"I suppose you're here to try and bring me in," Laurel said coolly, coming slowly to a halt. Robert faltered. And here he'd thought he was being stealthy. He didn't answer her.

"And what makes you think you'll have any more luck with that than everyone else who's tried?" Laurel asked without turning around.

"Laurel, it's me," Robert said, switching off his voice modulator so she'd recognize his voice, then pushing down his hood and removing his mask. The time had come to enact his plan. "It's Robert." At that, Laurel at last turned to face him.

"Well," she said dryly, arching an eyebrow. "You were certainly the last person I expected to be under that hood."

"I need you to come with me," Robert said. "For the safety of everyone in this city." Laurel laughed.

"Your approach was to appeal to my humanity?" she asked. "You're a lot of things, Robert, but I never thought you were stupid."

"Laurel, please," Robert begged, holding his hands out toward her in a placating gesture. It was hard to look non-threatening when he was still holding his bow in one hand, but he did his best. "See reason."

"We're well past reason," Laurel snarled. The coldness in her voice sent a shiver down Robert's spine. It was clear to him now that this- devoid of morals, compassion, and empathy- was not the Laurel he knew. He suspected that Laurel had died the day she'd gotten her powers. "If you gave a damn about reason you'd hang up that hood and go home to your family instead of running around pretending to be a hero." Robert didn't react. That particular barb had been thrown at him so many times by so many people that it had ceased to have any effect on him.

"You've hurt people-" he said, trying again.

"Do you really think I care?" Laurel interjected.

"You cause chaos wherever you go," Robert went on. "I'm just trying to keep the damage contained."

"Oh please," Laurel said scornfully. "We both know what 'containment' really means. I'm not going to let you put me in a cage, Robert." Robert didn't bother to point out that he wouldn't be the one doing the cageing- he lacked the facilities necessary to hold a metahuman safely. Instead, he would merely be handing her off to someone who did.

"Please," he said, trying it one last time. "Just let me stop this. Before anyone else gets hurt."

"You were like a father to me once, Robert," Laurel said, softening slightly, and for just a moment Robert caught a glimpse of the old her. "You gave me somewhere to go and someone to turn to when I'd lost everything, and I'll always be grateful to you for that. That's the only reason you're still alive. But any connection between us died with Oliver." That barb landed- Robert felt a sharp stab of pain in his heart at the reminder that his only son lay dead somewhere at the bottom of the North China Sea.

"If you come after me again," Laurel continued, and any hint of the old her vanished, "I will kill you." She shifted her stance, and Robert, recognizing what was about to happen, ducked out of the way a split second before she let loose with her cry, her intent clearly being to use to buy herself time to make her getaway. He wasn't quite fast enough, and the shockwave from Laurel's cry caught him in the shoulder, sending him spinning through the air, his bow knocked free of his grip. He slammed into a wall and then into the ground. He righted himself with a groan in time to see the end of Laurel's long black coat disappear around a corner. Without even a moment's hesitation, Robert gave chase. It didn't matter that Laurel threatened to kill him- she had to be stopped. Coercion hadn't worked, which left him with no other but to use force.

Pausing to pick up his bow from where it had fallen, Robert hauled himself up the side of the nearest building and onto the roof, because tracking Laurel through the narrow alleyways through which she ran was easier from above and also because it made it harder for her to detect his pursuit the way she had last time.

When he managed to get ahead of Laurel, Robert threw himself down from the roof and hit the ground in a roll, coming up standing in the middle of the alleyway, blocking Laurel's path. She stuttered to a halt, eyes narrowing as she contemplated her next move.

"I told you I would kill you if you came after me again," she reminded him, voice icy.

"I don't care if you do," Robert said, drawing back his bow and leveling an arrow at her. "You have to be stopped."

"It's too late for that," Laurel said, settling once more into the stance she used to minimize the backlash that came with using her cry. Before she could unleash it on him for a second time, however, a swirling blue vortex that Robert recognized as an interdimensional portal like the ones that had been popping up in and around Central City recently opened up behind her. Out of it stepped the black suited and masked speedster known as Zoom, blue lightning crackling around him.

"I require your services," he snarled in his strange distorted voice, grabbing Laurel by the upper arm. Before either she or Robert could react, Zoom started to drag her backward, through the breach he'd just come through. Robert didn't know what possessed him to do it, what made him think he had any chance of catching a speedster, but somehow he knew that if Zoom got away with Laurel, bad things would happen wherever he was taking her, so he gave chase. He reached for Laurel just as Zoom stepped through the breach, and the two of them disappeared through it. Robert stumbled forward, recovering from the momentum of his failed grab for Laurel, and immediately noticed that something felt… off. He glanced behind him and realized why- the breach was gone. Without even noticing, he'd chase Zoom and Laurel through it, and it had closed behind him, leaving him on some other Earth. Home was far behind him now, and he had no way to return to it. He was trapped.