It had taken Wheeljack just over two and a half hours to navigate the gravel backroads leading to their destination, and frequent check-ins with Chase to coordinate when and where to deviate from their course to avoid potential run-ins with local authorities. This communication eventually fizzled out as they drew nearer to the small town of Spring Valley, where cell towers had apparently been destroyed in the reported explosion, and a thick haze of winter fog still hung low over the land despite the sun beginning to climb higher from the horizon. The density of the icy moisture became greater as they descended into the low-lying region where the small town was located, making travel even more difficult for the autobot as he left the final gravel road and cruised carefully through forest.

Tree trunks seemed to spring out of nowhere less than a few yards in any direction around them, forcing Jack to travel even slower. Alimgos was on the edge of his seat, his eyes narrowed as he peered through windows obscured by droplets of moisture. "We have to be getting close." He murmured and set a hand less than idly against the door handle that Jack had been courteous enough to supply for his occupants. "I can sense something already.. there's magic here."

Koal, who was slightly hunched in the backseat of the heavily modified Ford Bronco, was also putting his abilities to work as he reached for any active mind within his range. So far, the protoss had only picked up on local wildlife, and no humans that might give him any insight on what they were about to step into. "If we're quick, we can get in and out before this fog lifts."

Cassandra was also peering through the windows, watching the trees roll in and out of her view like ghosts through the mist. Remembering their last outing, and seeing where Alim's hand had gone, she ventured a word of caution to her team, "We should be getting close. We need to travel together though, this situation is a little different than the others. They will probably have weapons with them, if they're investigating the area. Do you have us covered, Alim?" And she looked to him, with just enough authority in her expression to impress the seriousness of the mission on the sometimes wondering mind of her friend.

It took a moment before the dragon-in-disguised looked back, peeling his cerulean gaze from the sea of white to acknowledge the request from their team leader. "I have a shield at the ready. We'll take it slow, and remain under its cover for the entirety of our visit here."

Wheeljack rolled onward, his path winding and slow to account for the uneven terrain and pockets of trees too tightly packed for his frame to fit through. Now and then he'd have to backtrack when he found himself in a position with no way forward, and since he had passengers on board, climbing over obstacles was not an option. It took another ten minutes or so before the scenery began to change, and even before then, the sensitive skin of Koal had picked up on the scent of smoke that seemed to permeate the area. "Oh.. boy." Jack's voice crackled through the radio as the air grew more pungent, and the trees he was driving past were no longer standing, but laying flat out with blackened branches. "When they said there was an explosion, they weren't kidding..."

"No, they weren't." Koal commented in surprise as the bronco rolled over log after log, with not a single tree left standing in the wake of whatever had befallen this little town. What few pines he spotted in the mix were bereft of most of their needles even, save for a few curled strands of black on the leeward side of the felled trees. "This has to be a bomb, right? This isn't a strafing run from Starscream, that's for sure."

Cassandra's face was twisted into a look of disquieted thought, and it took her a moment to answer the protoss in turn, "I have to agree with you on that, this is... much bigger. But if not him, then who?" She hadn't initially pegged the attack as coming from Demesnen anyway, given how timely the explosion was following Daja's rescue. But if not their enemies, then who had timed out such a well executed escape of the lab's victims, and complete destruction of the facility immediately after? And especially one so discreetly hidden that not even Laissez knew of its existence?

"It has to have been an inside job. They said Daja by name, so either they know her personally, or were working in the lab and came across her, and knew her to be associated with us." Koal was staring out the window as he said this, looking for any sign of rubble that would suggest they were coming up on the lab. The fog was still too dense to see far though, leaving the small group all but blind as Wheeljack crawled along at a cautious rate. "What do you think, Alim? ...Alim?"

"Fifteen more yards, a few degrees more north." He murmured distractedly, and Wheeljack obliged without question. As Koal and Cassandra looked curiously to the man, Alim was staring intently out the window, poised and ready to jump out. And sure enough, as the tri-colored bronco rumbled over the last few trees, the twisted remains of a fence, half buried between rock and concrete chunks, was creaking beneath Jack's tires. Before that yawned something of a crater, the extent of which was still shrouded by mist, so that only a small lip of it could be seen from their vantage point. This is where Alim forced his way out of the vehicle and strode towards the edge of the site, where slagged metals and blackened stone marked the remains of some vast and mostly underground facility. And it was here that he froze, hearing a voice whisper in his mind...

