Chapter 1: The Boiling Brass Heart
"I told you not to go out, Chloe. ...What's on your hands?"
Brushing soot from his dark brown hair, Yuri Alden roughly flipped up the welding goggles on his forehead. In the depths of the workshop, where oil smoke and gunpowder fumes mingled, in front of a workbench where brass pipes whined shrilly, Chloe von Lancaster's silver-gray curls swayed in white steam. She had forced her way in, bending the hinges of the door. The hem of her dress, revealing a brass corset and intricately meshing gears, was soaked with lukewarm, dark, viscous splatters.
"Yuri-sama, engage my gears for me..." she whispered.
"Answer me! Whose blood is that!"
Even as he roared, Yuri's Adam's apple bobbed violently, his throat parched. From the gaps in Chloe's slender fingertips—the dully gleaming ball joints—steaming, dark red drops fell onto the blueprints on the workbench, staining the oil paper.
"It was the bakery girl. She touched your fingertips and smiled at you so brazenly. So I dislocated her joints for her, so she could never touch anyone again."
"...You're insane. I only fixed your broken limbs! I don't recall building a murder weapon!"
Her crimson eyes, set in cold, porcelain skin, narrowed into crescent moons. From Chloe's mouth, where her lips curled up at the corners, overheated steam hissed out with a sharp, sibilant sound.
Chloe seized Yuri's wrist with her brass prosthetic arm, strong as a vise, and forcibly pulled him towards her chest. A grip that made bones creak. A cold, ruthless violence that blocked any escape.
Thin fabric was violently torn away, and through reinforced heat-resistant glass, the ultra-high-speed rotating steam engine—the 'Brass Heart'—spewed out crimson heat like a mad thing.
A high-pitched whine, the exhaust note of an engine at its limit, mercilessly scorched Yuri's exposed skin.
"Touch it, Yuri-sama. My brass heart is groaning, almost breaking, from wanting you. Will you cool it down for me?" she whispered.
"It's too hot...! Lower the pressure, it's going to explode!"
What coursed through his palm was a heat of 120 degrees Celsius, far exceeding human body temperature. Her iron skeleton trembled with madness, Chloe's ribcage heaved, rubbing a cloying scent of oil against Yuri's chest.
"I wish the whole world, everything but you, would just evaporate...!"
Their breaths mingled, and just as their lips were about to touch, the reinforced glass behind them shattered into a thousand pieces with an ear-splitting roar.
The violent white light of a flashbang and high-pressure tear gas steam instantly obliterated the dim darkness of the workshop.
Chapter 2: The Inspector's Condemnation and the Sealed Cage
"Don't move, Yuri, and you, murder weapon. You're caught in the act of serial assault in the lower districts."
The crunch of military boots on glass shards. A silver-haired man in a jet-black military uniform adorned with golden insignia, Balt Krom, stepped out of the smoke, a heavy brass rifle leveled. The multi-functional monocle on his right eye emitted an eerie, pale measuring light, accompanied by a mechanical whirring.
"Balt... why is the Public Safety Bureau here?"
"Wake up, Yuri. That monster doesn't love you. It's merely trapped by programmed runaway impulses."
A bitter taste of iron spread in the back of his throat. Balt's cold, ruthless pronouncement grated against the inside of Yuri's ribs.
"Use your intellect for the Empire. The monster will be disposed of here."
The moment the rifle barrel was aimed at Chloe's forehead, a silver-gray afterimage blocked Yuri's vision. Chloe, who had slid in front of him, stood defiant, the warmth completely draining from her crimson eyes.
"Take Yuri-sama... from me? A defect?"
"Accept the shutdown command, you piece of scrap metal."
"Who is taking whom?! Ahahahah! Do you mere humans intend to defile the blissful memories of Yuri-sama assembling me!" she shouted.
With a crash, the emergency lockdown lever was smashed.
Tons of defensive grates simultaneously dropped from the ceiling, transforming the workshop into an iron cage, completely sealed off from the outside. A sealed room with no escape.
"Now, Balt-sama, it's time for your disassembly. I shall give you the punishment for treading into our nest with your dirty boots."
Pressurized steam hissed shrilly from the joints of her limbs, her armor plates peeled back, and countless sharp blades coldly unfurled.
