Xaviers!

Tosh snuck around to the back alley behind the butcher-shop, counting buildings until he figured out, roughly, where the back entrance would be. It wasn't a large enough shop to have a sign on the back or anything, but he was at least moderately sure he was in the right place.

It was a narrow alley, with doors on either side between the shops on the butcher street and the more industrial buildings on the next street over.

"I sure hope there's not a flaming log this time."

Tosh swept his scanner over the door at back of the store. He, of course, didn't think Will would actually be inside, but if Finn had recent contact with him there could be a faint trail to sniff out.

The back of the store had a faint signature -- almost background noise, but not quite.

The door on the opposite side of the alleyway, however, was emitting quite the strong signal.

Tosh raised a curious brow, and wondered briefly if it could really be that easy, before crossing the alleyway and testing the door.

The door was not very good at tests, but it was locked.

He searched for a window to look into. If he couldn't find a way in without brute force, he at least wanted to be as informed as possible before considering it.

There was a window, but it was frosted over -- not something he could easily peer through, at least, if he wanted to actually know what he was seeing.

Tosh paced indecisively for a few moments and decided on an unusual tactic. He knocked on the door. It was worth a shot, right?

It certainly was worth a shot!

What it wasn't worth was an answer, as the knock echoed through the heavy metal door.

Tosh switched his device to another mode, the screen briefly reading "Shark Vision" and displaying a cartoon shark wearing sunglasses, and scanned the edges of the door for electrical currents that might indicate a security system.

There didn't seem to be much of a security system, just a standard Yale lock.

There was an indication of a security camera, but the door itself did not appear to be alarmed in any way.

He decided to look around to again make sure he wasn't currently being watched by human or machine. If he wasn't, he'd go Sea Hulk long enough to bust the lock as quietly as sharkmanly possible.

He still wasn't being watched, and he smashed though the lock with a quiet BANG -- not quiet enough to avoid all-caps, but it could have been louder, I suppose.

The first thing to hit Tosh was a terrible smell -- a strong smell of cooking fat that permeated the entire dang building and would render many stronger senses overpowered.

The door itself opened onto a large, wooden floor. Racks of sides of beef and pork were hanging from beams stretching across the ceiling. It was very cold -- possibly refrigerated -- and the ceiling of the room was blackened with smoke. A slow, hardwood fire burned in the center of the building -- the source of the smoke, for sure.

Several smaller rooms were alongside the walls. Up against another wall were some cylindrical silver containers of some sort.

From the side, Tosh stuck his enhanced smartphone into the doorway and quickly snapped a photo to check for cameras. If clear, he'd head inside and use the Will-scanner to direct himself.

The security camera was still there, and presumably got a good picture of Tosh's cell phone as he took it's picture.

The Will-scanner was definitely still indicating strong signals from inside the building -- and likely, from one of the closed side rooms, though that was hard to tell from outside the building.

Tosh became Bruce again and launched a small thunder-ball in the camera's direction from out of sight. He turned back to nerd form and headed in, praying not to get caught because nobody in their right mind would believe his reasons for breaking and entering.

Fortunately for Tosh, no one else seemed to in the building -- that explained why his knock on the door had gone unanswered, at least.

The room was much the same, except for the broken shards of a security camera on the floor in one corner.

As he neared the smokehouse fire, Tosh's mind flashed back to Finn prognosticating over another fire. He wondered if this fire ever served that same purpose. He let the thought fade and went back to following his digital nose through whatever door it led.

While the signal was all over the place -- the entire building seemed to have remnants of it -- the strongest signal came from one of the side rooms.

It also had the strongest smell, that gagging, overpowering smell. Noxious!

In the room were four poles, fastened to the tiled floor, surrounding a drain. On one side of the poles was a cheap card table, with some empty bottles and vials sitting around. On the other side was a large, aluminum tub, with some kind of control mechanism lying on it's side. Another one of those cylindrical silver containers was lying in that corner, as well.

Splotches of some sort of substance were on the floor around the tub, and near the drain itself.

Tosh wretched at the smell, but so far resisted the urge to spew his last meal and, more importantly, DNA evidence all over the floor. He slowly approached the tub like someone expecting to find a worm-riddled corpse. Obviously he had a very bad feeling about this room.

The tub was clean!

The smell wasn't so much decay as it was...burnt fat. Like someone had been cooking bacon for 12 hours straight without opening a window.

He breathed a sigh of relief, but it caught in his throat as he used the scanner on the tub and mystery substance.

A-yup. Both were radiating very heavily with the dimensional signature he was looking for -- especially the goop on the ground.

"What did he do to you?" he asked sadly, feeling sickened. He grabbed a clean, empty bottle and, with shaky hands, scooped up some of the Will-matter. He set it on the table and checked out the silver cylinder, hoping by some miracle there was both more of Will around and that the amazingly resilient clay man could still reconstitute himself.

The silver cylinder, sadly, was empty.

On the front was a sort of packing label -- it had the Hole in the Wall Butcher Shop logo neatly printed on it, complete with a stylized symbol awfully similar to that on the dagger that had been stuck in Will's door -- a sort of calling card, as it were.

That was in the "return" box -- the address this canister was to be sent to was some sort of leatherworking company in Sussex.

Tosh took pictures of the address label and the rest of the room before running an internet search on the address.

The leatherworking company was a bespoke, hand-made leather company which hand-made custom leather goods "the old fashioned way".

He wondered what leather had to do with Will, but made a mental note to follow up on the angle later. He decided, since he had already broken in anyway, to quickly check the other rooms, and the other canister he saw, for clues.