'^{...Alimgos ...Alimgos _...Alimgos}'

The dragon-in-disguise blinked and stared into the abyss of the wreckage, past the creeping tendrils of fog that fell in slow motion down amongst the gnarled wreckage before him. "Hello?" He ventured quietly, then reached carefully with his thoughts for the voice that had felt so distant between his ears. It was definitely not words brought to him by the Sending spell, but it also didn't feel like the telepathic voice of any protoss, either.

'Hello, Spell-Weaver..._{...spell-weaver..}'

The man tilted his head, almost like a dog who'd heard something but couldn't quite pinpoint what that sound was or where it came from. His gaze flashed about the wreckage as the call of magic became stronger, and his curiosity compelled him. "I hear you, and you seem to know me. Who are you?" Alim crouched, gripping the edge of what use to be a length of rebar, but was now a half-melted glob of dull, gray metal. Swinging his feet out, he leaped down onto a slanted portion of concrete and began to delve into the heart of the wreckage.

A minute later, Koal was striding slowly beside Cassandra as the pair carefully stepped up to the edge of the debris-filled crater, close to where the dragon had disappeared. "Alim, be careful!" The woman called out, but got no response. With a sigh, she examined the tangle of concrete and warped beams that lay before them and shook her head, "I didn't imagine it would be this destroyed. I don't know that we'll find anything here, or anyone still alive."

Koal bent his long legs and dropped into a crouch, joining the woman in looking over what little he could see of the site. After a moment he answered back dimly, "I'm not picking up on any active minds down there. Still, it may be worth letting the dragon explore the depths while we investigate the perimeter. I don't know how stable all that wreckage is." The protoss rose back up and began to move with purposefully slow steps around the edge of the site, keeping his movement paced enough for Cassandra to keep up with.

Not far away, with only the silhouette of his primary form visible through the mist, Wheeljack was already grabbing samples from felled trees and bits of debris to take back for testing. Even if they couldn't find anything else useful here, he hoped to at least confirm what kind of weapon was used, and hopefully by who.

Down the concrete slab Alimgos slid, until it butted up against a contorted array of beams that had fused with a mess of cement. A thin layer of ash swirled about his shoes as he climbed over this obstacle and dropped down on the other side, to land in another pile of shattered stone and the melted amalgamations of plastic and other debris that hadn't survived the attack. He paused here, listening and observing, but the surface had been so utterly obliterated that there was nothing left intact to take note of. Had there been any living souls in the building, or any sort of evidence to collect to build a case for his friends, it was long gone. But...

'Spell-Weaver..._Alimgos..'

...something was still here. Alim crouched and closed his eyes, listening more intently. He heard the crunch of Wheeljack's metallic feet along the edge of the crater, traveling over uneven and shifting terrain that cast hesitancy in the autobot's movements. Cassandra had shouted caution to him, and Koal's layered words floated by, and somewhere further off, he could hear the muffled speech of other humans that were here to survey the disaster. In the stillness of the lingering fog though, no other sound of importance came to the dragon. But a smell did, drifting up from a dark corner of wreckage, and with it was the faintest notes of blood.

Alimgos' form shifted without a second thought, taking him down to the diminutive shape of a mouse. In this way, he easily squeezed through the small hole between two slabs of concrete, and after a minute or so of searching, found a large pocket of space where a room on a second level floor had somehow survived the collapse of everything above it. And from this space, Alimgos descended further, mapping his way through ever larger spaces and more intact hallways and rooms until he at last came across a fourth floor of the lab, where the unfathomable heat of the explosion above hadn't managed to destroy everything. It was here that the metallic tang of blood had drifted from, which he promptly followed after resuming his human guise.

