Disclaimer: I don't own Knight Rider or any attached charachrtes, just Cadge and the story. If Watson City or any named places or things other than the obvious happen to exist, then they belong to themselves and are a coincodence to be in the story.

Chapter 21: Reformatting

Cadge's sensors came on line to find himself in an empty parking garage. He could hear distant booms and the concrete trembled beneath him as shifts of dirt fell from the ceiling cracks, but he found that he couldn't move. Around him were four other cars; a Koenigsegg CCR, a Ferrari FXX, an Acura NSX, and an Ascari A10: his alt-modes. He ran through his memory banks quickly and realized that he had been in some sort of crazed state last time he was awake before shutting down due to lack of energy and programming complications and misfires.

"I'm dreaming, aren't I?" he asked.

The low engine rumbles from the others agreed.

"What do you want?"

"The technical term is that you're reformatting yourself," the intelligent Koenigsegg said. "Currently, your computer mind is seeing your alt modes and their programs as separate beings to help you handle us better."

The Ferrari spoke in a series of hydraulic hisses, engine snarls and growls and flashing lights; it saw no point in reformatting. It was stupid! Nothing could work with it!

Only because you are such a blood-thirsty idiot, the Ascari growled gruffly, also using body language rather than actual words or the wordlessness of the Ferrari.

"Cadge, you gotta wake up!" the Acura, Cadge's favorite, begged. "Masquerade is attacking and they're gonna put you down for you good because you're so out of control! Run, Cadge, run! But run skid marks around them while you're at it."

The Ferrari sneered that why should they run? Masquerade would only pursue them! It wanted to stand and fight.

"Cadge is too weak, Nasam," the Koenigsegg pointed out. "He will shut down again if he goes out to fight."

"What is the point of reformatting?" Cadge asked. "What's it going to do?"

"With your programming?" the Koenigsegg asked. "Probably create a whole new program all together with all the jumbling data. Cadge, our time is short, and the others here aren't going to tell you, so I will: You have to learn to control us. You're sentient; you don't have to live like this. You have a choice as to what you do in life and can change yourself. Learn to use us all together and you can over come Masquerade!"

Then the cars were gone and the light darkened around Cadge as he partially exited his dream-like state. He could feel his computer data flying around in its digital world, swapping data, mixing it up, and basically trying to set it all straight. Cadge turned his sensors off and made his scared mind slow down to ponder over the Koenigsegg car's words.

He has to control the alt modes and their program-personalities, making them work for him rather for themselves. He had a flight-not-fight dare devil Acura, a feral and impatient Ascari road warrior, an intelligent Koenigsegg, and a wild, battle-ready Ferrari. How could he meld all these people into something he could use to rescue him?

He was scared, bolts, he was scared. He wanted to find Wild and have her drive him to where he needed to go, or hide in FLAG's base, or ask Kitt what he should do. But would any of them accept him for what he'd done? He probably killed that old man, and traumatized that boy at the radio tower. He had allianced himself with Karr to try taking over the world, would anyone want to be his friend now?

No, don't think like that! He scolded himself. You're a car with mimicking, machine-control, and super scanning abilities, damnit! You can do this!

So Cadge sat in a void between sleep and wakefulness and pondered over his situation.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Michael fell on the ground, covering his head with his arms as the debris fell on him, but none of it touched him. Looking up, he found that Karr had appeared and was bent over him, arms wrapped protectively around his area to block the debris. Karr shook some of the concrete rocks off and stood up straight, almost twenty feet in height, and looked out at the Masquerade mini-army. Everyone stared back in shock.

Then the center tank pointed its gun barrel up at Karr and all chaos broke out.

Teens and young adults had obeyed Bob "Chill" Cracker's call for help, put out on Zoe's asking, to delay Masquerade's destroying of the people hiding in Parking Garage 016. They took up bats, crow bars, and brass knuckles to swarm the men at the jeeps. As the un-official soldiers and teenagers fought as cops swarmed the scene, flocking from all corners of the city from hearing the explosion. Seeing the fighting, they got confused and opened fire. Karr, meanwhile, bent over and scooped Michael up.

"I think it's time to test a new program of mine," Karr said, slipping Michael into the chest cavity. "Do you see hologramed cylinder structures in there?"

Michael looked and saw that golden yellow hologramed cylinders the size of arm casts were floating in the air in front of him.

"Yeah," he said.

"Put your arms in those."

Michael did and a golden-visor helmet dropped from the ceiling, clasping over his face. Michael suddenly saw the world from a high point of view. Targeting cross hairs appeared on all potential targets and he could see all sorts of measurements and scales around his vision.

"Karr! What the--!?" Michael exclaimed, jerking his shoulders back and looking around.

"A body sharing program," Karr chuckled in his ear. "I'll control specific functions, but you control body movement. Go on; test it."

Michael looked down at his left hand, only to see Karr's metal gauntlet. He watched as it folded up and narrowed to become a gun. He raised the gun, looking at it, then looked over at the tanks. The center cannon, the sensors said, was about to shoot him. Michael aimed the laser at the tank.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Billy ducked instinctively as Karr shot at the tank, making it jerk back on its treads a foot.

"Oh shit!!" he yelled, hiding behind a parked truck as gun fire crossed between confused cops and Masquerade guards. "Damn you stupid Karr!"

His cell phone rang and he answered it.

"What!?" he screamed into the phone. He was not having a good day.

"Billy, I can not approach the garage any more due to traffic conditions and the battle," Kitt replied on the other end. "I will begin calming the battle down out here. You go into the garage and see if you can find and help Cadge."

