The Leap To SunnydaleBy Meltha
Sam looked at Al. Al looked at Sam. Both of them were completely dumbstruck.
"Ah, Sam," Al finally managed to croak out, "this is a little out of our regular experience."
"No kidding!" Sam snapped. "I mean, yeah, you were the devil once, but still."
"I was wha?" Al asked, his eyebrows raising until they were completely under his hat brim.
"Nevermind," Sam replied quickly. Better to leave that one well enough alone. "Wait, is that the vampire that's going to get Buffy?"
Al punched buttons on the comlink, then breathed a sigh of relief. "No. It says here it doesn't happen until tomorrow night, and it's a female who, well, bites her."
"Anything useful I should know? Should I be on the lookout for witches or werewolves or Bigfoot, too?" Sam half-yelled in exasperation, his snout wrinkling in disdain.
"Um, actually, Ziggy says the other room-mate in the house is a witch, and, get this Sam, she used to date a werewolf, but he's somewhere in Sri Lanka now," Al said, his lip curling up as things just got weirder and weirder.
"She used... to date... a..." Sam said slowly.
"Werewolf, yeah but, hey," Al said with a none-too-pure grin, "Ziggy says she's a lesbian now."
Sam ran his hoof over his face in aggravation. The last thing he needed on this leap was Al's monster-sized libido. He could only hope this Buffy, whoever she was, was about as attractive as a Rottweiler.
"Okay, fine, so we got one girl named Dawn," Sam checked off.
"That's Buffy's sister," Al provided helpfully. "Buffy's raising her since, aw, that's a shame, the mother died a little less than a year ago."
Sam winced. "What about her father?"
Al typed something into the comlink and snorted in disgust. "Stupid meshuganah doesn't have anything to do with them. He's off with some bimbo in Rome right now. "
Sam screwed up his piggy nose in revulsion.
"And the..." he had a hard time saying it, "the witch?"
"Willow Rosenberg, same age as Buffy, which is... two. Two?" Al bashed the comlink against his palm. "Twenty. Well, that makes more sense."
"And we got one English vampire?" Sam added faintly.
"Ziggy doesn't know anything about him at all," Al sighed. "Sam, you're a stuffed pig. What are you supposed to be able to do here?"
Sam's brow furrowed deeply as this question led to another one. "Just what the heck is the stuffed pig doing in my body back at the lab?"
"Huh. Y'know, I don't know. Lemme check on that for ya," Al said as the chamber door abruptly swung open and he left with another swoosh of the air lock closing.
No sooner had Al left than into the room came a young woman. She was quite pretty, although she was rather thin and wore an expression of deep sadness. Her eyes seemed dim somehow, as though she'd seen too much. Currently, she was wearing a fast food uniform that made Al look fashionable by comparison, which was really saying something. She took the bizarre chicken/cow hat off her bobbed blonde hair and hung it off the lamp on her desk, sighing deeply as she rooted through her dresser drawers and grabbed what looked like gray sweats. Sam was prepared to shut his eyes, but she left the room once again, and a few seconds later he heard the shower come on.
"Not a Rottweiler, nope," Sam said. "Well, at least Al isn't here, or I'm pretty sure she'd have some invisible holographic company in the shower."
Meanwhile, in a completely white room several years in the future, Al was staring at Sam's form, currently inhabited by one Mr. Gordo. The good doctor was down on his hands and knees, his face smiling beatifically at Al, not moving at all. Verbena assured him that all his vital signs were fine, but it was a little unnerving.
"This is just weird," Al finally said to her.
"I don't know," Verbena answered, not even bothering to hide a grin. "I think he looks sort of cuddly."
"Whatever," Al said as he walked away. "He gives me the heebee-jeebees."
Verbena waited until Al was out of the room before going up to Sam and patting him on the head. "Don't listen to a word he says, Mr. Gordo. You're adorable. I'm sure Dr. Beckett will take very good care of your girl."
As her high heels clicked away down the hall, the smile on Sam's face became just a little wider.