Little Bitty Puzzle PiecesBy PJzallday
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"So we agree the problem is numbers?" asked Mr. Simmons, one of the Council's directors. "There aren't enough Watchers to keep a rein on these Slayers?"
A dignified-looking white-haired man, who'd been part of the former regime, spoke up, "If that's the case, why not hire more?"
"Yeah... um... At the moment, we're barely scraping by," Andrew explained. "It's cost a lot of money just setting up. You know, buying books and equipment. Renting out office space. Travel expenses. We pretty much used up all the Old Council's liquid assets."
"We 'ave been very fortunate to find benefactors willing to donate portions of deir estates," stated Mr. Lechateau, another director, patting the older fellow on the shoulder.
"That's true. If it weren't for the Harrington-Smythes," Andrew said, smiling appreciatively at Director Harrington-Smythe, "opening up their estate in Essex to house the Academy, we'd be even worse off. The fact is: we need more money. We hardly have enough to pay the employees we've already got, so hiring more is pretty much out of the question."
"And no new hires means we can't expand our training program or support in the field to include more Slayers," the Council's other associate concluded. "Nor will it encourage new Watcher-Trainees, if there's no guarantee of gainful employment to follow graduation."
"Alright. So we can't hire more," conceded Harrington-Smythe. "Why can't the existing Watchers and Trainees take on more Slayers?"
"No disrespect intended," interjected Field Watcher Mabbissi, "but I am already overseein' twelve Slayas. I don't know about de other Watchas, but I spend more time travelling from one Slaya to de next, dan I can actually workin' wit' dem."
"Yes, our time is already spread too thinly," Ms. Chen, the Chinese Watcher argued.
"Perhaps if we found some more sources for financial assistance," suggested Mr. Simmons, "we could-"
"Money isn't the most immediate concern," snapped Giles. "The more pressing problem is that we've far too many Slayers, the vast majority of whom are completely out of control."
The rest of the group immediately quieted.
"The Slayers are out of control?" Simmons reiterated. "Haven't we a policy in place to deal with such a situation?"
"Indeed. We should do as we've always done: round them up; rehabilitate those who can be," Harrington-Smythe stated plainly, "and retire the others."
Dawn, who'd been listening intently to the discussion, repeated the phrase to herself several times, "Retire the others." Her face dropped and she blurted, "You mean kill them! You're going to force the ones you can, to play nice and the rest you're gonna kill!"
Amidst the reactionary outbursts of the attendees, Andrew tried to refocus the group's attention. "Hey. Everybody. Let's calm down. I'm sure that even if... um... that's what the Director was saying, 'retiring' Slayers would be a last resort. Every effort would be made to-"
"We're looking at hundreds of Slayers with no ties to the Council," Giles broke in. "We simply haven't the facilities or the man-power to undertake such a broad-based plan of action. In the past, as I'm sure some of you know, it took considerable man-power to assume and maintain custody of just one girl. Even when there were only two Slayers and the current ratio of Slayers-to-Watchers was reversed, the Council wasn't able to control both of them."
From where she sat, out of the range of the video camera on Wesley's computer, Faith huffed and frowned as she slumped back into her chair.
After a quick glance to her, Wesley turned back to the monitor and argued, "To be accurate, the Council didn't have control of either of the Slayers at that time. Each had... taken up her own agenda."
"Semantics," Giles discounted. "The point remains that even with only two Slayers, the Council had difficulty controlling them. Now we've far more who've..." He paused dramatically before slyly rephrasing his former colleague's words, "taken up their own agendas."
"Surely we aren't going to eliminate all the Slayers," Chen insisted, "simply because of man-power issues or because some have gone wild."
Willow looked sympathetically at Buffy, who sat stoically staring at her open report package on the table. "We don't know if they've 'gone wild'. And those other two Slayers," she noted with an edge of annoyance at their "polite" refusal to use names, "the ones who left the Old Council — I happen to know for a fact that at least one was actively fighting demons and using good judgement. She just wasn't following the orders of an outdated Council that knew less about actually slaying than she did." Glancing again to her friend, Willow noticed Buffy still hadn't made any significant movement.
"In any event," Giles said with a subtle glare in Buffy's direction. "There are now one thousand more individuals... being pulled in all directions... Since the prospect of contacting and assessing each of these Slayers is unfeasible, I think the best course of action would be to recapture the power."
"Would we do that on an individual basis?" asked a voice via computer.
Another countered, "But that brings us back to the question of man-power and time. It could take years for us to find them all. We'd need to establish whether they'd be candidates for rehabilitation and-"
"No. It would be best if we took control of all of the power until such time as the girls can be placed under the Council's supervision," Giles declared. "All the power, all at once."