"Yeah, but how?" Billy asked, shouting over the gun shots.

The bland dial tone was the phone's laughter at his question.

"Damn you living cars," Billy muttered, flipping his cell phone closed. "Should've worked with Microsoft..."

He looked around, making sure that Karr was too busy fighting the tanks and the humans were too busy fighting each other to notice him before taking a chance and bolting into the parking garage.

The garage was spooky-dark inside with lack of working lights. In the rare spots he could see light, cracks littered the concrete floor and ceiling, graffiti covered the walls and even parts of the floor, and parts of the pavement were simply crumbling. Weeds and moss even grew here and there.

"Sheesh, what a dump," Billy muttered to non-existent listeners. "Perfect hide out for a creep like Karr…"

"He is not a complete creep."

A low engine rumble drew his attention to the voice and Billy spun around. When he saw that it was Cadge in his Porsche mode, he settled down slightly. Perhaps Cadge had returned to his normal self?

"What do you mean 'not a complete creep'?" Billy asked.

"I mean," Cadge went on. "He's crazy, sure. He wants to create a virus program that will make all machines sentient so that he can over throw the human race. But deep down in side, all he wants is to be reunited with Michael, the first and only person to truly and personally care about him.

"But enough of that; innocent idiot youth are being hurt out there for my sake. We have to dismantle the tanks before they hurt Michael, who's in Karr, and the jeeps and Masquerade troops before any one is seriously killed. But I need to recharge, and I can't do that in action while controlling myself. So…"

Cadge opened his driver's door.

"Want to team up?"

"Like Kitt and Michael?"

"Like Kitt and Michael."

"Sweet! Do I get to order you to shoot lasers?"

"……. No."

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Sarah was the first thing Will saw when he woke up from being unconscious. He stared at her with wide, old man's eyes as she spoke.

"Hi, I'm Sarah Graiman," she began. "I'm a friend of Michael's, the man who was with you this morning when--"

"Some pissed off ass hole in a racing car tried to turn me into two Wills to get him to come with them, I know," Will interrupted. "And you must be the darling angel and special girl Michael's told me so much about. Huh, you're just as pretty as he told me you were."

Sarah was struck dumb for several minutes.

Finally, her tongue remembered that it was in her mouth for a reason.

"M-Mike told you about me?"

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

When the silvery Porsche drove out from the garage with a comically friendly greeting engine growl, Michael glanced down from his perch in side of Karr before suddenly whipping his borrowed metal hands up to catch one of the tanks' missiles in his hand.

"Badass," Michael whistled, chucking the missile over his shoulder, where it blew up on one of the upper stories of the parking garage.

"Very." Karr agreed. "But what is Cadge/ Nasam doing?"

"Good question," Michael said, ducking a small missle. He picked up a large bit of concrete and threw it at the left most tank in front of him. The concrete block broke in half on top of the tank, but the tank barely dented; it was made of some tough stuff.

Further up the center of the three streets leading to the battle field in front of the abandoned parking garage, Kitt was trying to pick people off as carefully as he could with tranquilizer darts and stun lasers, but he was just about out of darts and it was getting harder for him to aim with his already bruised systems being pushed harder than they needed to be. He needed to be repaired by Sarah, ASAP...

"Kitt," Zoe called over the communications link with the machine, "Billy's in side of Cadge, and Cadge's back to normal. Be careful not to hit them!"

"Don't worry, Zoe," Kitt commented, stopping his laser firing. "But my systems can simply not shoot anything more at the moment. I am in dire need of repair."

"Well then, just shut up and watch them!"

"Hey, guys, this is Sarah," Sarah said, suddenly joining the conversation. "I'm coming to the battle from the hospital Will was at. Update, now."

"It looks like Billy and Cadge are gonna try being Michael and Kitt today," Zoe answered.

Sarah was silent for a long minute.

Finally, she groaned, "Aw crap."

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Meanwhile, the Porsche roared its engine, showing off its location to the Masquerade troops. Several of the surrounding human fighters turned around to see what was up.

"Get him!" Dr. Gomez roared.

"Cadge!" Wild cried out fearfully.

"Don't worry, Wild, I'll just nick him," Spencer called from in side one of the tanks, turning his gun barrel down on the Porsche.

But the Porsche gunned its engine and jolted forward on its wheels. People understood and parted the crowd for it, not wanting to become poorly made pancakes. The Porsche leaped forward, charging right for the semi hauling Dr. Gomez, Ms. Wild, and the main computer equipment.

"What the…?" Gomez muttered.

The Porsche stopped inches from the semi, making the trucker with in flinch. Two long cables with sharp metal barbs at the end slithered out from just beneath the front bumper, swaying in the air before they stabbed themselves into the semi's grill. The barbs on the end sparked before electricity began leaping up on the semi's engine-filled nose before running down the cables and raced into the car at the end of them.

"Is that something Cadge was built with?" Wild asked Dr. Gomez.

"Um..... no," Gomez stated. "We had nothing of this sort of thing planned for Cadge.... This can't be good for us."

Inside the Porsche, Billy looked at the pale blue screen on the dashboard as a bar appeared on screen, measuring the energy flow. It was deep red at the bottom, but as the bar grew, it turned to orange, then yellow, then yellow-green before finally reaching its peak and becoming full green.

There was a cheerful beep and Cadge's dull masculine computer program spoke with a note of cheerfulness in its voice.

"Energy levels at 100%. Activating new Multi-Alt-Mode Attack Program."

"Oh yeah," Billy squeaked happily, squeezing Cadge's steering wheel.

Then things got real interesting.