Redoing of the first chapter/Prologue thanks to my beta RippersGirl who I am glad to have the help of.

Family Reunion

Prologue

Letters

Buffy sighed; she had been royally beaten by that super vampire last night. The whole ass kicking part of the program had been in reverse last night. She had barely stood against one, and lived to tell the tale. And the way Giles was talking, there was an army of those things itching to come out of the Hellmouth and have a party, with the people of the world as the main course. The question that was going over in her mind, was how was she supposed to fight an army, when she could barely take down one of the scouts? And why was all of this on her shoulders all of a sudden? She snorted to herself. She already knew the answer to that damn question. It was because she was the fricking Chosen One, Slayer comma The. She was the one person in the whole world with the strength to supposedly kick the ass of every evil undead thing there was, yadda, yadda, yadda. She had been doing it, too, since she was 16. She had moved here and killed all sorts of evil bad guys. She had even been forced to try and kill some of her closest friends. That's what fun it was to be the Chosen One. You had to do all of the not so fun jobs, and then put on a happy face, no matter what happened.

Her eyes darted briefly to a photo that she had on her headboard. There were actually several pictures on it. There was one of all the original Scoobies; one of Angel's team, and ones of various other people. The one her eyes flickered to this night was the one of her childhood friend, Ford. Ford, who had tried to cheat death, and in the end made her have to kill him. Of course, his idea of fighting death was to become a soulless vampire. If Spike were still around, she would have slapped him upside the head for that.

Maybe this was really it, the one where they all bit the dust. There would be no one around who would care enough to bring them back to life. They would all be dead, except for a handful of people that had already left town. This thought made her eyes flick to two of the pictures, one was of Angel, her first love, the other was of a pale skinned man almost as white as her vampire lover, except he was a werewolf not a vampire. The one person that had always put Willow first had been Oz. Somehow though, she doubted that would matter much to anyone. Besides, if they fell here, the world would be over run with all sorts of monsters. And that would be the end, as in 'Be-de-be-de-be-de that's all, folks.' Hell would come to earth because she hadn't been good enough to stop the forces of hell from coming through this time. She ached all over, but there had to be something she could do that would help. Sighing again, this time in frustration, she got up off the bed and went downstairs for a snack. Damn slayer metabolism was a real pain sometimes. She found a leftover pizza, that for some reason that would remain a mystery, Xander had not touched.

She looked up from the food in the microwave and noticed her mom's address book lying under a small pile of papers. She calmly picked up the book, along with the yummy smelling pepperoni pizza, and went back to her room. She sat down at the desk, and looked over the various names in the book. Some of these people she had never heard of, but they were actually supposed to be distant cousins. And some were friends that her mom had made on one of her business trips or from her college days. It was kind of crazy realizing. that her mom had known so many different people, but never told her about them. 'Kind of makes me wish I had done that family tree project for school,' she thought to herself. Looking at this had given her the very smallest of ideas. An idea she knew that Giles and the others would hate, but an idea all the same. The only question was, should she? 'What the hell,' she thought. Maybe she could give the world a fighting chance. Even if it was a really, really slim chance.

She began writing letters of warning to each of the people that were there, and just went down the line, telling them her story, and a little of her friends' stories (they had the right to decide for themselves if they wanted people to know about them). When she was done, there would be at least a handful of people that might hopefully understand what was going on.' That is, if they don't try and send me to a mental hospital,' she thought wryly, a small grin on her face. "Oh, ouch," she whined as the grin tugged at some of the scratches she had. It took her nearly all night, but she had a nice big wad of letters ready to be sent, along with several copies of her version of what had been happening. Fortunately, Anya had insisted on buying a copy machine to take care of business receipts, and amazingly wasn't charging them to use it. 'And to think, I nearly failed English,' she thought as she stuffed one of the envelopes. She would take the letters by the post office tomorrow; it was still open, so that meant she might be okay. Content, that even should she fail, there would be others to continue the fight that she had dedicated her life to. Even though she knew she would never really win the fight, it had been fun while it lasted. She nodded in satisfaction as the last stamp was in place. After she had drunk enough water to get the stamp taste out of her mouth, she went back to bed for a few hours of rest.

The Powers That Be looked on with interest at what their warrior had done, and nodded to each other in approval of this plan. But they also knew that the current allies of the Chosen One, might persuade their Champion not to do this. Such a thing would be sad; perhaps it was time that others knew what it was that was done in their world. They whisked the letters away in a glow of light, and placed the packet in a mailbox that would be picked up later. Now there would be no backing out of this for their Champion, and the world might stand a chance. They were even more limited than usual on what they could do, thanks to the one the world knew as Jasmine.

The Human Spirit though, is not something that even the Powers can truly understand, and one thing many do is to always protect their families. The wheels of change had been set into motion and now the Powers, and the world, would see the consequences their meddling had caused for the destinies of all the people in this dimension.