Jace looked over at the building with a scowl on his face, wishing it would go up in flames. Valentine was still inside, however, so was Lou Ellen. He'd have to put arson off for another time.

The sun had no qualm lighting the sky on fire, however. As the sun dipped low, oranges and reds danced through the sky next to red-violet and indigo clouds. There was something dark resting on the horizon to the east, a storm of some sort, but it was too far away to be a complication for their current mission.

Jace glanced around to the positions he knew everyone should be at. He caught the gleam of something at the top of an adjacent building, where Simon and Isabelle were, and Clary was still with him, hidden around the corner from the bottom enterence to the decommissioned building. Alec seemed to be going everything one final time in his head, while Nico held an unidentifiable look on his face.

"Emo kid. What's wrong? It's not too late to back out if you're scared," Jace said, half-serious, half-teasing.

Nico gave him an unimpressed glare, "I'm missing the funeral."

Alec fell silent, but no one said anything, or bothered to ask whose funeral. It wasn't important right now, other than the fact that it was occupying a portion of the boy's mind. Yet again, maybe he was close to the person who had died, maybe it was relevant to their current situation. Either way, Jace had his priorities sorted, and missing a general was a lot lower than taking down Valentine a second time.

"If we hurry up, then maybe you can get back before the funeral ends," Alec suggested, ever the optimistic one.

Nico gave him a look, dark eyes looking even darker in the fading light of day. "Knowing my luck, I can only hope it won't end up being my own."

It was Jace's turn to give Nico a look. "Used to taking on infamous individuals with a hatred of an entire people?" He joked.

Nico just let out a half-hearted snort. "More than I would like. Now are we going to get Lou out of the there or what?"

Jace glanced up towards the rooftops, looking for the signal after giving one of his own, a flare of a witchlight. Something glinted back, two flashes. Everything was clear.

"Wish granted," Jace said, and motioned for Clary to take the lead.

The quartet, all dressed in black, slunk from the shadows towards a side entrance of the decrpit building, not even Nico's steps made a sound, which Jace found odd since he didn't have anything similar to a silencing rune. It was weird, but not weird enough for Jace to call him out on it. Just creepy shadow kid doing creepy shadow things.

Clary pulled out her stele and quickly sketched a rune to unlock the door, and the hinges groaned in protest as Alec pushed it open. Clary gave Jace a quick peck on the cheek before darting away to keep watch from the ground, and provide back up in anything rune related. Nico was the first to dart into the darkness of the building, right past Jace and Alec much more easily than it should've been.

Dressed in shadowhunter's gear, Nico looked more like a shadow than he had the previous times, especially cloaked in the darkness of the first floor of a boarded up building. Jace and Alec each gave eathother quick nightvision runes, and followed Nico inside. The teen had stopped in the area where the darkness was thickest, and the darkness writhed at his feet. Jace almost attacked, thinking there was a demon lurking there, but Nico didn't react and Alec stopped him from getting closer.

Nico had closed his eyes in concentration, and the shadows shifting from writhing to a steady pulse, slowly calming down until they seemed to ripple like water until finally they settled and stilled. Nico had remained unmoving perfectly still, though his expression slowly relaxed along with the shadows, before he fell out of whatever trace he was in.

"She's on the second story from the top, Valentine is also on that floor, but not in the same room," Nico said, keeping his voice low, "I can get us close, but there are other... things in the building on the floor below."

Jace hummed in thought, revising the plan quickly. "Guess we fight our way up towards the top, so we don't get sandwiched between floors with no way out. We'll probably loose our advantage of surprise knowing Valentine, but if we're stuck up there, then so is he unless he wants to take a swan dive off of the roof."

"Always wanted to climb 17 stories while fighting off demons the enite time," Alec grumbled while pulling out his weapons, mainly a bow and a seaph blade.

Nico adjusted his own weapons for the asent, but didn't pull any out, "If we get pinned, I'll get us out."

"Really, how?" Jace asked, curious how Nico planned to get out.

"Well, I'll shadow-travel Alec out of the building and throw you out a window. Problem solved." Nico said, answering nothing.