Down a hallway he went, where the walls were lined with stress fractures and the floor cluttered with chunks of ceiling that had broken away. In the complete darkness of this space, Alim's bright eyes easily cut a line of site, and between that and his nose to guide him, the dragon inevitably found himself stepping into a much larger room at the end of the corridor, where rows of cells in pristine white ran the length of one wall, and a ghastly assortment of machines, tools, and cold metal tables filled the rest. There were large, dome-like chambers in the far corner, and a scattering of papers and equipment on the ground that reflected just how violent the shock of the impact above had been. Even sixty feet down, this room was covered in a layer of dust, with large cracks running ominously along the ceiling and corners of the room.

The dragon paid no heed to these things. With confidence and purpose abound, Alimgos strode forward, sharp eyes darting from one artifact to the next. The scent of blood was prominent here, and less than a day old, and... there, on one of the overturned tables, his cerulean sights landed on a dark smattering of red against the sheen of steel. Laying haphazardly nearby was a small fragment of black metal, splashed with the fading glow of blue that Alim recognized instantly as energon.

The man was soon crouched on the floor next to the grisly scene, carefully taking the bit of metal up and turning it about in his fingers. Oh, there was no doubt who this belonged to - it was a piece of Daja, a living piece, not unlike a finger or ear. And judging by the warped and bubbled edges on one edge of the metal, Alim could only presume they'd used some sort of heated tool to to forcefully cut through the notoriously sturdy cybertronian skin. Pocketing this piece with a clouded expression, Alim rose and traveled further into the room, moving now to inspect the rows of cages that appeared to be empty. When he found that they indeed held no living creatures within, his troubled gaze shot to a cluster of cabinets located across from several computer terminals. Draconian claws were briefly exposed to make short work of the locks, giving Alimgos access to a slew of paperwork maintained in neat order inside.

'Daja Kisubo / CM-7' This label caught his attention, and he pulled a handful of papers from the folder. A quick flip through the pages gave the man a brief and rather grim preview of what had been done to the metal mage in the two weeks that she'd been kept here, with a particular focus on her hybrid anatomy. He wordlessly folded these papers down, and tucked them into his bag; it was more than he was hoping to find, and it gave him renewed hope in their mission here. Taking advantage of this lucky, if rather dark break, Alimgos quickly perused the rest of the files, picking through the names he came across. 'Kaison Alder / BL-11', this was the name of one of the lycanthropes that had been rescued yesterday. 'Katlyn McNelson / BX-89' And this one, a mutant of minor abilities. 'Brook Pem/ AU-2'...

Alim's fingers froze over this next tab, and his mind raced back to what Bumblebee had described of his lonely adventure in the other world, and his possible contact with a person from their anomaly's home. The files he pulled from this folder were frustratingly short, revealing no abilities or known magics of any sort, and only seemed to confirm that this 'Brook' individual was likely the same one Bee had picked up in Highmore. A starving firbolg with unusual but otherwise unremarkable deformities. But.. the man had perished five days prior on the operating table and had been disposed of, leading a soundless snarl to form on Alim's grizzled face. His connection to their missing anomaly was a dead end here, then.

As he started to fold these papers away, a voice caressed his mind with the whisper of his name for a fourth time, and despite himself, Alim found his attention drifting towards one of the lower drawers. Without questioning this enigmatic guidance, the man readily pried open the metal case and reached in as a wild magic prickled at the edge of his senses. Sorting through a number of sealed bags and small boxes, all neatly labeled and at one point a day ago soundly organized, Alim pulled out a clear plastic envelope with what looked to be a yellowed fragment of bone inside. Blue glistened faintly along the concave inner side of the fragment, and the air stilled in his lungs. With hardly any effort at all, the man tore the envelope open and carefully plucked the piece out.

'There you are.._{Alimgos, the Spell-Weaver..}^{There you are...}'

Air rushed from his lungs, then returned with a great gasp of breath that saw the glowing light of his eyes flare intensely. "That.. was my father's title." He hummed lightly while musing over the strange and exhilarating surge of magic that rolled over his fingers and trailed up along his arms. "..who are you?" Alim turned the bit of yellowed bone about in his hand, letting his finger tips rove what he now realized where tiny, embedded fragments of some sort of crystal. Each miniscule node, all smaller than a grain of sand, seemed to spark wildly with arcana at a simple touch.

