Mecha-Man's eyes shot wide open as the suit's built-in sensors automatically adjusted the display's brightness setting to filter out some of the brightness of the explosion. The view flashed with dancing white spots that shifted into orange, yellow, and red, before finally dimming to the point that he make out details, though isolated white motes still flickered in and out in his vision. He blinked rapidly, trying to reset his eyes without success, as the shockwave nudged him back slightly. A plume of dust and smoke erupted out through the hole that the missile had punched through the wall, billowing upward and obscuring the moon, plunging the street below into a haze of yellowish shadows. The faint flicker of orange lights showed through the gaping hole in the apartment wall and reflected off the shattered remains of the windows of the unit next door; thermal imaging revealed a dozen points of elevated heat in the apartments closest to the blast zone. Mecha-Man ran a quick sensor sweep of the building, and a half-dozen spots along that wall lit up with flashing red warnings: the explosion had taken out a load-bearing wall, and the other walls were shifting to compensate. The floor of the targeted apartment had collapsed along with its ceiling, sending two floors of apartments crashing into the one directly below them, straining the structural integrity nearly to the breaking point. If the building weren't shored up soon, it could collapse. On his thermal imager, dozens of figures were running around within the building, most rushing down the stairs farthest from the explosion. But several remained close to the destroyed apartments, though the heat from the fire confused the scanner. Without thinking about it, Mecha-Man drifted closer to the building, unable to turn away.

"What the hell…"

"What do you see?" demanded Antoine a note of urgent panic in his voice. Blinking and shaking his head to clear his thoughts and refocus, Mecha-Man gave a quick command and switched the suit to stream mode, sending all of its data to Antoine's tablet in real time. Almost immediately, there was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the communicator. "My God…"

A sudden draft pushed Mecha-Man to one side, and he leaned into it, orbiting carefully around the building in the direction of the explosion, sweeping across the front of the building and counting the number of windows to either side of the target apartment. "I think–"

"It's–that's Bridgette's apartment!" Antoine interrupted him, his voice rising in pitch, his breathing turning shallow. "I–I–" A sob escaped from him before the audio cut out.

Mouth set in a thin line, Mecha-Man leaned forward and flew closer, turning away from the attack as he did so and scanning the buildings around them quickly for any indication of the suspicious persons he had seen before. The university campus across the street had filled with people in the last minute, most distinctive for their lack of clothing as having been in the apartment building which had been attacked. More people continued to flood out of the apartment building's main entrance, running across the street through the light traffic before turning to look back up at the smoke and debris. The figures he had seen before, however, seemed to have disappeared. "No sign of the Bearator," Mecha-Man reported, glancing up and down the streets to either side of the apartment building. "Or of whoever was on the roof." Another figure caught his attention, poking out of an alleyway down the block only to vanish the moment Mecha-Man spotted him. "Dammit – I think that might be Gardur." Mecha-Man let out a heavy breath and spun back toward the apartment building. "I'm pretty sure the Lynchpin knows."

"It's all my fault – it's all my fault – my baby – I–" Antoine seemed not to have heard him. The communicator cut in and out, only seeming to catch every other word from him. He breathed shallowly, taking in short, sobbing breaths that released with a rasping whimper. "M–my sw–sweet b–baby girl…"

Mecha-Man gritted his teeth, his eyes narrowing. "Look, boss," he all but shouted into his communicator, cutting off Antoine's self-recriminations into stunned silence. "We can debate that all we want – later. For now, we have work to do! We don't know where your daughter is or where the people who did this are! So you need to focus on getting some answers! Now I'm going to go in and see if there are any survivors I can help. You need to do your computer thing and figure out what bastard did this so I can find him and punch his head off! Got it?"

Antoine stuttered, his voice trembling. "I–I can't–"

"You can, and you will," Mecha-Man retorted curtly. "Because your daughter needs you to focus! Because if you don't, then none of this matters." Without even waiting for Antoine's response, Mecha-Man banked hard to one side, turned parallel to the ground, threw his arms out in front of him, and shot straight through the hole in the side of the building, into the devastated apartment. Braking the moment he was inside, he threw his legs forward under him and rotated slowly, making a quick scan of the apartment's devastated interior. He cleared his throat. "Based on the amount of damage sustained, it looks like a small, concentrated explosive," he reported. He groaned. "From what I saw of it before impact, it could have been one of the mini-missiles we designed for the suit."

