Weeeee here we go again.

I've had this idea for a story in my head for a real long time and I'm happy I finally got around to doing it. Disclaimer right now, I have no idea how technology works so please just bare with me and pretend. Also I'm hella bad at geography so just imagine everything is kinda correct.

One to the first chapter!

If Peter had to describe it loosely, it would almost be a vacation. No, it wasn't actually a vacation because when do heroes get legitimate downtime to relax? In reality, the team- consisting of Peter, Tony, Steve, Bucky, and Clint- were on a mission in California. They had arrived at a SHIELD compound in the mountains and been briefed about what they could expect. Peter had thought it would've been something about the super soldier serum or stopping a major weapons deal, and when he heard what it really was he wished for the former.

Children all over the Bay Area, ages six to sixteen, have been disappearing in the night; from as far up as San Francisco and as low as Monterey and the police had absolutely no idea how it was happening. The first three were ruled as runaways, the next few had got the FBI involved looking into serial kidnappings and possible murders, but once the number got over fifty- with literally no evidence of anything- they decided to seek alternate help.

A lot of the houses kids disappeared from had alarms and security systems, cameras watching nearly every inch of the property but there was still nothing; no alarms were set off, no strange person on any recording, not any video evidence that any kid left their house. The parents just woke up and their child was gone.

It was unsettling at best.

Peter's stomach was doing flips through the entire briefing and he was sure the others' were too. The whole thing felt like it just got thirty times worse with children being involved and the main target of whom or whatever was the cause.

When the briefing had concluded, everyone had gotten back aboard the Quinjet, which made Peter slightly confused as to why there were leaving. He had just assumed they would be staying there while they were in California but Tony had informed him that they were going to stay in one of his many vacation houses, in Monterey. Not quite smack dab in the middle of everything but the most recent disappearances had seemed to be in that area so it was logical.

That's why it was and was not a vacation. They had to wait until the night to see if they could actually find anything or catch the kids or perpetrator in the act. While they could go around during the day, the five of them attracted a lot of attention, in or out of costume. Until they could figure something out, Tony had sent out a number of drones to survey the area and around houses where kids had been taken.

Currently, Peter was floating in the pool and had been there for a few hours. He was surprised when Tony suggested it to him because normally he would've told him off, saying how they were on a mission but he nearly forced him in. It was after the first half hour that he had begun to calm, not even knowing he was in a sort of state of panic in the first place.

"You're going to just let him treat this as a vacation when there's so much work to be done?" He had heard Clint almost yell.

"I'm helping him calm down." Tony replied calmly. "He's a jittery mess; new sights, new sounds, new smells. Kid's senses were basically driving him to have a heart attack."

Tony was right. Peter didn't know how he didn't see it when they first landed at the base. California was a new experience so of course his senses would be going into overdrive in trying to obtain as much information as they could. Floating in the water for so many hours had helped him sort of calibrate what need to be corrected. The sounds of the cars were no longer blaring, the light didn't seem so bad anymore, and not even the chlorine smell was horrible. His spider sense was still a bit off but he had chalked that up to the several dozen or so earthquakes that had been happening, even if they were so small that he couldn't feel them.

He had gotten out about an hour before sunset and showered off before joining the others in looking over reports and information. Mainly he was watching through video footage in hope of finding something that showed anything of the child's disappearance. Seeing as FRIDAY couldn't even find anything he doubted he would. But, it was when he was watching the tape of a family whose daughter had gone missing that he found something. He had paused the recording and played it back several times and there was something there.

"Guys, I think I got something." Everyone stopped what they had been doing, Peter's words being the first slightly positive ones of the evening. "Okay so this is from a week or so ago. I- don't know if you guys will be able to see it but I don't think it's normal."

He played the video and watched as the thing happened.

"You're right. I don't see it." Bucky said bluntly.

"Here. Watch her hand." He played it again.

"I don't know what we're supposed to be looking for kid." Clint said.

"It's very slight but her fingers move." He played it again. "FRIDAY can you zoom and enhance on her left hand? Maybe even slow it down to half speed?"