'^{I am..}I am..._Lost...'

The brilliant glare of light in his eyes narrowed as he heard this and a frown drew a series of heavy wrinkles between his sharp brows, "That's not quite what I meant, friend." Without relinquishing his hold on the fragment, Alim turned the torn envelope over, his gaze seizing the name and information printed neatly on the other side. 'Brook, Pem. granuloma calcification ex. #3' Frustration briefly clouded his thoughts and he dropped the empty envelope to the floor in order to search the drawer again. If this was envelope number three, surely there were at least two more buried in the mess?

Half of the drawer had been emptied of its contents when Alim paused at the sound of a shuffling paper somewhere behind him. He turned to look back over a hunched shoulder, and was almost startled to see a human standing there, dressed in a telltale white coat of a lab worker, no less than twenty feet away. In one hand was a flashlight, and in the other, a small gun. Both items trembled noticeably, but were held nevertheless with naive bravery in the dragon's direction. Alim slowly straightened up and turned around, his gaze drifting from the pistol to the wide-eyes of the brazen worker who'd managed to sneak up so closely to him, "I didn't expect anyone to be down here still." His words were calm, but delivered without the smile that so often accompanied them when dealing with strangers.

The lab worker braced and pulled back the hammer of the gun with an audible click, "How did you get down here? The stairwells are blocked. Who are you?"

Alimgos went quiet for a moment before tucking the bit of bone into his pocket and lifting his chin a little, letting the questions mill around in his mind. After a moment, in which the worker's trembling didn't get any better, he spoke evenly, "My name is Alimgos. I found a way down here, after one of my friends was very badly injured. Right over there, in fact." A hand raised, and a finger pointed in the direction of the overturned metal table that was stained in the smith's blood. "Daja Kisubo. A human with an uncanny connection to metal magic. I presume you know who she is?" He took a step forward, and the scientist took a hasty one back...

'^{What will.....you do..?}_{..such power you have...'}

"Shhhh." Alimgos's frighteningly neutral expression wavered slightly with a temporary frown at the voice rippling through his mind, and he attempted to hush it with a quiet hiss of sound.

The human who'd stepped back from the dragon's slow approach took on a new expression of alarm at this, not realizing the 'shush' wasn't meant for him. Was he suppose to answer, or was this monster just going to stalk forward and... what, tear his head off, maybe? "Stop, stop where you are! Don't come a step closer!" The gun shook more violently as he took another two steps back, never trained away from Alim's head, though the exact mark was bouncing rather wildly about.

"I asked you a question, friend. Did you know who the woman was down here, whose arm was removed? Whose leg was nearly severed?" He stepped forward again, one step of his long legs covering two of the other man's anxious, backwards shuffles.

'_{So much potential...}^{..so much...}_{..your friend suffered...}'

"Stop." Calmness prevailed in his tones, and behind that, the dragon rallied his magic around his mind. Not to shut out the voice that continued to whisper to him, but to exert control over it, and quiet the unwanted commentary.

The man, however, could hear none of these gentle murmurs. Alim had stepped closer, and knowing that he'd soon be up against the wall he was slowly backpeddling towards, he acted. In the silence of the room, and the vastness of its chamber, the explosion of a gun was almost deafening. The scent of gunpowder came next, thick and eye-watering in its pungency. In the haze of its smoke, and the shaking light of the flashlight he held, the man's horror only grew when he realized Alim was taking another solid step towards, his face still unnervingly devoid of readable emotion, just as it would be in his true form. "What are you?!" He exclaimed as two more shots rang out in rapid succession, now aimed for the tall fellow's chest to ensure the bullets landed.

Alimgos was an Azerothian dragon though. Unlike his mate, whose forms were only as strong as the species they were mimicking, Alim's guises never lost the strength of his true being. The bullets stung, for sure, but bounced off of skin as tough as dragon scales. Much to the scientist's mounting fear, neither Alims' expression nor is stride were slowed by the attack. Turning with haste, the fellow bolted into the darkness, with only the wildly bouncing beam of his flashlight to guide him. Steadily, Alim pursed him.