Antoine let out a strangled sob. "Do you mean to say that I might have built the device that killed my daughter!?"

Mecha-Man shook his head. "We don't know that for sure," he insisted. "I only said it's similar."

Bits and pieces of the ceiling lay scattered throughout the apartment, including a couch that had fallen halfway through a hole in the ceiling before getting stuck. In several places, the charred floor had collapsed into the apartment below. The living room walls had all been incinerated in the blast, with the interior walls missing entirely. The outer wall had been scorched, a couple of paintings burned away, leaving behind small patches of unburnt wall in their place. Above, the ruined ceiling sagged dangerously, and the couch protruding through it shifted. Mecha-Man eyed the couch cautiously before firing one of his arm-mounted energy cannons at it, slicing through it and sending one half crashing through the floor. An old couch crackled against what would have been the wall between that apartment and the next, giving off the strongest thermal signature in the apartment. On the far opposite side of the apartment, the bathroom and hall closet had both burned away in the blast, along with most of the furnishings in the two bedrooms set against the apartment unit on the opposite side of the apartment. Mecha-Man could only identify a single bed between the two bedrooms, and he furrowed his brows, looking between the two bedrooms in concern. Swallowing nervously, Mecha-Man switched the suit's transmitter off. Antoine didn't need to see this – not if one of those had been his daughter's bedroom.

Especially not if his daughter had been in one of those bedrooms when this happened.

The sound of something shifting on the far side of the apartment caught his attention as Mecha-Man scanned the floor for a spot where he could land. He cocked his head, pausing to listen. A crackling from the fire was the only sound Mecha-Man could hear for a brief moment. The shifting sound came again, this time accompanied by a pained grunt. "Come on, just a little further," a masculine voice growled, panting.

Dropping to land on a less-burnt patch of the floor, Mecha-Man turned toward the far side of the apartment, where a young man stood over the collapsed wall, straining to lift it next to the ratty old couch. "There's someone still alive…" Mecha-Man reported quietly.

Antoine's breathing hitched. "Bridgette?"

"Unclear." As quickly as he could, Mecha-Man waded through the debris of the apartment in that direction, shooting apart clumps of debris with his energy cannon as he went, pushing burnt furniture aside with his feet. The man barely glanced up at Mecha-Man as he rose into the air to hover over the collapsed wall, his helmet scraping against the ceiling and leaving behind a trail of plaster that showered down around him, turning the flickering flames different colors as the plaster dust burned. Landing next to him, Mecha-Man reached down with one hand and grabbed the wall, hauling it up easily. A girl with shoulder-length brown hair lay beneath it, part of the wall still covering her legs below the thigh, her eyes squeezed shut, not moving. The wall began to crumble in Mecha-Man's grip, and he threw it aside, over the couch, just as the young man grabbed the girl's shoulders and dragged her back, out from under the collapsing wall and further into the apartment next to the center of the blast. The ceiling rumbled slightly above them, and Mecha-Man braced his feet, eyeing the ceiling warily, even as he shifted to his sensors and quickly checked the girl over. Though her neck didn't show any fractures, at least one of her leg bones had broken.

"Jennifer?" the boy called, slapping the girl's cheek lightly with one hand. Her head lolled to one side and then the other, and she let out a moan. Her eyelids fluttered open and she whimpered before passing out once more.

Mecha-Man gritted his teeth. "Not Bridgette," he muttered into his communicator.

"Damn it."

"Your friend's leg is broken – you need to get her out of here," Mecha-Man told the boy, scanning the apartment for anything that he might use to immobilize the girl's legs.

"I know; I–" Finally, the boy looked up at Mecha-Man and started, staring at him in confusion. "Wait… you don't look like Iron Maiden."

Mecha-Man shook his head. "No – I'm not Iron Maiden," he began.

Suddenly, over the sounds of the crackling fire and his own jetpack, Mecha-Man heard another sound coming from a spot just outside the building. "That would be me," a mechanically-distorted voice announced from the direction of the hole in the wall of the other apartment.

Mecha-Man tensed, turning in that direction. "Iron Maiden just showed up," he reported, watching her warily as she edged her way into the apartment and dropped Bandruí to the floor next to a smashed flowerpot.

Antoine let out a loud sigh. "Oh, thank God."