The message

[middle_amazon]

Lilly's powers are fantastic, but there are limits. Random, unexpected limits. It's frustrating, but rather than waiting to have Omen exhaust herself on another attempt, everyone is out looking for the children. Donna Troy is especially frantic. Even if the circumstances were very different, she's had a child taken and then apparently die. As

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[nation_gothampc]

The picture comes over Roy's phone and he'll see both Cerdian and Lian smiling happily...along with Jason Todd.

Do you know where your children are? I do. Wait for instructions.

[middle_amazon]

"Great Hera," she breathes. "Who else is getting this?"

[aiminghigher]

"I am." Roy's voice is strangled, panic, anger, hope and fear singing through every nerve and cutting of his breath more than is really reasonable.

"How the hell did he find them first?"

[middle_amazon]

"I don't want to know. I just want to spring the trap I know I'll be walking into. My coordinates say Switzerland. Yours?"

[middle_amazon]

This chateau.

She never pegged Jason as a sentimentalist. The world economy left this exclusive and exclusively private resort an empty shell. It was never a place she associated with life anymore then one associates flash floods or erupting volcanoes with life, even if there is a connection between devastation and creation.

Dick's words ring in her ears. She was a young bride, a bad leader and alone without any of the official Titan line-up to lead. It was just after the Crisis when she came her, over Dick's objections. He claimed her drive for perfection for the prefect little life was the problem. He was right. What no one else had noticed (Okay, almost no one...) was that the power dynamics in her marriage were changing, and Terry was not ever going to be okay with her not being clay to sculpt. Terry extorted more and more control - pitting her against them. He'd started to threaten divorce - failure - and in her young mind, it wasn't an option.

That's when Roy showed up with his assemblage of broken people. Garth,

[nation_gothampc]

His voice seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once when he speaks.

"You're awfully confident that I want to 'sort this out', Donna." Jason says, preparing the last bit of his little surprise for her.

"What, no Dickie with you? You two are practically inseparable, aren't you? I mean, the pool for when you two would just stop fighting it and jump each other was pretty big. Surprised it ain't happened yet." he says now, appearing at the top of stairs.

"Glad you came, though. I got somethin' for you." he says.

[middle_amazon]

"Dick is looking for you," she admits, scanning the rafters. "And you put $20 on Roy after that first throw-down with Cheshire."

[nation_gothampc]

"Funny, that's kinda what I was shootin' for when I started this whole game. I wanted Dick to get off his duff and come at me with both barrels. I mean, it took a lot of work to get all this goin'.

I'd be pissed if my guests didn't show up for the party." Jason says.

"I mean, I killed his enemy, I killed a lot of people to get him to come out. When he was too slow on the draw to get my message...well, I beat the living hell out of his cripple of a wife to get him to come and kill me.

Instead, I ended up with you." Red Hood says, a tad disappointed.

"But, I have some lovely party favors for you, Donna. Share them with Dick won't you?" Jason asks.

At that moment, Donna will find herself sprinkling with a rain of what seems to be confetti on first glance. But if she examines closer...she'll find that the "confetti" is actually several hundred mutilated and destroyed pictures of her and Dick together, smiling, at play, and during other times.

[deadly_jade]

A potential overdose of a paralytic nerve agent? Pfah! Creative as he is, Jason is an amateur with poisons. Cheshire is the master, she knows how to clean up the little messes.

She crouches along side the prone Troia, carefully administering just enough of the antidote -- among other things -- to wake her up, but keep her slow and clumsy.

"Wake up, Amazon. I've been waiting a long time for this."

[middle_amazon]

Her first conscious thoughts are not positive ones regarding her outcomes for survival. Plus, she is bound and she can feel the Amazon curse starting to bubble up to the surface of her mind. Keep calm. Remember how Roy handles this. Just fake it as much as you can and get them talking.

"Jason?" she asks weekly.

[deadly_jade]

"Does this sound like the voice of a 'Jason' to you, Mrs. Harper?"

That name is emphasized by a certain amount of bitterness. Yes, she had told Hera to bless Roy's marriage to the woman lying in front of her, but that doesn't mean that she's not carrying a grudge. Donna has both Roy and Lian's love, and Cheshire had tasted that once. Who wouldn't resent this 'Wonder Girl' stepping into their own vacancies? No one human wouldn't hate her for that.