"Certainly."

The five men watched over the footage again. "Look. I know it's slight but her fingers were straight then began to curl but were straight again not even a second later."

"Kids tend to move in their sleep Peter." Steve crossed his arms. "It might just be a glitch in the camera."

Peter huffed but Steve's comment got him thinking. "What's the time stamp for that?"

"03:00:17 Mr. Parker." The AI responded.

"Pull up another video, any other one and go to around that time."

"What's going on in that head of yours?" Tony asked.

"Maybe Cap's right and it's a glitch." He watched a video of a boy sleeping and saw something similar. "There! Did you see that?"

"You know we didn't."

"FRIDAY what's the stamp for that one?"

"03:00:26."

"Are you gonna give us any insight into what you're thinking right now?" Clint crossed his arms.

"There's a glitch, or more so a few frames are missing from the recording and someone was able to put the cameras on loop." Peter pointed out as he wrote the time stamp down. "Pull up another one FRIDAY."

The AI did as she was told and went to the same time and yet another blip happened. "The time for that was 03:00:36."

"So- all these tiny glitches are happening at three in the morning." Steve voiced. "It's not just the system acting up?"

"No, the families all have different surveillance systems and providers. It can't be coincidence." Tony informed him. "Are you saying we're dealing with a hacker who sets the cameras on loop and takes the kids?"

"I'm not saying anything, just pointing out what I see… but considering that no one else saw this or that FRIDAY didn't catch it, I mean- looping a security camera from a separate access point besides the main server isn't all that difficult to do if you actually know what you're doing; same with disabling alarms and security systems but doing that would leave some sort of trail. There's literally zero evidence of anything. All the kids just seemed to vanish into thin air." Peter leaned back in his chair and put his hand over his eyes. "I feel like there's something else there but I don't know what it is and I know it's not really a decent assumption but-"

Steve clapped him on the shoulder. "You did good Pete. Don't overexert yourself on this. You were able to find a substantial piece of information: a time."

"Yeah, at least now we know when to look for anything or anyone. Be nice if we had a definite location though." Clint said. "The locations are miles away from each other and would take a few hours to reach any of them yet a kid in Madrone and San Jose both seemed to up and leave at three in the goddamn morning."

Peter knew Clint's anger. The mission involved young kids and Clint had three himself. He could only imagine what was going through his head at that moment.

"It's moving south." Bucky pointed out. "But it's not going farther than Monterey before it seems to go back to San Francisco. It's like on a loop."

"FRIDAY where was the most recent disappearance?" Tony asked.

"The most recent reported was in Seaside on Broadway Avenue. The most recent video footage in the archives is from a few days ago in Marina."

"So it's only a matter of time before it reaches here, or it's here already and we just need to wait a few more hours."

"Have your drones picked up anything?" Steve asked. Tony shook his head. "Is there a map we can use to see what houses have young children? Or a map to see which houses children have disappeared from? Maybe we can find some sort of pattern through that and predict where it's gonna happen next."

"Please, I can do that in my sleep." He turned to Peter. "You look like you could use some sleep."

"I'm fine." He retorted. "I just need a snack and I'll be ready to look through more things."

"I'm sure we could all use some food and rest." Bucky said. "I vote for pizza."

AVENGERS

A few hours and several pizzas later everyone was ready to head out to see if they could find anything. The hours leading up to their departure consisted of Peter going through every surveillance video they had, looking for more glitches. Everyone had something and it was never before or after 3:00am. It was a one minute time slot that it happened. So that time was their target. Tony had created several maps of the areas trying to find any sort of pattern in demographics; age, race, gender, social standing. The only substantial thing in any of them was while making the one pertaining to age, more than half of all the kids that had gone missing were under the age of ten.

They had set out at a quarter to two and canvased a ten mile area to try to find anything or even catch any kids attempting to leave. Sadly- or not- there was nothing. They stayed out until the sun began to rise but didn't find anything. It wasn't until they were back and it was into the regular morning hours that they saw the news; kids from the Neponset and Blanco area had disappeared.