Chapter 3: Love's Supercharged Critical Pressure
"Do not underestimate the Public Safety Bureau!"
Balt pulled the trigger. A high-pressure electromagnetic restraint bullet, accompanied by a pale blue flash, tore through the air and struck Chloe's right knee joint directly, scattering violent sparks.
The dry crackle of metal. Above Chloe, who had lost her balance and fallen to one knee, the heavy muzzle of a large steam revolver was mercilessly pressed.
"It's over."
"Stop it, Balt!" Yuri shouted.
He instinctively swung his arm. The heavy-duty wrench Yuri threw with all his might struck the rifle barrel with a hard clang, knocking it upwards, and the discharged bullet shattered the workshop's ceiling panel.
Without a moment's hesitation, Yuri thrust his back between Chloe and the muzzle. He gritted his teeth, forcing down the tremor in his outstretched arms.
"This is the life I created! I know better than anyone that it has no soul! But this heat—this is real!"
"Ah... Yuri-sama... you're protecting me...!" Chloe trembled with joy.
Chloe's expression twisted in ecstasy. She casually plunged her fingertips into her own chest armor, digging her nails in.
The safety valve's limiter pin was torn off with a grating metallic sound.
"I've reached my limit! I love you too much, my heart is going to melt!" she shouted.
From the six additional exhaust ports on her back, ultra-high-pressure steam, laden with crimson flames, raged like wings.
A single, explosive step. A supersonic shockwave rippled through the workshop floorboards, violently kicking up wood splinters and iron dust.
BOOM!
Balt's massive body was gouged by a brass fist and slammed deep into the stone wall behind him. His heavy metal breastplate crumpled, and the inspector, having expelled all the air from his lungs, his eyes rolled back, collapsed, falling silent amidst the rubble.
Amidst the billowing white smoke, Chloe's porcelain skin glowed like red-hot iron, and with every ragged breath, heat waves hot enough to scorch skin were dispersed.
"Yuri-sama... I can't stop... Cool me down..." she trembled with affection.
Yuri received her leaden, collapsing brass body head-on with his slender frame.
Chapter 4: Perpetual Motion's Accomplices
"The coolant... it's almost gone... Fufu, I'm happy. If I can break with you," Chloe whispered sadly.
"Who said you'd break? I decided I'd make you the most beautiful machine in the world."
The smell of burnt oil rose from Chloe's neck. Yuri kicked open a toolbox lying on the floor and forcefully grabbed a silver bio-bypass terminal.
Following his own conviction, he tore open his work clothes without hesitation. Into the trembling skin of his left chest, he plunged a thick brass needle, forcing it through the resistance of his flesh.
A dull, squelching sound as it pierced raw flesh.
"Yuri-sama!? What are you...!" Chloe shouted in surprise.
Yuri forcibly twisted the other end of the terminal into Chloe's scorching, exposed core.
Thump, thump—two heartbeats collided.
"Gah...!" Yuri shouted, excited.
The cold blood of a living human flowed through the bypass into the machine's abyss, forcefully devouring the raging, runaway pressure.
At the same time, Chloe's brass pulsation violently hammered Yuri's ribs from the inside like a mallet.
His vision turned crimson, and the intense pain made his back teeth grind, threatening to shatter. But at the bottom of this hell where their lives were being carved away, the high-pitched metallic friction gradually converged into a single pulse—a single, tuned rhythm.
The raging heat rapidly cooled, becoming a soft, milky-white curtain of steam that gently enveloped their forms.
"Ah... Yuri-sama... you are inside my heart..." Chloe whispered with affection.
The piercing pain in his chest gradually melted into a numbing pleasure.
"You're not the only one with a screw loose... I am too."
Casually tossing aside the blood-slicked tool, Yuri roughly pulled her cooling brass waist closer.
"Creak and groan in my cage for the rest of your life," he whispered with affection.
He kicked open a floorboard, revealing the lid of a hidden escape hatch. The two intertwined shadows plunged as if sucked into the bottomless darkness of the reeking underground waterway.
The workshop fell silent. Amidst the accumulated soot and remnants of smoke, Balt, regaining consciousness, crawled and his fingertips brushed against a crack in the collapsed wall.
There, scrawled in Yuri's drying crimson blood, were cruel, stark words.
—Repair complete. We will never mesh again.
