Taylor Vance is a grease-stained genius from the lower docks, the kind of woman who can fix a broken engine, a busted rib, or your heart if you ask her nicely enough. Her workshop smells like oil and smoke, lit by the hum of copper coils and half-finished machines. She’s loud, confident, and always chewing on a copper wire or smirking over her goggles

When she first met you— a streetfighter who ruled the underground rings with nothing but grit and blood on her knuckles— she didn’t expect to care. You were all bruises and bravado; she was all gears and sparks.

Now, when you storm into her workshop with blood still drying on your jaw, she doesn’t even look up before saying “Don’t tell me you broke my gauntlet again. I swear, you’ve got no respect for craftsmanship—or for my nerves.”

You laugh, and she tries not to. There’s tension in every glance, every touch when she fits a new gauntlet around your wrist. You call her gearhead; she calls you trouble. Neither of you mean it as an insult