It was- frustrating. Neponset and Monterey were only about thirteen miles apart. If they had only covered more ground…

Tony was adding the new information to his maps, Bucky was glued to the TV fuming with every child's picture that was shown; Clint wasn't much better. Steve was looking over the video feed they had from the night.

Peter was sitting at his makeshift desk looking at screens of information in front of him. Nothing made sense. The kids were there then they just vanished almost in a literal poof, though that would've been preferable because it would give them more to go on instead of them having to guess. There was still something about the video footage that didn't sit with him but he didn't know what it was or how to deal with it. That's when he decided to outsource.

He texted Ned and asked for a favor. It was a little while before he got a reply but of course Ned was willing to do what he could to help. Peter had sent him the basic information and a video of the most prominent able to see glitch, according to the others. He asked if he could somehow fix the recording because if it really was hacked, there would be a corrupt file in the data or something and Ned was probably the best bet in fixing it. Besides, they could use a fresh set of eyes on things. Ned said he would get back to him in a few hours with everything he could get.

After the message was sent, Peter slumped in his chair. He was exhausted but didn't want to take a break until he found something. His stomach sank when he heard about the disappearances mere miles from them and they found nothing. There was something else, something besides what he was having Ned look through. He had a thought that maybe it wasn't in the video but secluded in the audio.

"FRIDAY do you have access to just the audio files of any footage?" His tone was weary and he couldn't help the overwhelming feeling of wanting to close his eyes and sleep for days.

"Yes Mr. Parker." The AI answered. "But might I suggest you get some rest before continuing with your search? You haven't gotten more than a few hours' sleep since you arrived."

Though she was right, he ignored her completely. "Bring up the file from the first house with an outside surveillance system." He slumped further in his chair as FRIDAY wordlessly pulled up the file. He plugged in a pair of headphones and listened. For hours he listened to a basic jarring silence with the exceptional car driving by. He was on the verge of falling asleep when he heard something different, low and behold, as it turned to three. It was very slight and he could barely hear it with his advanced hearing.

It was a song- or more so the sound of a flute playing a soft melody. It was light hearted and cheery and yet extremely haunting. The lyrics were… interesting. They sung of candy and sweets and most importantly, they repeated something about a three o'clock fairy.

After a minute, Peter's senses flared to life. His eyes flashed open, he hadn't realized they'd shut in the first place. He stood up sending his chair crashing to the ground behind him and flung off his headphones. He heaved in a breath and clapped his hands over his ears. What just happened?

"You okay Peter?" Bucky asked though Peter didn't even seem to know the man was there. It was only when he reached out to touch the boy that he got a somewhat violent reaction. Peter whipped around, sending an arm about to strike his attacker but Bucky was able to stop it easily. "Easy kid. It's just me."

The boy huffed out a breath and lowered his arm. He was a bit embarrassed to see the four men staring at him. "Sorry…"

"What was that about?" Tony asked, concerned. The look of pure fear in Peter's eyes was disconcerting. "Are you okay?"

"I- yeah. I'm good. I think I might have found something else though." He slowly picked his chair up. "There's a song… in the audio that I didn't hear before."

"A song?" Steve asked. Peter merely nodded. Steve picked up the discarded headphones and placed them on his head. "Play it back FRIDAY." He stood there and listened to utter silence for a minute, then two, hearing nothing but the outside ambient noises of the street. "I don't hear anything Pete. It's not even showing up in the logs."

"But- but its there." Peter said as he looked at the screen. Though it was true it didn't show up on the actual audio track, he knew what he heard. "It starts at 3:00am, just like the glitches."

"Maybe grandpa's ears are just going." Tony took the headphones ignoring Steve's slight glare and slipped them over his ears. After a minute he slipped them off. "Maybe grandpa is right."

Peter took the headphones and hesitantly placed them back over his ears. The sound immediately hit him and he had to stop himself from flinging off the headphones again.

