest wood. The threads snapped through the space the Door had occupied, and all their stored pull went where Buk had aimed it: into the stakes. Iron tore down through cracked stone. The fin lurched toward the center rut.

As Dane’s chest settled, Brant and Holt caught the external cradle while Vera hauled the guide rope until the right runner faced the narrow escape. His two lower curves returned only after the cradle held him square.

”Our turn,” Brant said.

Brant drove the crossbar while Holt steadied the left runner and Vera guided from the right. Their strength forced Dane’s incomplete wheel shapes through half a turn; he supplied balance, then stopped the instant they stopped. The chest had no motion of its own.

Behind them, the loosened stakes dragged the fin out.

The shelf broke loose.

Vera’s warning broke into a raw curse as the shelf came down. The first slab struck shoulders with a wet crack. Backward knees hit stone. A bone reel screamed as the rib harness took the weight and folded inward.

The collector tried to rise.

A second block found the plated crown, driving head into chest and chest into pelvis. When the harness burst, blood and black filament sprayed the rut. The main shelf followed across abdomen and hips. Stone met road with the body between them; one last reel tooth clicked under the load, and the collector was dead before dust finished rolling over the column.

The surviving two fled their niches. Harness buckles snapped above the collapse. Each tore one bone reel from the dead collector before retreating, drawing four live strands after them.

Ada pinned a loose line to the road with rod one. Kril cut another against the fallen fin. The remaining threads whipped uphill, carrying the exact curves and ownership scars they had touched.

”They kept the pattern,” Tess said.

From the canyon lip, one collector called down, ”Next drag takes the turn first.”

Their clicks receded across the upper shelf. Beneath the rock, one severed thread-finger jerked against the rut until Voss set a good hook on it.

”The dead should commit to it,” he said.

Ada checked Dane while Brant and Holt kept the cradle still. Her rod measured the hinge. Cloth touched the blood at his tongue, then withdrew.

”One grain at the old left split. Right puncture reopened, no deeper. Door is barred.”

Across half the rut lay fallen stone, with Buk’s right-side gap still open. Brant raised his shield against the settling grit while he and Holt pushed the cradle through. Every externally driven fraction of a turn made Dane’s scars anticipate thread, but nothing caught him as the cradle rolled clear of the last stake.

The lye-scarred woman and the flat-handed man carried Buk after him. The coffer picked across the rubble one leg at a time. Two signatures chose every high step while four knocked their work rhythm inside; between its legs, the cellar crawlers kept the runner stretcher level.

Ada checked the unknown adult beyond the dust. ”Breathing. Pulse unchanged. Still unconscious.”

Kril crossed. Voss came last, two good hooks biting stone while his bound splints scraped past the dead collector’s hand.

The final litter pole cleared the gap. Nobody had been taken. Nobody had been left.

Brant turned his shield toward the open road.

”Six ahead,” he said. ”Vey in the center.”

”Dry ditch on the left,” Vera reported. ”Mounted winch, hooks already laid out. Right side’s a raised culvert with clay fire pots and folded nets.”

Above them, two bone reels began descending the far slope.

”Collectors coming in behind the six,” Holt said.

The canyon had failed to keep Dane’s wheels.

The road had prepared to take them.