Cheshire slaps Donna on the face, a growl rising in her throat when it doesn't even leave a proper mark. Amazons!

"Wake up!"

[middle_amazon]

She does. This is nightmare fuel.

"Red Hood has Lian - and you know he wouldn't turn me over to you unless he wanted to slow us down!"

At another set of coordinates

[nation_citizens]

At this point, Roy Harper likely wishes he could forget why he knows this place.

Once upon a time, he and a rookie agent named Nate Bloomberg entered these jungles on a lead. Something having to do with rebels in Laos, communists and something embarrassing to Checkmate. Beyond that, his memory is soup. He does know Jason chose this place for a reason. Maybe it was the place his alter ego, the terrorist known as Killswitch, connected the dots and discovered Nate's name was actually Jason. Maybe he already knew, and this was the trial run for Red Hood to see if the evil Diablo had cultivated within Jason "took."

Beyond that, his memory is the worst kind of soup. A familiar scent here, an unidentifiable left over something there.

It really doesn't matter who did what to who for how many chocos, Somewhere in there Jason says he has my kid - Garth's too. So let's just get on with it.

Re: At another set of coordinates

[nation_amazons]

The hunt begins within the first five minutes of being parachuted in. An arrow come whizzing out of the brush towards his head.

[aiminghigher]

He's fast to dodge, faster to find cover, resisting the urge to snort out loud. Hostiles with arrows? Seriously? What kind of backhanded slap in the face was this supposed to be? It would almost have been funny if it wasn't vaguely insulting...

He darts a hand out to pry the arrow from the tree it hit in place of his head, taking it with him as he starts booking it through the bush, assessing the weapon's make and efficiency on the fly, ears pricked for the sound of extra feet.

[nation_amazons]

A click is his only warning as two trees suddenly begin to fall, and then more and more, like dominoes.

[nation_citizens]

Where our thread opens is a godforsaken base in the middle what can nicely be call disputed territory between drug lords, peasants, rebels and a so-called government somewhere in South America. In this base is a man tied to a chair and he's had many names

[aiminghigher]

Consciousness bleeds back much too slowly for his liking. His head is ringing, he can taste the faint metallic tang of blood in his mouth, and it's painful to lift his head with the way his arms have been wrenched up behind him. Because Roy taught Jason better than to tie up a troublemaker and put their hands together at the small of their back where there's all kinds of leeway to move. Much better to strap him in tight with elbows bent over the back of the chair and forearms aligned to the spokes.

Dammit...

He coughs hard enough to hurt his ribs, the drifting smoke that he inhaled in the forest clinging to the insides of his chest. He picks up his head and straightens up as much as he can, just to the point of pain. No need to go making Jason's job any easier.

Anger brings adrenaline back to the surface and he takes the risk of a good hard yank and on all the ropes just to see how well he's really stuck in there. His seat at least isn't bolted down, but his legs are tied to the chair's legs anyway.

[nation_citizens]

That's when she sees something else hanging in front of him. A trophy of what used to be soft, long black hair hung from the ceiling with red ribbon.

Beyond that is a monitor showing that room he saw before. The timer has counted down and the room is filling with some sort of liquid, but it's not water.

One of the chair legs seems less stable then the others.

[aiminghigher]

The hair is what jars him first when he sees it, his heart pounding in his chest, and then the monitor just a little further back comes into focus...

That wobbly chair leg, attached to his left leg, creaks and cracks at the tension that fires through him, and he turns his focus on it, because he can't do anything tied down. Perhaps on a regular day the strength it takes to pull the weak leg free of it's hold on the frame would have been beyond him, but, well, Jason put his daughter on the other side of the obstacle course and said go.

When the chair leg comes free the ropes come loose and although he topples onto the floor and that hurts like hell it gets him free from where he's been tied and the chair leg itself nets him one more weapon than he used to have.

He snatches that long lock of hair from it's perch, wrapping it around his fist as he storms up to the monitor, struggling to look at the room, seeking for defining features in the setting, and not at Lian and Cerdian's panicked faces.