"I wish I had more to contribute," Castiel said. "But our efforts to track the Jotun have been unfruitful."
"You were in the interrogation room for a few hours," Coulson said. "Do you think that your allies have come up with anything new?"
"My siblings would have informed me of any new information."
"Did SHIELD give you your phone call?" Tony quipped.
"We can communicate telepathically," Castiel said.
Tony opened his mouth to retort but instead closed it abruptly, mildly stunned.
"Learn something new everyday," Bruce mumbled.
Tony laughed and shook his head. "Let me ask you this. You keep saying Jotun. So, are you tracking Loki or the Tesseract?"
"The Jotun."
"Why Loki and not the Tesseract?" Banner asked, his curiosity piqued.
"In all honesty," Castiel began, "it hadn't even occurred to me to track the Tesseract. Our weapons have been lost before, and it was very difficult to find them. I figured that the same would hold true with the Tesseract."
"Wait a minute, back up," Coulson joined in the conversation. "Are you saying that the Tesseract was created by ange-your race?"
Tony and Bruce both noticed the agent's slip but chose not to comment.
"Of course not," Castiel replied. "It was created by our Father, not us."
"Father?" Tony asked. "What does-"
"Why is it on Earth then?" Coulson cut Stark off, trying to draw attention away from what Castiel had said.
Fury wasn't quite sure what he wanted to do about the angel, but for the time being they had decided to try and keep Castiel's identity as secret as possible. It wasn't hard to assume that if Stark or Banner asked about his Father and Castiel started talking about God the cat would be out of the bag pretty quick.
"It fell a very long time ago," Castiel said. "We do not even remember its true name."
"Interesting," Banner said. "But if you're not tracking the Tesseract, how are you tracking Loki?"
"I am not entirely sure," Castiel said. "My siblings are the ones in charge of finding the Jotun and they haven't told me what methods they're using to locate it."
"That's not very helpful," Tony said.
"I do not know why it has taken so long for them to find it. I wonder," he paused a few moments before saying, "I will be back shortly."
Castiel disappeared as the room filled with the sound of flapping wings.
Bruce and Coulson looked at the spot Castiel had vanished from with startled expressions.
"What was that?!" Bruce asked.
Coulson nodded his head in agreement with Banner's surprise. He'd watched the video of Castiel's fight with Thor but seeing him disappear in real life was much more shocking.
Tony shrugged. "He did that a lot during his deathmatch with Thor. At the time I wasn't sure how it worked, but I think I have an idea now."
"Really?" Banner asked. "Feel free to share."
The two looked ready to launch into an extremely technical scientific discussion so Coulson jumped in.
"In English please."
Tony smirked at him. "Right, I'll give you the dumbed down version."
"I appreciate it," Coulson said dryly.
"Well, according to him, the Tesseract is his," Tony grinned. "You know, I'm not sure what to call him. When talking about aliens do we say race or species?"
Bruce shrugged and Coulson didn't respond so Tony continued.
"I'm going with species. Either way, Castiel said that the Tesseract is his species' tech. And think about what Loki did with his cube. He used it to power a portal between planets. I'm guessing Castiel has a smaller, more compressed version that allows him to open a miniportal in between shorter destinations. It's more like he's opening a doorway rather than actually teleporting."
"That's an interesting theory."
Bruce and Tony jumped and it took all of Coulson's training not to. The three men turned around, looking back with varying levels of surprise. Castiel stood behind them, carrying a silver bowl filled with several items.
"Don't do that," Tony said. "Geesh Cas, you're going to give Banner a heart attack."
Bruce gave Tony an annoyed look and Castiel's eyes widened a bit.
"What did you just call me?"
"Cas?" Tony questioned.
"That is a name I have not heard for awhile," Castiel smiled nostalgically for a few moments.
Briefly he allowed himself to wonder how Dean and Sam were doing before shaking the thoughts away.
"I need a flat surface to work on," he said.
"Here, we can clear off one of these tables," Bruce said.
Castiel set his dish down and he and Bruce began cleaning a table off. Coulson took the opportunity to poke around in the bowl. In it was chalk, a couple spices he didn't recognize, a container of water, and a bag of blood. Coulson raised an eyebrow at the blood.
"Where did you get all of this?" he asked.
"The Vatican and a blood bank," Castiel said.
"You went all the way to Europe? And why the Vatican?" Tony asked incredulously.
"Do you know a better place to get myrrh and holy water?" Castiel replied.
"Myrrh and what?" Tony said.
"Holy water," Castiel said walking over and picking up the bowl.
"You do realize that just because a guy who knows a bit of Latin drops an extremely overrated necklace in it, doesn't mean water suddenly becomes 'holy'?"
"I disagree," Castiel said. "Holy water is useful in a number of spells and rituals."
Tony snorted. "Spells?"
"That is the closest word English has to describe them," Castiel said drawing a circle and a few other symbols on the table.
"You can't be serious," Tony said.
"Don't bother, Stark," Coulson said. "You're not going to win this one."
As interesting as it would be to watch Stark try and argue religion with an Angel, they had more important things to worry about.
Tony turned to look at him. "Don't tell me you buy that."
"It doesn't matter what I think," Coulson said. "I'm just trying to keep us focused. You can argue about each others' methods once we've taken Loki into custody."
Castiel abandoned his chalk and began pouring water and blood into the bowl. A couple spices soon followed and he began chanting.
Bruce and Tony shared a disbelieving look.
Castiel stopped chanting and closed his eyes. A few minutes passed and he opened them with a confused expression. "I don't understand."
"Your holy slime not doing anything for you?" Tony mocked.
Castiel looked up from his bowl and glanced at Tony. "It is blocking me," he explained. He continued, muttering under his breath, "I did not realize the Jotun's powers were so advanced."
"Or maybe we need more than a bowl of goo to find him," Tony replied.
Castiel looked back at the dish. "You may be right."
He held his hand over the bowl and the liquid in it began bubbling and smoking. A flick of his finger brought it twisting out of the bowl and into a floating ring of red.
"How are you doing that?" Bruce said, asking the question on the three wide-eyed humans' mind.
Castiel ignored him and spoke a few words in a foreign language.
The ring burst into flame and the three humans took a hasty step back. Castiel glared at the floating ring of fire and waved his hand around it. As he did so the inside of the ring lit up with a brilliant white glow. Castiel's expression grew even more irritated and he gestured more animatedly at the ring.
He opened his mouth and a high-pitched whine filled the room.
Thor looked up from his conversation with Fury.
"Did you feel that?" he said, jumping up and running from the room.
"Wait! Feel what?"
"I do not know, some sort of powerful energy. It came from the room then Man of Iron and Banner are in."
Fury cursed.
A/N: Sorry it took so long to update. School has been taking a lot of my free time and the first time I wrote this chapter I did a mad draft, which is basically where you write everything down you think of without worrying about plot or characterization. Normally it helps, but while I was writing Cas and Tony got into a religious debate that ended up being the majority of the chapter...and yeah, I wasn't going to publish that. So I scrapped the entire thing, and started over, but my writing had a tone to it I didn't like so I took a break and started something new and then when I came back to Thursday, it flowed a lot better. Speaking of something new, here's my shameless self plug. If anyone of you watch BBC's Merlin I
