It had not taken long for Steve to ascertain his suspicions, and it had taken even less time for the demigods to react to their friend's disappearance. As soon as the two teens had worked through the entire building to check again they gathered in a corner of the room talking rapidly in that strange language again. Just hearing the sharp, bitten off phrases that passed between them was enough to make the soldier's skin crawl as he remembered the battle scene from his dream. Hopefully, things would not become so bad this time around.

While the children bickered back and forth, their words never raising above a certain level though both seemed to be getting increasingly agitated, the avengers gathered in the board room trying to decide what should be done about the situation, but the truth was, none of them knew what to do with the matter other than to keep Fury out of it. They did not yet know why the boy had left and I they were to tell the spy now, he would probably start having yet another paranoid fit about security breaches. In the end, they hadn't really come up with more than this agreement when the doors were thrown open and the demigods walked in, Nico clutching a single feather that looked to have come off a Raven. Flopping down into one of the waiting chairs, he sighed heavily before waving the item around.

"Well, at least we know that he left willingly, Blackjack listens to no one but Percy and we found this on the landing pad. Why he disappeared however, well, that's an entirely new question."

Despite the fact that it was long before dawn in New York, Steve had found that the children were actually still awake when he went to get them. They claimed that they had just got carried away talking, but he suspected that it was something more. Nico had said that he was lucky because he could escape from dreams, but, from the state of the bags beneath the girl's eyes, it seemed like she had long since given up on the concept of sleep. As he was studying her however, the girl was shifting around in one of her pockets as though she was looking for something, her foot tapping rhythmically against the spray bottle on the floor by here chair, though there was no reason for it to be there that the soldier could see. Finally, her hand camped over something, pulling out a fat, golden coin for the others to see as she turned to face them.

"Look, we really need to contact our friends, and you're gonna have to hear what they say too so I guess we are just going to send the message here. Don't be alarmed, its just a branch of Greek magic called an Isis message, it can't hurt you."

As she spoke, she passed the coin to her friend and reached down for the bottle, something that was not lost on the others, especially as Nico had just pulled out a torch from one of the pockets in his over large aviators jacked.

"So, you're saying you are going to contact your friends, at 3am using nothing but a coin, water and torch? Okay, that's enough, you guys are officially crazy!"

Tony threw his hands up in the air, spinning slightly on his chair as he said this, the pale blue light of the arc reactor illuminating his face and making his last comment seem rather hypocritical, something that seemed to amuse Annabeth greatly when she turned to glare at him.

"Well, unless you have a better way of summoning a rainbow, this is the only way we can do it now that Percy isn't here!"

She tried to remain firm when she spoke, but she wasn't fooling anyone, especially as her voice broke on the last part of her sentence, but everyone, besides Natasha, pretended not to notice, even when she began to play with a slim silver ring on her left ring finger absentmindedly. When she noticed this gesture, something had seemed to click in the Russians expression and she went over to sit beside the girl, looping an arm around her shoulders comfortingly, something that came as a major shock to the others.

Trying to ignore the fact that the deadly black widow was actually acting human for once in her life, Tony only smirked at the girl, doing his own part to cheer her up by trying to rile her up again. After all, it was much easier to deal with things when you were feeling irritated than when you were upset.

"Oh, come on, does the word genius mean nothing to you pagans?"

He smirked at the flash of anger in her eyes, but soon turned to stare up at the ceiling, called up in a clear voice that surprised the others.

"JARVIS, you think you can simulate a rainbow in this room for us?"

For a minute there was no reply, and Steve heard Nico lean over and whisper something suspiciously like "And he calls us crazy" in Annabeth's ear, but the next, a band of multicoloured light flooded through the dark room, making the demigods look up in shock and the billionaire grin more than a little smug as he took in their confused expressions. Shrugging it off slightly, Nico seemed to smirk as he thought of something.

"Hmm, maybe this will work."

Without warning, he flipped the heavy coin into the light and called out in a serious voice that had everyone, once again, questioning his sanity.

"Yo, Fleecy, do me a solid. Show me Hazel Lavesque, camp half-blood!"

Surprisingly, the coin never landed on the table on the other side of the projection like everyone had been expecting it to, instead, it seemed to shimmer the second it reached the lights before disappearing entirely. Then, not one moment after the coin had vanished, a ripple passed over the image and it changed to be one of a young girl sitting on the steps of a black cabin as she looked out over the sea. Her leg was in a cast and crutches leant upon the steps next to her, but she seemed not to notice the message. Moving round to the other side so that he could see her more clearly, Nico's grin became rather creepy before he spoke, a heavy Italian accent as he spoke.

"Good evening Ms Lavesque, lovely night don't you think?"

The girl almost shot out of her place as she turned round to face the message her terrified countenance suddenly turning to one of fury when she caught sight of the gangly boy that was facing her through the panel, her irritated growl turning into mist around her face indicating that the winter was coming in.