Alec snorted and Jace frowned. "Is that how you got out of the Institute? 'Shadowtravel'?"

Nico huffed, "Still not telling, let's go," then he took off towards the stairs.

Jace added the ability to see in the dark to Nico's growing repitoir of powers and tricks right under whatever shadowtraveling was. It honestly made Jace a bit uncomfortable how many things Nico was capable of despite being a young teen. He had powers unlike anything he had seen, and he had seen quite a bit, just apparently not whatever a 'Reaper' was supposed to be. He didn't really think a skinny, pale, emo kid was the image he had in mind when he imagined the word 'reaper'.

Jace didn't really buy it, but who was he to question it when the man who had raised him, then abandoned him, then fought a war against all of the Shadow World, was running free from whatever eternal torment he was supposed to be suffering. Nico claimed he had to be the one to send Valentine back, but Jace would be damned if he wasn't the one to stick his blade though Valentine's chest. He had gotten reduced to a charred corpse the first time due to heavenly fire, but this time, this time it was Jace's turn.

Jace took off after Nico, leaving Alec in the dust. Jace wouldn't let that scrawny kid beat him up the stairs and get to all the fun first.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nico rushed up the stairs, taking two at a time despite the growing ache in his lungs and legs. He used the shadows that infested the building to hide his footfalls, but conserved most of his every for the large collection of monsters on the third floor from the top. It had been a strange experiance, using the shadows like that without physically traveling through them himself. His head complained with a minor migrane from the sensory overload, but he clung to the map the shadows had painted for him in a 3-D rendition.

The gear the shadowhunters had nearly forced onto him was much more comfortable than Nico would ever admit, stretching farther than his jeans would, but still sturdy enough to protect his skin without limiting his movements. The fact that it was in black was also a plus. Nico could hear Jace attempting to catch up to him, and gaining. Of course he was taking three steps at a time, Nico preferred being short, it was easier to hide.

Nico fell still as he reached the desired door, careful to even out his breathing while he removed his sword from the sheath at his side along with a dagger. A sword wouldn't work too well in an enclosed space, which is why he had the dagger, but he could still skewer a few monsters at a time with the sword, getting bigger and more critical hits. A sword also worked better for blocking attacks.

Jace was on his heels in a second, barely panting, and it took Alec a minute longer to reach the floor. They both pulled out seraph blades and mumered the name of some angel, and the blades lit up like glowsticks on Halloween. Nico huffed, but watched curiously as his dagger and sword tried to contest the angelic power by absorbing any light that came close. They each exchanged glances, and with a kurt nod, Jace kicked down the door.

It didn't take long for everything to desolve into chaos. With Jace's loud intrusion into the room working as a distraction, Nico darted past him into the fray beofre any of the various greek monsters that had gathered could attack. Alec took up a stance in the doorway and fired arrow after arrow, each landing with a solid 'thunk' after the twang of his bowstring, reducing a monster to a pile of golden dust. Nico slashed a drakon in half, and Jace managed to stab a telekine through a hellhound. Nico threw himself into overdrive, taking down as many monsters as he could, making his way over to the other set of stairs to the next level, blocking off any sort of escape.

It was over in minutes, and the silence was almost more deafening than the chaos of battle. Jace kicked down a small pile of golden dust, confused.

"Why the hell did those demon's turn to dust?" Jace asked, looking around at the now dustier floor, the original color of the concrete lost to the golden powder.

Oh, that was something that had actually slipped his mind. Nico was used to fighting monsters, but the shadowhunters were used to demons. On that note, Nico was actually surprised their weapons worked, but he supposed adamas was a holy metal, just like imperial gold and celestial bronze. Nico decided to play it off.

"Don't yours usually turn to dust?" he scoffed, pretending this was completely normal. Which for him, it was, it just wasn't for the shadowhunters.

Both Alec and Jace gave him a look, but Nico ignored them and slowly progressed towards the other set of stairs, motioning for them to go the other way. Alec decided to join him while Jace ascended the other staircase alone.

