Title: Voice Over
Prompt: Unsteady for Team Schmoop For the Numb3rs WriteOff "Future!Fic" challenge
Author: Jelsemium
Characters: Colby, Michael Knight and KITT
Rating/Category: (G/K)
Word Count: 2,202

Time:

2 hours, 59 minutes to write

26 minutes to edit
Spoilers: Maybe a little one for Season 4.
Summary: A futuristic car and its driver comes to Colby's aid.

******* **********

It was 11:19 PM on a Friday night on a summer day in an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County, California. The temperature had been in the high nineties all day, but had dropped into the eighties with the setting sun. The incoming fog was bringing the temperature down even more.

A black Ford Mustang pulled to a stop in front of a bar.

The driver frowned. The Mustang should not have been able to get this close to the bar. It was very popular hang out, one of the reasons it had become a distribution point for the latest in designer date rape drugs... a nasty little thing known on the street as "Stagger."

"No lights from the building, no cars in the parking lot," the driver observed. A few decades ago, an observer would have thought that he was talking to himself. These days, the assumption would have been a hands-free cell phone. "Maybe nobody's home."

"Michael, wouldn't the fact that the bar is empty imply that the people are at home rather than carousing?"

"KITT, you need to download a better sense of humor," Michael Knight, formerly Michael Traceur said. He stared at the dark bar. It was almost midnight. The bar should have been packed, noisy and well lit.

"I wouldn't want to show you up in front of our co-workers," The voice of the Knight Industries Three Thousand seemed to have a tinge of smugness to it.

The driver ran his hand through his brown curls and frowned. Before the square jawed former marine could come up with a rejoinder, the automobile spoke again.

"Michael, I'm picking up life signs from the building. Three men are coming out... one of them not under his own power."

Michael stepped out of the car cautiously. He wracked his mind to come up with a plausible reason for his presence at the bar, and then decided that the fact that this WAS a bar would be sufficient reason. He'd ask the men if the bar would be open later. His next actions would depend entirely on what reaction he got.

The reaction wasn't exactly what he was expecting.

Two of the men were dark haired, tall and ruggedly built. They were half dragging the third, a somewhat shorter man who had blond hair and broad shoulders. When they saw KITT and Michael, they stopped short.

The one on Mike's left stepped to the left and almost lost his grip on the limp blond. "Ah, geezus, Sean, we told you to get something iinconspicuous/i you moron!"

Mike moved towards the three. He wasn't sure how to respond, but it turned out to be a moot point as the moon chose that moment to make its way through the fog.

The two dark haired men obviously realized that Mike was not this "Sean" person they were waiting for.

The man to Mike's right swore vehemently. The man to his left didn't waste any more breath. "Run, idiot!" he bellowed. He pulled a handgun and jumped away from the blond. Mike was ducking behind KITT's bulletproof self long before the first shot was fired.

The man on the right released the blond and bolted. The moron on the left ran after him, firing a few more shots as he fled. The two disappeared around the corner of the bar.

Mike dashed around KITT. The blond was already on his knees. "You okay, man?" Mike held out his hand.

"Yeah, perfect," grunted the man. He accepted Mike's assistant and managed to stagger to his feet. He took a few unsteady steps. "Where did those morons go?"

"Maybe you should worry about you..."

There was a squeal of tires and a black jeep shot out of the parking lot.

The blond was energized. "FBI, I'm commandeering your wheels!"

"Whoa!" Mike protested.

The blond whipped credentials out from a pocket, took another step and almost fell on his face.

"Michael Knight, ATF," Mike said, grabbing the blond by the shoulder. He was pretty sure he still had the credentials from the last time the Foundation for Law and Government worked with the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. He steered the Fed around to the passenger side.

The Fed blinked at him. "ATF?" he asked. "Those turds are moving a new designer drug. Shouldn't you be... um... DEA?"

"Well, they've been soaking cigarettes with this 'Stagger' stuff," Mike said. "We consider it to be 'weaponizing' tobacco."

"Oh," the Fed blinked a few times.

Mike expected a sarcastic comment from KITT. Instead, KITT was all business. "Michael, I'm detecting traces of 'Stagger' in Agent Granger's perspiration," KITT said quietly.

Granger shied back a step. "Who said that?" he demanded, looking around wildly and then glaring into KITT's empty interior.

"My partner," Michael said tersely. "Get in the passenger side, you're in no condition to drive."

He strong armed the blond into KITT's passenger seat.

"How he know..." Granger managed to get his seat belt buckled. He hadn't asked to see Mike's credentials, which was just as well. He was now almost certain that those ATF credentials were in his other jacket.

"He could spot the drugs by his infra red... thingie," Mike said, gesturing to KITT's sensor array. He knew KITT would razz him about that later, but he didn't have time to rack his brains for the actual name of whatever KITT had used to analyze the man.

He ran around the hood and got himself into the driver's seat just as KITT slammed into gear. He managed, somehow, to get his seat belt fastened. It was just as well that KITT was driving as his hands were full.

Of course, if Mike had been driving, he would have waited for himself to get in the seat.

"I mean, how'd he know my name?" Granger asked plaintively.

"Um, you just showed us your creds, man," Mike said.

"Oh... call me Colby, not 'man.'"

"Okay, Colby, where's your back up?"

Colby sat up straight... straighter. "I dunno, they may have done something to him... I gotta call this in."

"Call who?" Mike demanded.

"Special Agent Don Eppes, major crimes," Colby got out.

"I shall apprise him of your whereabouts and of your partner's..." KITT started.

Colby goggled as if he'd never heard a voice coming from the dashboard before. "You... who are you?"

"More importantly, who is your partner?" Mike prodded.

"David Sinclair," supplied Colby.

