The Accident

The sky above Brasshaven shimmered with golden steam as airships drifted between the towering brass spires. Below, the city streets clanked and hissed with automaton workers, street performers juggling clockwork birds, and vendors shouting about the latest mechanized must-haves.

Seventeen-year-old Finn Gearwright sprinted down a cobblestone street, coat flapping behind him, as an enraged shopkeeper hurled a boiling teapot at his head.

"You little gear-gremlin! You broke my Steam-Kettle 3000!"

Finn barely dodged, the kettle exploding in a hiss of superheated steam behind him. "It was an accident!" he yelped.

Correction. It was Tess's accident. His best friend, Tess Copperwrench, had sworn her latest gadget—a self-buttering toast machine—was a flawless masterpiece. Instead, it had misfired, launching molten jam onto an aristocrat's wig and short-circuiting the shopkeeper's entire storefront.

Now, Finn was on the run.

"Why am I always the one getting chased?!" he shouted, vaulting over a pile of coal.

Tess, perched on a rooftop above, waved down at him. "Because I don't stick around after I press the button!"

Finn cursed under his breath and turned a corner—

—straight into Lady Zephyria von Stormhaven.

For a single, frozen moment, Finn processed what had just happened. He had crashed into the most notoriously short-tempered noble girl in all of Machina Academy.

Her emerald eyes burned with outrage. Her extravagant steam-threaded ballgown hissed and sparked as one of its hover-skirt stabilizers malfunctioned. Then, with a horrifying mechanical whirr, her dress launched her straight into the sky like a faulty rocket.

Finn gawked.

Tess gasped.

The entire street erupted into laughter.

Zephyria, now flailing thirty feet above them, screamed murder. "YOU ABSOLUTE BUFFOON—!"

Acting on pure instinct (and a terrible sense of self-preservation), Finn leapt onto a nearby cart, bounced off an automaton's shoulders, and caught Zephyria midair—only for gravity to remind him why this was a bad idea.

They crashed into a pile of hydraulic pumpkins.

A long silence.

Zephyria, half-buried in squash, glared daggers at him. "You… absolute… idiot."

Finn chuckled nervously. "On the bright side… at least we're alive?"

The crowd erupted into cheers, completely misinterpreting the situation. An elderly woman sobbed, "Such youthful romance!"

Zephyria's eye twitched. Then she grabbed the closest pumpkin and smashed it over Finn's head.

Cue slapstick beatdown.

And just like that… Finn's normal life was officially over.