The Leap To Sunnydale

By Meltha

"Oh! My hero!" the little red-haired, bespectacled Girl Scout crowed happily as she threw her boxes of cookies up in the air and hugged what she thought was Mr. Fogerty, the former meanest man in town, who had just rescued her puppy, Schmoopie, from the speeding bus.

It was at that moment that a slightly flustered Sam Beckett, who was housed inside Mr. Fogerty, began to glow brightly. Moments later, he found himself leaping through time and space, until, quite abruptly, he was in a new and utterly unknown landscape.

Darkness surrounded him. He couldn't see his hand in front of his face. As always after a leap, he was more than a little Swiss cheesed, but this disorientation was starting to make him downright panicky. Wherever he was, though, it was crowded. Objects of unknown size and shape were pressed in on him from every side, and the air was close, confined, and smelled strongly of...

"Fabric softner?" he tried to mumble quietly, but the sound of his voice came out strangely muffled and echoey. "Where am I?"

It was then that he heard approaching noises. He couldn't make out what they were at first, but that changed abruptly when a huge metal door swung open, lights suddenly illuminating the chamber. For one brief moment, he thought he'd managed to leap home, that the door to the imaging chamber had opened and he was free.

But the imaging chamber shouldn't have been filled with what seemed to be miles of flowered cotton...

"Dawn! Are you bringing the laundry upstairs?"

"Yes! Geez, Buffy, I've only got two hands," came another voice, much closer, and ringing through the metal room Sam occupied.

Two enormous hands ending in violently pink nailpolish suddenly grasped the contents of the chamber, including Sam, and proceeded to pull them out of... a clothes dryer? What the hey?

As he was jostled and bounced up the stairs, the scientist was at a complete loss for words. His view was mostly obscured by what he now recognized as a pillowcase, but soon the journey ended and he, along with the laundry, was dumped unceremoniously on what seemed to be the world's largest living room couch.

"Huh," said the voice that belonged to the pink nails, "looks like someone came along for a free ride."

With a yank, he found himself being lifted by his hindquarters out of the floral sheets and held in front of the face of a teenager with long brown hair, her mouth quirking in what appeared to be a grin. Or perhaps it was a frown. He was, after all, hanging upside down.

"You're way April fresh, but no harm done, I guess. Better get you back upstairs before Buffy kills me," she said to him and then proceeded up yet another flight of stairs, still carrying the Nobel Prize winner head downwards.

Moments later, Sam found himself flying helplessly through the air to land with a soft bounce on a huge, unmade bed as the girl who was apparently called Dawn fled from the room as if she'd just robbed Fort Knox.

It was then that he noticed the large, full-length mirror on the closet door.

"Why don't I see myself?" he wondered in confusion. This was one weird leap. The lack of a reflection bothered him. There had been that one creepy guy who lived in the castle and thought he was a vampire... but, no, he told himself firmly. Those did not exist.

It was at this point that he waved his hand frantically in front of his face, and the movement was repeated in the mirror. But, it wasn't possible. Testing his theory further, Sam gingerly got to all four of us his feet and scuttled forward a few inches.

"I'm a... I'm a stuffed pig?" he said in complete disbelief. "Oh, boy..."

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