I don't own anything or anybody and certainly not anything to do with BTVS or Quantum Leap, and any representations here of people from television shows belong to their respective owners and not me (not even a tiny bit of them).

Al stared at Ziggy, and shook the machine a few times.

Sam waited patiently wondering what had the other man so upset. Al wiggled and jiggled the machine, tapped it, turned it upside down, jiggled it again then abruptly left.

Sam looked at himself in the mirror.

He seemed to be a healthy young man ... possibly still at school. He wandered round the room picking up photographs of friends, looking at the posters on the wall and inspecting other general "stuff" lying around the room.

Al appeared back in front of him after a few minutes, looking pale. He cleared his throat before speaking.

"There is a 100% chance that you will be kidnapped tonight and a 99.9% chance that you will survive the overall ordeal unscathed"

Al paused and Sam waited, but with a growing sense of impatience and wondered where the problem was.

Al gulped before continuing, "If you survive, in a year or so, the world will be completely destroyed. You have to make sure that you die in order for your friends ..." he gestured to one of the photograph on the desk "... to join the fight against evil to avenge your death."

Sam heard Al's voice drone on in the background and wondered how he hell he had ended up here - they were supposed to help people, make things right, not kill them. The last of Al's words filtered through his brain brain before he vanished again.

In order for the human race to survive, one of his friends had to kill him with a "steak"?

He picked up the photograph that Al had gestured to. He smiled at the image of a dark haired boy and a red haired girl looking back at him.

So, in order to save the world, one of them will cook him a steak that will give him food poisoning? Or he will choke on it? Maybe it falls to the ground and he slips after standing on it? Does he get badly burned when trying to eat it? Does ... Sam shook himself out of his thoughts as he answered the ringing phone and found himself agreeing to go to the "Bronze", where ever and what ever that was. He hung up and turned to get ready, wondering if he should avoid eating meat when he was there.

As he turned to find the shower he glanced at the mirror again. The fit young man he saw earlier, was now a very scared looking boy.