The Leap to Sunnydale

AUTHOR: Meltha
SUMMARY: Sam leaps to Sunnydale
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: Through Grave

Suddenly, the familiar rushing sound of Al's arrival filled the room. Sam didn't know whether to be thrilled or mortified. He was a stuffed pig, for crying out loud! Al would never let him hear the end of this.

As he sat on the bed and waited for the inevitable to occur, Al, who today was wearing a garish ensemble of tomato red pants and a bright green and sky blue striped shirt, topped off with a hat that looked like the thing the Skipper used to beat up Gilligan, looked around the room quizzically.

"Gushy? You sure you got this right?" he called to what looked like no one. He gave the comlink a mighty swat and it squealed in protest. "Sam! Where are ya, buddy? There's nobody in here."

Taking a deep, shaking breath, Sam braced himself for the inevitable as he said softly, "Oh, yes there is."

Al spun around so quickly that he nearly fell to the floor.

"Where?"

"Um, here," Sam said resignedly as he waved his front legs weakly.

Al blinked, stepped forward, stared at the little piggy, then blinked again.

"Sam?"

"Yup."

"What the hell are you doing there? Ziggy said you're supposed to be some guy named Mr. Gordo," Al said as his eyes became huge.

Sam sat down in despair, barely even denting the coverlet, and immediately felt something crinkling under his posterior. Looking over his rather plump shoulder, he was just able to see a cloth tag that protruded from his backside. With a loud groan, he turned his back to Al and said, "I am Mr. Gordo."

Al leaned closer and stared at the tush tag, reading aloud.

"'Mr. Gordo the Piggy, made by Cuddletta Toy Company of Pasadena, California.' Well, you're American made, at least. Hey, says here you're machine washable and 100% polyester filled, Sammy," Al laughed.

"Yeah, I'm well aware of that washable fact," Sam muttered. "This is ridiculous. I'm supposed to only leap into humans! The chimp I could understand, but this? How did I end up in a stuffed toy?"

"Good question. Ziggy here says… huh. Well, that's odd. She's not sure, Sam. She's hypothesizing that maybe Buffy, that's the girl that owns you, has been cuddling you for so long that you've picked up some of her DNA. Doesn't really make any sense, though. Still, the only other option is that the toy is sentient, which of course, makes even less sense," Al said in exasperation.

"Okay, okay, whatever, I'm here now, so how do I get to move on to someone a little less fuzzy," Sam said, shaking his head and resting his forehead on his front hooves.

"Do that again," Al said with a chuckle.

"What?"

"It's just… Sam, you're so cute," Al said with far too wide a grin.

Sam rolled his shoe-button eyes and circled his hoof in a motion that clearly meant to hurry things along.

"Right, right. Okay, uh, Ziggy says that there's a 89% chance that you're here to stop Buffy from becoming a vamp." Al stopped in confusion. "Personally, I've always liked women who were kinda vampy. What's so wrong with her being a vamp?"

Al slugged the comlink again, and with an electronic curse it spat out the rest of the word.

"Oh! A vampIRE. Buffy's going to…" Al stopped in mid- sentence. "Buffy's going to become a vampire? See, Sam, I told you there was something to that thing!"

Sam sighed again. "Al, for the final time, all of that leap had a perfectly logical explanation. There are no such things as vampires. They do not exist. They are figments of folkloric imagination brought on by fear of early entombment and religious connotations of burial in unconsecrated ground. I don't want to hear another word about…"

"Vampires?" Al said with his mouth hanging open and staring at a spot several feet over Sam's head.

"Yes, vampires!" Sam shouted, but Al didn't even blink. Sam looked in the mirror, wondering if perhaps some gorgeous woman had entered the room, although it would have had to be through the opened window, in order to make Al go speechless, but there was no one there. "What are you staring at? Nobody is…" Sam began, but then he felt the hand on his head.

It was unusually cool, which would have been enough to make anyone jump, but the fact that the man, who was wearing a leather coat and had slicked-back blond hair that could only have come from a bottle, was sitting right next to him on the bed but casting no reflection at all was what prompted a scream and made him topple off the bed.

"Oops, quite a tumble there," the man said in an English accent as he saw the pig fall. "Been hittin' the JD, Gordo? Best put you back where you belong, puffball."

With a surprisingly gentle grip, he picked up Sam and settled him against the large pillow on the bed, giving him a fond pat. Sam noticed when his wrist brushed against him that there was no pulse.

"Oh boy," Sam mumbled again as he watched the long leather coat and its owner go through the door and disappear down the hallway. "Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy…"

Continued