"Nico Di Angelo, I swear to Jupiter, if you ever do that again, I am going to…"

Her threat was cut off by the boy's laughter and she ended up just grinning back at him, all things forgiven. Now that he could see her face, Steve found himself looking at quite a cute 13 year old girl with caramel ringlets and coffee coloured skin. With a jolt, he recognised her as the youngest general he had seen in his dream/ vision thing.

"Sorry Hazel, just wanted a quick word."

She rolled her bright eyes at that and simply shook her head slightly while indicating with her hand that he should go on. She seemed like she did not trust herself to speak to him yet.

"Um, so, we were wondering… have you seen Percy anywhere?"

The question seemed to wipe the happiness off of her face immediately and she turned round more so that she had a better angle to look at them from. Now, she was probably able to see the other people in the room as well, but she simply smiled slightly at Annabeth before turning her glare to the son of Hades.

"No, I thought he was with you?"

Her voice was inflected with worry at the end making it seem more like a question than a statement, but something suddenly flashed behind her eyes and she called for someone behind the message to get someone named Chiron.

"No, I guess he didn't go back to camp then huh? What's the matter by the way?"

The boy's questions seemed to snap Hazel out of her thoughts as she began to chew absentmindedly on her bottom lip before replying.

"Blackjack kind of freaked out earlier before he took off, I thought that maybe Arion had done something to annoy him, but I guess not."

Things fell silent for a minute, and the sound of hooves could be heard in the background seconds before a middle aged man stepped round the side of the cabin, only, where his legs and the lower part of his body should have been, was the body of a pure white horse. A sound of suppressed shock went round the room as the avengers saw their first centaur, but other than that, they remained silent.

"Nico my boy, is there a problem at your end, it is a little late for a casual call if not!"

His smile has kind, and it warmed Steve from deep inside, like he was looking into the face of his father once again. Apparently he wasn't the only one to feel such as bothe the demigods relaxed visibly at the sound of his voice.

"Sorry Chiron, can't say that this is a casual call. Percy's gone missing… again. We were wondering if he was back at camp, but he obviously isn't. Do you have a way to contact Lupa to see if he's in San Fransisco?"

For there the conversation went to depths that none of the avengers, bar maybe Thor, could understand, and they ended up just looking around quizzically at each other. In the end, it seemed like the only one's who had actually been paying attention to the screen besides the demigods who had summoned it were Bruce and Tony.

"Have to say, that is an amazing way of communicating."

Banner was still looking at the place where the rainbow had been, blinking slightly as if he was trying to see it once again, but there was no time for them to indulge the scientists' fantasies now and Steve spoke up, cutting off what ever Tony had been about to say in response.

"Well, what did you find out in that then, the conversation got a bit hard for us to follow."

He quickly tagged the last bit on when he saw the surprised look in the boy's face in front of him, but, in the end, Nico just slouched back round the table before collapsing into his empty chair. To the soldier, it looked almost as though he was wanting to slam his head into the solid oak of the table, but the teen resisted the urge.

"Nothing, that's what we found out, absolutely nothing other than the fact that his Pegasus went mental and he isn't at either of the camps."

Choosing to ignore the mention of mythical creatures in order of finding out facts (and because he really didn't want to have anything else to think about this early in the morning,) Steve started pacing as he thought.

"Who was that girl, is she definitely reliable?"

At this, he was almost brought up short by the growl coming off Nico, but he carried on trying to ignore the kid when he wasn't answering questions.

"Hazel" He stressed the use of the girl's name, "is my little sister, and yes, she is reliable."

Captain America nodded slightly at this, but before he could turn and move back again in his round, a cold hand reached out and grabbed his arm, pulling him up short. After her little speech about the rainbow earlier, everyone had just presumed that Annabeth's withdrawal from the conversation was due to grief at the disappearance of her friend, but now, looking into those cold grey eyes, it was obvious that she had been distracted for an entirely different reason. The daughter of Athena had resorted to doing what she did best, she had been thinking.

"The answer is in the prophecy. Someone said earlier that the nouns, 'Fire, Lightning, Earth and Scorn' sounded like they were being used as names for people and you're right, they are. 4 people are going to have to go west and face the 'Storm' but that wasn't a metaphor for the war, its Percy. When he fights, I mean, when he goes at it for real, a hurricane blows up around him, after all, another name for Poseidon is 'storm bringer', it makes sense."

Nico leaned towards her now, his expression guarded and his words cautious as though he did not want to believe what he was saying.

"Yes, it does, and that works with what it said the line before about keeping a hero's mind. I can't think of anyone that deserved that title more than him. But Percy's fatal flaw is loyalty so it has to be some pretty strong control and for that sort of magic you have to be really close to cast it. The problem is, I don't think anyone other than Aether actually went near him and manipulation isn't his style."

"You know." Clint spoke up, a dark look in his eyes as he observed the demigods like they were a bomb about to explode around him. "It did strike me as odd earlier but I ignored it. But don't you guys think its weird that the Primordial god of light or whatever he is, would use a weapon made entirely out of ice to try and kill him."

The room went silent and Bruce sucked in a quick breath, realisation dawning across his pale face.

"Unless killing wasn't the intention…"