Because of his position in life, Nick Fury was not a man who was easily unsettled, and very few things seemed able to unbalance him. However, a prolonged and suspicious silence from the group known as the 'avengers' was certainly one of those things. At first, when he had introduced the heroes to the demigods, there had been a constant stream of whining and complaints, mainly from a certain billionaire, but, approximately 3 weeks ago almost the exact day after the training session where the boy, Perseus, was attacked, all of these had stopped. Abruptly.

Sighing, the spry looked down, attempting to focus on the compilation of reports that had taken up residence on the desk in front of him, but the words just seemed to drift off the page and twist themselves into meaningless jumbles all because of that nagging feeling in the back of his head which kept informing him that things were a little too quiet, and that this calm was never going to last. Even Agent Romanov had missed one of their scheduled meetings, and the woman was always sure to turn up to those things on time.

Realising that there was no point even pretending that he was ever going to get any work done that day while he was distracted to this extent, Nick forced himself away from his desk and out of the office building, informing Agent Hill that he was leaving her in charge for the rest of the day as he left. He would just make a quick visit to the Avengers tower and look on their progress to assure his paranoia that everything was fine, and then he could spend the rest of the day relaxing at home with the nice bottle of Scotch that Tony had bought him last year for Christmas, that was a good plan!

However, all thoughts of a relaxing afternoon fled straight from his mind as he exited the lift in Stark's stupidly oversized tower only to find that the main communal area of the Avengers was completely empty. Even the kitchen was empty of a certain asguardian who had taken a strange and unexpected liking to pop tarts and Turkish coffee. Growling under his breath, the director of shield made his way over to both the labs on the R&D floor and the completely packed garage only to find them both completely empty with not a single thing out of space. Either everyone in the tower was still in bed, or something was most definitely up. Realising that, unless he wanted to search all the other hundreds of rooms, he would have to ask for help from something that intimately knew all the workings of the tower, he stopped in the middle of the room and called up to the ceiling.

"JARVIS where the hell are the Avengers?"

It took a moment for the AI to respond, and Nick found himself seriously considering shooting the camera in front of him just to spite the machine before it responded in its normal, level headed way, though the spy was sure that the thing was mocking him from its tone of voice.

"Mr Stark and the others are down in training room E, which is where they have been for the last 6 hours."

The training rooms? Nick had been avoiding looking down there as he was predominantly looking for Tony, and the billionaire never even went into those rooms when testing a new suit… the very idea that he had been in there for any length of time along with all the other residence of the building made something on the back of his neck crawl and he could not help but shudder at some of the reasons he could think of that would make the group as a whole interested in training. However, as he made his way back over to the lift for the 5th time, a new thought struck him and he spun round, glaring at the camera with his one good eye.

"JARVIS, I have been up and down this building no less that 4 separate times now, why didn't you tell me this before I wasted all this time running around like a blue arsed bloody fly?"

"Because you never asked sir."

Now absolutely positive that the machine was mocking him, the director of S.H.I.E.L.D . stormed off into the elevator and punched the button for the correct training floor with far more strength than was strictly necessary, all the while muttering under his breath as he tried to think of things that didn't include killing off members of his staff for their infuriating inventions. And it was still chuntering like this that he actually entered the training room, though the sight in front of him soon struck the man dumb.

Over in the corner, Thor and the gothic boy from the demigods, Nico his name was, were fighting in a manner that proved them both to be inhuman. Lightning flashed around the two of them as the seemed to speed up even as Nick was watching, and the occasional shadow seemed to wrap around the man mountain either drawing blood or causing him to stumble… it was quite an impressive struggle to watch, though it was soon forgotten when the spy looked across at his best assassin.

Standing in a dark corner of the room, Natasha seemed to be merely observing everyone else as she leant casually on the wall beside her, but, when he looked closely, he could see the intense look of concentration on the woman's face and the occasional flash of purple that seemed to form some type of dome around her before fading away again every time Annabeth thrust her dagger at the black widow, no matter which angle she attacked from. This in itself was rather a strange occurrence, Agent Romanov had never been one to stand around and let others attack her unless there was something to be gained in doing so, and the purple shield did not seem like any technology he had seen before. He was contemplating going to ask her about it when he was forced to dodge backwards a way to avoid being forced to the floor by the stumbling body of the world's one and only super soldier.