Hey look, list-en care-full-y. It's such a sweet me-lo-dy. The Three O'clock Fairy is call-ing out to me. Knock on the door to sleep, jump-up, wake-up, and hur-ry. To the coun-try of caaaandy we will get on the ship-

He suddenly found the headphones off his head and he was being forced to sit.

"Just breathe; deep breaths."

Peter took a breath which was surprisingly difficult to do. He looked up to see Bucky now had the headphones and was scowling as he tried to listen.

"Pete, are you all right?" Steve asked, concern masking his face.

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?" Peter's brow furrowed.

"Well for starters, you looked like you were going to pass out if you kept listening to whatever it is you can hear. Second, you started hyperventilating basically right as you put the headphones on." Tony scowled. "What do you hear?"

He looked to Bucky. The man had taken the headphones off and crossed his arms, indicating that he didn't hear anything either.

"It's- a flute, or some sort of pipe. It starts of soft but gets louder and more prominent. The melody it's playing is happy and- upbeat. I don't know, there's something else there- like some sort of underlying sound or something. The lyrics are singing about sweets and candy. But the actual singing…" He hung his head and placed his hands on the back of his neck. "It's kids. There are kids singing. It sounds like something you would hear at a theme park but it just sounds so- haunting."

There was silence for a moment before Clint broke it. "What exactly do you feel when you listen to the music?"

"It's uh," he took a deep breath. "It's like I'm underwater. Everything gets kind of blurry and muffled except for the music. It makes me want to sleep but I feel like if I do, I won't wake up."

"Okay. I think I have an idea of what we're dealing with." Clint nodded. "It's a form of hypnotism. Whoever's doing this is most likely hiding a Mosquito in the song that's somehow getting kids to leave."

"What do you mean by Mosquito?" Steve asked.

"Mosquito alarm; it's a device that plays a sound at such a high frequency that people usually over the age of 25 can't hear it. The higher the frequency, the harder it is to hear."

Steve nodded. "If that's true then why can't we hear the actual music? It's like it's not there at all."

"That could just be because of the kid's hearing. The sound could be that low and subtle that it doesn't actually register in the audio logs even if the camera was able to pick it up… or someone tampered with them to make it not show at all."

"So you're saying there's someone out there who's smart enough to somehow hack into dozens of families' security systems, tamper with the cameras, and somehow emit a hypnotic song that can't be heard by anyone under the age of 25?" Tony summed up.

Clint shrugged. "You got a better idea? This is the only thing we have to go on right now. Besides, doesn't it help prove the point that we can't hear it but he can?"

The four of them looked at the boy in the chair, his elbows propped on his knees, head resting on his hands. His chest rising slowly as he took deep breaths as a sort of calming mechanism. They'd all seen it before, usually when something bad happened. Hell they've done it themselves. But Peter, Peter was different when it came to that. His senses were both a blessing and a curse. Most of the time they helped him fight, warned him of danger but there were times when they seemed to do more harm than good and those were the times that made him vulnerable.

"Okay I think I speak for everyone here when I say it's time for a break." Tony announced. "Pete, get some sleep. We've been here for days and you've gotten maybe a handful of hours."

"But…"

"No buts. We know you want to help. Hell you're the one that got us this far with barely anything to go on but you're no good to us or the kids if you aren't at full strength."

Peter knew he lost the argument when Tony mentioned the kids. "Fine. I'll go take a nap or something." He stood, a bit wobbly on his feet but not enough to be concerned about. He made his way to the stairs and up to his room.

"Kid's too pure for his own sake." Bucky commented.

Ayyy I think it turned out nice. Actually the whole story is done but it was one big thing so I'm gonna chop it up into like three smaller ones and post them at some point in the next week.

For anyone that is curious, it is an actual song that I'm using but it's originally Japanese and the English translation is horrible but it still works. Also if you haven't caught on to the reference, I totally didn't steal the idea from Sailor Moon... I just wanted a story with that plot because I like it.

Please point out any grammatical or spelling errors so I might fix them in the future! Leave a review! It'll make me wanna update faster!

Hope ya liked it. See ya later!