Whistler's logic seems kind of... faulty. By the way he presents things the Slayer itself, existing, is the reason that the world keeps coming close to ending. If this "balance" he's so fond of maintains itself all the chalanges that Buffy went through, even the ones that almost ended the worlds, existed only because Buffy was their to fight against them. Of course this leaves open the possibility for her to fail and the world to end.

On the other hand if she didn't exist, if there was no slayer, wouldn't that mean that the threat wouldn't exist to begin with?

That's essentially what is implied in this chapter and I just can't buy it... that the Slayer herself is responsible for the world almost ending simply because she exists and that we'd all be better off if she, well, didn't. The only way this chapter works for me is if I assume whistler is full of it... that the powers that be ARE more interested in balance than in the well being of people and when the tables are turned see the slayers as a threat to this balance. It isn't that the Slayers existing gives evil leave to create more evil, its that the Slayers existing creates a chance to really kick daemonic ass until the world is actaully a safe place to live in. The powers concider this to be a corruption of the balance and send Whistler to try and convince the Slayers to do something really stupid... like destroy themselves (or rather de-slayer themselves) because they figure its the easiest way to accomplish their goal. If the second option is for the powers themselves to start doing their best to send lots of evil things to try and wreck heavoc well, that's not the Slayers fault or a consequence of "balance" its just a sign that the PTB are officially the enemy now and not their friends and that the next time Whistler visits Buffy really SHOULD rip out his ribcage. I'd suggest not wearing it though, that could be messy.

It certainly explains why they get a direct pipeline to G-d in your next story... they dont' have a higher power in their corner anymore and this suggests the PTB do NOT work for G-d. If we're working in traditional views you could almost say that we have G-d in one corner, Satan in the other, and the PTB in the middle trying to make sure that neither of them win because then the game would be over and the PTB would have nothing to do with their time but play cards.

I know in the show Whistler was trusted, but he's going to keep popping up and not everything he's going to say is going to be trust worthy. I left deliberate holes in 22 Minutes because I plan on using them later, if that makes sense. Also--everywhere Joan talks to the Scoobies she is either under a privacy spell or on the phone--the power's aren't going to listen in on a 18 yo girl's phone calls...

I can't say more now without ruining a couple of the twists down the line. Just suffice it to say that everything has been said in protected area's, and it will make much more sense in a while.

Thanks for reading! The next part of the series will be out later tonight or tomorrow morning (Holiday's. *grin*)

An interesting take on the retaining the balance aspect of Chosen. However, if that conversation was 22 minutes they must have been speaking really slowly.

THANK YOU! This is the first post-Chosen fic I've read that has addressed the balance issue in a manner that would have been perfectly in canon for the show and handled things logically and in context. You had Buffy perfectly in voice here, too. And Whistler as well, from the little we saw of him on the show.

As for the build up of the new fight...*SQUEE* I dearly love Stargate crossovers, and this series of short stories looks like it is going to be great! I'm really looking forward to more! Thank you for sharing. :-)

Thank you. = ]

interesting!

Cool idea, well-written. Hope that there will be more of this later on. :)

Horrible idea. Buffy should point out the new Slayers can be identified and would be helpless if attacked. He also failed to explain why deactivating some of the new Slayers would allow new potentials to be born, and why not deactivating would prevent that. There's also the matter that one Slayer was protecting humnaity when their were a few thousand humans, now there's six billion of us. Should more people have more protectors. Frankly when the PTB started to threaten to send bad guys, Buffy should have threatened to take them down, too. She's already beaten a god, and the First Evil.

Very interesting idea and a really nice writing to pull it off!

Keep them coming.