Unlike the previous floors, this one was lit up and lived in. There was evidence of abandoned furniture getting moved about, papers strewn about a desk, food wrappers, and the dust had been meticulously cleaned away. Yet the floor was empty, and a deep frown marred Nico's face, especially when he came to the room, an old holding cell with engraved bars, a pair of handcuffs bolted to the wall, and a foldable chair and table a comfortable distance from the cell bars. The door to the cell was thrown opens, and there was blood stains on both the cuffs and the concrete ground, fresh ones.

Jace entered the room after sweeping his half, "I thought you said they were here?"

Nico glared but not particularly at Jace and broke off into another sprint, reaching through the shadows on a much lesser scale to locate Lou and Valentine. "They moved up!" he snapped behind him, scrambling to the stair well once more.

Nico was almost on all fours from how fast he went up the stairs, before simply shadowtraveling to the top. He had no time to waste climbing stairs. Nico appeared right behind the door and it was his turn to slam it open, boots echoing loudly on the industrial metal door as it was forced from it's hinges.

The sun had since fallen, and night had swathed the landscape in darkness, city lights flickering in and out and the distant sound of cars echoed through the city that never sleeps. But this rooftop seemed disconnected from the rest of the city, isolated in a tense moment and eerily quiet. It was worlds away from the bustling street a few blocks over.

Valentine sat there, almost nonchalantly, on the side of the roof opposite where Isabelle and Simon were on lookout. This building was taller, they wouldn't be able to see or help with Simon's apparent archery skills. Clary wouldn't be able to do much from the ground floor, and Nico doubted she would be able to get here in time to do anything of significance.

"Certainly took you long enough," Valentine casually remarked.

Despite the darkness, his near-white hair still gleamed in the light, dark eyes hidden by the shadows, and his black cloak draped casually across his shoulders, massive sword on his back. Then there was Lou, passed out in his arms where he cradeled her in a way that would've been tender if he had been anyone else. Her arms were soaked in her own blood, and it had dripped down into her shirt, soaking the leaves and her sides. It took him a moment, but he could see the patterns scorched into her flesh, runes, both angelic and not. He had tortured her.

"Give her back," Nico hissed, trying to figure out how he could get Lou away from him and back to Camp.

Valentine reguarded him with a flat expression, unimpressed. "I certainly will, though I did enjoy her singing voice. It was quite lovely, as I'd expect from one with celestial blood. Imagine my suprise, however, to learn that there are armies of you, already organized and trained, but now inactive. I'm certainly hoping you all are willing to cooperate with me once I have control of the Shadow World, it would make everything so much easier. Especially since since your little camp is so close, right here in New York, and the silly Nephilium know nothing. How curious."

Nico froze, and glanced towards Lou, who didn't dare stir. Thoughts of betrayal flashed through his mind. She had given up the location of camp, endangering all of the other Greek demigods, especially those who were unable to, or still too young to fight against whatever Valentine decided to throw at them. But he couldn't blame her, it wasn't Lou's fault. She'd clearly been tortured until the point she passed out from the pain.

"I thought you only wanted Percy, Annabeth, and I?" Nico asked, trying to buy time for Jace and Alec to make it to the roof.

"Well, I certainly still do, but I could always use an army. Demons have proven to be difficult and the angels have refused me, but an army of demigods? That would certainly be the best optinon if you and lovely Ms. Lou Ellen here are anything to go off of. She was so hard to break, I'm surprised she didn't give into death or control first. Her body rejected the runes, but not nearly as much as a downworlder or human would. It's curious, I'll have to try again," he mused, and Nico's blood turned from ice to boiling water.

"Go to hell," Nico spat, grip tightening on his sword, wanting to drive it though Valentine's chest, if only he wasn't using Lou as a meat shield.

"Been there, done that. But you can have the girl back, she's far too injured to be of any use to me now."

Everything then decided to happen at once. Jace and Alec rushed through the busted door. Valentine threw Lou over the edge of the building, just as she weened into consciousness, a confused mummer escaping her lips as she tipped over the edge. Nico had dropped his sword and it resonated oddly as it hit the concrete. There was shouting. Valentine said something with a laugh.

And then Nico pitched himself off the roof.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~