"David Sinclair's possible peril," KITT continued smoothly.

"We were in there undercover," Colby said anxiously. He twisted around. "I shouldn't have left..."

For a moment, Mike feared that Colby would try to leap out of KITT. Not that he could, unless KITT went nuts and let the man open his door. However, in his condition, he could hurt himself.

Then he had no more time to think about it, because KITT had caught up to the black jeep.

"Shall I stop the jeep, Michael?"

"Stop the jeep, KITT," Mike concurred.

"You might hurt David!" yelped Colby. "Isn't torturing me enough, you sadistic son..." His tirade was cut off when KITT sent an electromagnetic pulse and stalled out the jeep's engine.

Mike was out of KITT in a heartbeat, but he stopped after taking a few steps. The two morons who had drugged Agent Granger were running. However, their panicked attempts to escape from Mike, KITT and Colby had only landed them in the path of several Ominous Black SUVs that had converged from the other direction.

"It seems that Agent Granger's team is rather upset," KITT observed.

"Hm, there's an understatement for you," Mike agreed. Two attractive women, one of Asian descent and one with a profusion of kinky black hair, were making short work of the two who had attempted to kidnap Colby.

"Well, yeah, they don't like it when I get poisoned and tortured, Lancer," growled Colby.

Mike frowned at Colby. "What is your problem?" he demanded.

"My name is not Lancer," KITT protested mildly.

"Whatever," Colby muttered. He pushed the door open, staggered to his feet and keeled over.

"KITT!"

"What?" KITT demanded. "I did not poison him."

"You could have kept him in his seat," Mike protested. He went around to check on the prone Fed.

"Actually," huffed KITT, "it's imy/i seat. He was merely occupying it."

Colby's pulse was unsteady, but basically strong. "You should have kept him in it, no matter whose seat it was... is," Mike said.

"He kept accusing me of drugging him, Michael," KITT complained.

"Well, he's been idrugged/i, KITT, he's not thinking straight," Mike said. "You should be able to tell that."

"And he kept giving me dirty looks," KITT continued. "He was, as you say, creeping me out."

Under other circumstances, Mike might have grinned. However, he was too worried about the incoming Feds. Law Enforcement types were notoriously lacking in humor when it came to their own being injured. He hoped they wouldn't blame him for Colby's face plant.

"You Michael Knight?"

"I am, and you are?"

"Don Eppes. I want to thank you for assisting my agent." The dark haired agent pulled off his aviator glasses. "I'll make sure that your Foundation gets the credit for this bust."

Mike breathed a sigh of relief when Eppes mentioned The Foundation for Law and Government. He didn't have to worry about where those ATF credentials were now. KITT must have called Sara, who must have called... somebody convincing.

"My pleasure, Agent Eppes," Mike said. "I can get him to a hospital before the EMTs get their ambulance in gear."

"Sold," Eppes said. "We'll meet you there."

***** ------ ******

A few days later, Michael Knight dropped by the hospital to check on Agent Colby Granger. He was concerned about the Fed. Plus it was nice to be on the good side of the officials for a change.

"Hey, man, I owe you big time," Colby said.

"You're welcome any time, Agent Granger," Mike said.

"Please, call me Colby."

"Michael Knight, call me 'Mike'." He displayed the bag of Hershey's Kisses that he'd picked up on the way over. "I brought you these... you didn't look like the 'Hello Kitty' kind of guy."

Colby laughed. "Thanks."

"So, what happened with your partner?"

"David's okay... He didn't get drugged, he got an old fashioned whack on the head."

Mike raised his eyebrows.

"The dealers made me as a cop, so they slipped a little something into my beer," Colby said. "When David came over to help me, they whacked him. He's down the hall, if you'd like to meet him."

"I would love to," Mike said sincerely.

"Great," Colby said. He rubbed the back of his neck and seemed embarrassed. "Um, I hope I didn't say anything really stupid while I was drugged."

Mike grinned. "Well, aside from calling my partner 'Lancer'..."

Colby buried his face in his hands. "Oh, for..."

"Dare I ask?" Mike asked.

"Well, you have the right," Colby said. "The short version is that I was on an undercover assignment and Lancer tried to get information out of me."

"With drugs?" Mike asked.

Granger nodded.

"Ah... and what about the longer version?"

"Classified, sorry," Colby said.

"I'm sorry that my partner sounded like this Lancer character," Mike said.

"Not your fault," Colby said.

"You have my word that he's not..."

"Lancer's dead," Colby said with some grim satisfaction.

"Your friends play rough," Mike said. "I think those two and their little friend 'Sean' are so scared that they're istill/i confessing to their sins."

Colby laughed. "They do tend to get protective."

"It's in the blood," Mike said. He could hear KITT in his earwig informing him that FLAG had a new assignment, courtesy of the FBI. "Well, I've got to get going," he said reluctantly.

Colby nodded. "Sure, tell you what, when I get out of here, I'll buy you a beer and a steak to wash it down with... your partner, too."

"KITT doesn't do steak," Mike said. "But I'll be happy to eat his share."

Colby laughed as Mike left.

"Humph," muttered KITT.

"What?" Mike demanded. "You don't eat meat."

"No, but I would have liked that beer."

Mike stopped in his tracks, one hand going to his ear in disbelief. "What?" he almost squeaked. He wondered if his earwig was on the fritz.

"It's called a joke, Michael," KITT informed him. "I tried that new humor download as you suggested."

Michael Traceur shook his head. "KITT... just... nevermind." And he strolled as his futuristic car pulled up to the curb to pick him up.

******** **********

If you didn't watch Knight Rider, Colby's problem with KITT stems from the fact that he was voiced by Val Kilmer, who played Mason Lancer in Trust Metric.