The other canisters were identical in size and shape, but not in address.

There was the address of a chip shop in London, something called Tall Ship Adventures in Liverpool, a skin-care company in Birmingham, a restaurant in Leeds, a candle-manufacturing company in Glasgow, the Sheffield Soap Company, a blacksmith in north London, someone at the UK Green Party headquarters in London, the Deutscher Olympishcher Sportbund, a bakery in Manchester, Derbyshire Arms, Ltd-- the list went on.

On some of the canisters, the "to" and "from" addresses were reversed, as if the canisters had been sent back to the shop at some point.

A couple that were set to go out -- i.e, that had the "from" address as the Butcher Shop -- were heavier than the others.

Tosh attempted to use his scanner to determine if Will had been in any of the containers.

His sensors did not indicate a particularly strong signal from any of them -- if Will had been in a canister, it did not appear to be one currently in the smokehouse.

Tosh continued on to looking at the other rooms. He hoped to find a computer, or shipping records, or a journal, or something more informative. Hell, he'd settle for that salmon thing Finn mentioned.

No computers -- perhaps not a surprise, for someone as old as Finn must be. There were hand-written ledgers and records, though,dating back quite a long time, in one of the side rooms -- we're talking a book with the word "1835" written on it, and presumably, older.

The most recent book, however, stopped a few months earlier. I was full, so perhaps a more recent book was in progress somewhere else, and this was just where they were stored?

The search began to feel like a dead end, or at least done as thoroughly as he could do alone while trespassing. Getting thrown in jail wouldn't help Will. With an aggravated sigh over his powerlessness, he trudged back to the tub room to collect the possible Will sample.

Why didn't you come to anyone? We could have helped you. Instead you went off and...

He buried the line of thought as he took one more look around the room. Will couldn't be hurt that easily. It was preposterous.

...right?

Back in the tub room, there was that table full of bottles and vials, as well as those full cylinders of...whatever was in them.

Tosh decided to check the bottles and vials more closely with the help of his trusty Science Phone(tm).

His Trusty Science Phone (otherwise known as Google) at his side, Tosh went over to check the bottles and vials.

He probably didn't need his science phone to identify the Draino, considering it's bright, colorful, distinctive packaging. Imagining pumping draino into his own veins might give Tosh a bit of a shiver, however.

Some of the fragments of herbs registered as Moly. According to legend, it protected Odysseus against the shape-changing magic of Circe. It might stand to reason that such an herb, if it were real, would impact a shifter's ability to, well, shift. At least if it was magical in nature. As to what it would do to Will, there was less of an obvious deduction to be made there, with the limited knowledge on how Will worked.

Another one appeared to be Lotus -- or, at least, consistent with it's mythological descriptions. Another favorite of Odysseus -- it caused people to live in a permanent life of idleness, forgetting their friends and homes, as well as a general pleasant drowsiness. What use what that have, here?

Hazia, according to Tosh's database, was a particularly nasty plant, probably originally of Skrull origin. Besides being a terribly addictive narcotic, it can cause disorder of the nerves, and a lack of motor control -- and eventually, death. Nasty stuff, and Tosh probably shouldn't get too close.

A native British plant, Alihosty, was another hallucinogen, creating hysteria and a sense of rambunctiousness before it's effects eventually are counteracted. Honestly, with Will's dower demeanor recently, some alihosty might be just what the doctor ordered, though if Finn was a doctor, it would be news to Tosh.

Rakovnik comes from Serbia, and, according to legend, could open any lock. That certainly would have been useful trying to enter the smokehouse! What it's specific use here was, however, was not immediately clear.

There were remnants of fruit, which appeared to be Gingold, which grows naturally, though rarely, in the jungles of Yucatan. According to Indian rubber men who swore by it, it causes limbs to be more, well, limber, and allows the user to stretch and reach farther. This appeared to be a very concentrated elixir, indeed.

There were the remnants of candles, as well, though most of the wax appeared to be missing. There was some more of the gray muck from the floor on the candles.

Then there were three very scientific-looking bottles, much different than the natural ingredients that cluttered most of the table. They all had very long chemical formulas on the front, and the bottles were almost otherwise nondescript. However, glancing at the bottom would note a trademark label connecting them to a company called Setec Astronomy.

What boggled his mind more than the variety of ingredients Finn had gathered, was how the Irishman could have possibility known about Will to such an extent long enough to gather them all. Finn himself had said that the source of his visions wasn't all that specific. Had he found a better way? And since when did astronomy require chemicals?

He hoped the fancy chemicals weren't expensive or explosive, because he... let's say confiscated them... for hero science! With loot evidence in hand, he headed for the van.

Tosh soon returned with an idea.

Okay Bruce, let's see what you can hunt down.

After becoming Bruce, he focused on his senses, sniffed some Will goo, and let instinct be his guide. Well, instincts other than eating all that meat.

Meat was, definitely, the most prominent smell in the room -- aside from the still-present stench of cooking fat, which permeated the air and did a number on any advanced senses.

...If this guy was responsible for getting rid of Will, it'd be only fair if they took some meat off of him, right? Right.

The Will goo --- presuming that's what it was -- did smell vaguely like the stench in the air, so that seemed like a connection, there. Whatever happened to Will probably had something to do with that smell. Bruce's more advanced nose would pick up faint scents of herbs and things like that -- presumably, the aftermath of the things Tosh had found. Perhaps the grey goop had been left over after the process of transferring it somewhere?

One thing Bruce could tell for certain, though, was that Will was not in this building.