"Hey, whoa." Faith pushed into Wesley's camera space. "Maybe it's not my place to say but ya can't do that."
The others strained to view her in the monitor.
"I mean, yeah, it sounds lame, but this is a parta me. And yeah, maybe I haven't exactly been toein' the party line all this time but... I been fightin' vamps and demons," she insisted.
"We can't just take back the power anyway," Willow argued. "We don't know whether it can be done safely."
Sternly, Giles reminded the witch, "You've taken power before."
Willow had to do a double-take to see if it was in fact Giles who'd raised that point. "Yeah, and I... Well, that's why I'm not sure if it can be done without somebody getting hurt." With a scowl at Giles, she asked, "If we were to give this a try, how would you suggest doing it?" She leaned back in her chair crossing her arms defiantly at her chest, making it clear she wouldn't be party to such a plan.
After removing his glasses, Giles calmly stated, "I know a number of individuals-"
Mabbissi wanted to know, "Ms. Rosenberg, are you sayin' dat recapturing de power could kill dese girls?"
"It's possible," the witch acknowledged. "But even if it doesn't kill them, we could still be putting them in grave danger. Doing a blanket-spell like that... we wouldn't know what's happening to them when we enact it; they could be in the middle of a demon fight. They'd be defenceless then."
The meeting attendees made various gestures and facial expressions to display their concern, encouraging Willow to continue with her speculation.
"Besides, we don't know what would happen to the power. We can't guarantee that it could be contained. And even if it could, we might not be able to reuse it. We can't pick and chose who gets to be a Slayer. The power could become useless."
As Willow spoke, Buffy stiffly rose from her chair and walked to the door, exiting without looking back. Distracted, her friend followed behind.
"There's a lot of factors to consider," Andrew agreed. "I don't think we can predict them all."
"That may be true," Simmons conceded, "but we've a choice between the Slayers and countless innocents."
"And how do we know if these guys — the ones that would take the power — could be trusted with it?" Dawn posed. "I mean, we don't know if we could get it back. What if they started using it against us? Or they could sell it or something."
"That's an excellent point, Dawn. I would personally oversee the transfer," Giles indicated. "Perhaps we could return the power to the scythe."
Dawn glanced with concern to where the other young women had disappeared into the hall before turning her attention back to the issue adding, "What if Willow does the spell and goes all black-eyed scary and veiny again? Or what if she can't do it? Or the spell doesn't work?"
***
"Buffy?" Willow called softly to her friend, who wandered as if in a trance down the corridor.At the sound of the witch's voice, Buffy turned and looked at her with wild wide eyes.
"Buffy, are you OK?"
"I can't do anything right," she squeaked in reply.
"What are you talking about?"
"This is my fault. Don't you see! All of it: my fault. Spike-" a tearful Buffy choked. "Spike saved the world so that I could destroy it. He died. Angel... All those other girls in the Hellmouth. Anya. Who knows how many innocent people all over the place. And they're in there now talking about killing all those girls because I forced them to be Slayers."
"You didn't do that alone, Buffy," argued Willow. "We all went along with your plan."
With a furrowed brow, Buffy fretted, "Yeah, you went along with it. But you didn't want to do it."
"I was afraid to do it. Afraid I couldn't. I knew you needed me and I was afraid that I'd fail and we'd all die," the agitated witch explained. "Buffy, this isn't your fault. It was literally an apocalyptic situation. You made a suggestion; we made a decision. And we saved the world."
But Buffy wasn't listening. She leaned against the wall. "Willow... You can do something... something to fix this," she pleaded. "Take back the power. You can experiment on me."
"No! I won't do that," Willow snapped, clenching her fists and turning her back to her friend in frustration. With a heavy sigh, she softened and returned to Buffy's side. "We'll find another way."
When Willow rested a hand on her friend's shoulder, Buffy looked at her questioningly.
"Remember what Aisling and Bea told you: you have something important to do. Some big challenge and this Slayer situation sure seems like a challenge to me. Buffy, we can do this," Willow insisted, "but you need to pull yourself together. I know you're hurting but the pain you feel..."
Though Willow completed her sentence, Buffy was lost for a moment in a memory: "...you only can heal by living. You have to go on living, so one of us is living." Determinedly, the Slayer pushed off from the wall and stood tall as she wiped the tears from her eyes. "You're right, Will. We can do this. We have to; I won't let his death be meaningless." Marching into the meeting room, Buffy thumped her palms on the table and declared, "Here's what we're going to do."