Once he was out of any danger of being bulldozed, Nick could clearly see what he had missed before and that was Steve going face to face with a fully suited Tony as they wrestled back and forth, though both of them seemed to be swinging around swords with a curiously bronze sheen to them. Evan as he watched, a panel of the new Iron Man armour slid up and shot a cluster of… bronze darts? In Steve's direction only for the captain to catch them on his shield and, before long, the two of them were moving further into the room, not even noticing his presence.

Stunned by the sight of all of the avengers actually fighting seriously, and not in the playful way he had seen whenever they had deigned to come in and 'train' in S.H.I.E.L.D HQ, Nick didn't even notice the slight ban walk up behind until the doctor placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Impressive isn't it? I have to admit though, Annabeth is a real drill sergeant."

Trying to hide his surprise at the man's presence with a scowl, Nick turned back to Banner and only arched an eyebrow, though the message behind the gesture was clear as day. Explain.

"The girl's getting paranoid, she says that we are running out of time until we are going to be forced to act so as to avoid a war and is forcing everyone into a manic training schedule." Catching sight of sceptical look sent his way, the doctor laughed and pushed his glasses further up to the bridge of his nose. "I know, it's hard to believe, but that girl can be incredibly persuasive if she so wants to be."

For a moment, the two of them just watched the others sparring in silence, neither of them feeling the need to say anything, or, that it, until Nick recovered the use of his voice and fixed the other man with a firm stare.

"Where are Agent Barton and the other demigod boy… Percy. I can't see them here."

Interesting enough, even as the doctor's face paled to a faint ashy colour, it was sound of a blade hitting the ground that drew Fury's attention next, and he found himself staring at the blonde haired girl across the room who, by all rights, should not have been able to hear his question of the racquet in the room, yet was fixing him with a glare that would have made a lesser main quail. As it was, he just tilted his head to the side and watched as the teen stalked over to him with all the grace of a hunting lioness.

"Things are moving faster, and in ways that we did not think to prepare for director. As such, we have been forced to change our methods slightly. Percy, unfortunately, has been taken by the enemy, which puts us at a major disadvantage, and Clint is with some of our cousins so that he can learn to shoot straight without the need for a technically adjusted bow."

Although her words had started out biting and fierce, towards the end her tone had softened out into a teasing manner which suggested that this was a line she often used to needle the archer with, and there was no venom in those words. As it was, Nick was still slightly hung up on the boy being taken aspect of what he had just been told, but one look at Romanov told him that it would be unwise to broach the subject in present company. Instead, he settled for crossing his arms over his chest and smirking down at the girl.

"Okay, the shooting I can understand, but what are you having the rest of the avengers do down here? I must admit that your training style seems rather unique."

He hoped to irk the girl enough so that she would lower her guard a little, but after a brief flash of anger lit up her eyes, her face went oddly blank, before she shot him a smile that could be used to freeze the ocean.

"Well, Nico has been teaching Nat how to use magic, so I was just testing her proficiency in the most important areas, such as the ability to keep up wards during the heat of battle when they are constantly going to be attacked. Thor, we decided, will be the one to fight Percy in the worst case scenario so we had death breath fighting him in the style that he would need to be able to cope with, only he would have to deal with water instead of shadows. And finally, Tony and Steve just need to master being able to fight with celestial bronze weapons as no others will actually work on the monsters they will be facing."

Throughout her tirade, the girl's icy smile stayed firmly in place, and this appeared to amuse her friend who came over and slung his arm around her neck as though he was completely unaffected by the death glare she levelled on him.

"And, of course, Annie here is being the gruelling task master she always has been. Do you realise that he has had everyone up well before dawn to go through all of these exercises? I swear she is worse than Clarisse!"

At this, the whole room started laughing, and, now that they had all gathered round, Nick could clearly see the changes in his old charges. For one, they all seemed grimmer than normal, though that was only to be expected seeing as though they were preparing to fight in a second war, but for some reason they all seemed to have a strange light of excitement in their eyes and even Steve had gone to hug the girl close and had even ruffled her hair affectionately.

If he were a superstitious man, Fury may have said that the demigods coming to Stark tower had been a good omen, even now the team seemed to be functioning better together than they had ever done in the past, and all of them seemed to have a much powerful feeling coming from them than there had ever been before. However, he was actually a man of logic and, logically, he decided that the best course of action was to get the hell away from all the bloody strangeness going on around him and have an early night. After all, it would take a miracle to get all of these over grown children to actually mature and start working together, and he highly doubted that one teenage girl, half god or not, would be up to the job.

A/N: There you have it, a new chapter from Fury's point of view because I wanted to add some humour into this thing. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the chapter and I promise to try and update faster, thought with my exams I can't be sure that I will be able to.