NOTE:

In honor of the Chiefs' victory in Super Bowl LIV (hubby's from KC; rooting for them was required, even though I was a Niners girl back in the day...), have another chapter. ;)

Tony insisted on changing out of the T-shirt and sweats he'd been wearing before they left. Not that he had any idea what fashion in the future looked like (assuming this all wasn't a hallucination), but his own pride wouldn't let him depart wearing anything but his best.

Then again, Kirk had said they needed him as an investigator. Without any idea of what conditions he might face, and taking into account the somewhat casual feel of their uniforms, he mentally revised his "best" to allow for jeans instead of trousers and sturdy boots instead of shoes.

He was buttoning his shirt when the question occurred to him. When he left his bedroom, Kirk and Spock both were surveying his collection of movies.

"He has all the classics," Kirk was saying quietly. "The Wizard of Oz, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean …"

Wait, Pirates of the Caribbean was a classic in the future? Tony shook his head, more and more convinced that they were telling the truth. His subconscious usually didn't give him weird scenarios like this. Jessica Alba on a beach, maybe, but not a visit from time travelers.

"I find it intriguing that he has had time to watch all of them, as well as accumulate a vast amount of related data, and still become an exemplary investigator," Spock observed.

That was too good an opening to pass up. "Like I always say, work smarter, not harder."

His visitors looked up at him, open curiosity in Kirk's expression where Spock simply raised one eyebrow in inquiry.

Tony shrugged. "I got a broken leg - and the bum knee - in a football game in college. I had a lot of time on my hands while I was recovering and watched a lot of movies then. The habit stuck."

"You're ready?" Kirk asked.

"I have one question," Tony said.

"Only one?" Kirk grinned.

"Only one important one," Tony allowed. "I've seen Back to the Future and a dozen other movies involving time travel. How are you going to make sure I don't accidentally change the future? Your past - whatever you want to call it."

"Nothing too terrible," Kirk replied. "Just a post-hypnotic suggestion."

Tony nodded slowly. He'd been hypnotized before, as part of his therapy when he was recovering from that broken leg, and if hypnosis worked for that, it would probably work for this, too. "I suppose I can live with that. Let's go."

He crossed to the door and opened it, only to find the other two regarding him curiously. "What?"

"Your door needs only to be secured," Spock answered.

"Don't we have to go to your ship?" Tony asked.

"We will," Kirk answered. "But we don't have to go anywhere to do it. Lock the door and we'll show you."

Not bothering to hide his confusion, Tony closed the door and locked it, then followed Kirk's gesture so that he stood beside the other man.

Kirk pulled what looked like an old-fashioned flip-phone from his belt and opened it. "Kirk to Enterprise. Three to beam up."

Before Tony could wonder what beam up actually meant, he felt a queasy, falling sensation in his stomach, and then a tingling throughout his body, as though he were near an electrical field.

Then everything went white and some indeterminate time later, Tony's awareness refocused on his surroundings - which included a room with metallic walls and an odd-looking workstation at his eleven o'clock position.

"What the hell -?" Tony couldn't help himself.

"Welcome to the Enterprise," Kirk said.

"What you are feeling is an expected sensation of the transporter technology," Spock added. "In humans, the symptoms typically subside within four point three minutes. If you still feel them after that time, inform us at once."

The queasiness was already fading, so Tony just nodded.

Spock shifted his attention to Kirk. "Captain?"

"Take us farther out," Kirk said. "Hide us among the Jovian satellites. I'll get Agent DiNozzo up to speed."

Spock raised an eyebrow, but said only, "Yes, Captain."

He inclined his head first to Kirk, then to Tony, and left the room they had arrived in.

"Someone's been killed, you said," Tony prompted.

"Yes," Kirk answered, gesturing Tony to walk with him, "but before we do that, we need to stop by Medbay. You need a couple of inoculations."

"I'm current," Tony began, but broke off when he caught Kirk's grin.

"No doubt," he said as the door slid open and Tony paced him into a corridor. "But I'm fairly certain you haven't been vaccinated against Rigellian fever."

"Ah - no," Tony agreed, then fell silent to study his new surroundings. The walls were a metallic silver-white and just dull enough not to reflect anything clearly. Here and there, access panels or display monitors dotted the walls.

"This must seem strange to you," Kirk said after a few minutes, during which Tony realized the corridor they paced had a slight curve to it.

"Not that strange," Tony answered. "I've been on subs and aircraft carriers, and this isn't too different from them."

"Not surprising," Kirk said, pausing at a door. "We - Starfleet - descended from Earth's naval traditions."

A moment later, the door opened, and Tony guessed the small room beyond was an elevator of some kind. The hunch was confirmed when the doors slid shut, Kirk touched a control, and the room started to move.

"I don't see any markers to tell you where you are - deck, frame, compartment - though," Tony added. "How big is she?"

"A little over twice the size of an aircraft carrier, overall," Kirk replied. "This section is about half an aircraft carrier in diameter."

The doors slid open and Tony obediently followed Kirk out of the elevator. "And you're not going to tell me how to navigate it."

"Nope, sorry." Kirk grinned to rob the words of any offense. "You won't be going anywhere without an escort."

"Fair enough."

A few feet later, Kirk led him into what Tony immediately recognized as a sickbay. A dark-haired man about Tony's own height looked up from a supply cabinet.

"Dammit, Jim," he said with a clear Southern drawl - Georgia, if Tony wasn't mistaken, "what've you gotten us into now?"

"I'm trying to get us out of a diplomatic incident and avert a war, Bones," Kirk replied. "This is our investigator, Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, Junior. Agent DiNozzo, our chief medical officer, Doctor Leonard McCoy."

"Tony, please," he said, glancing first at Kirk then McCoy.

"You don't look injured," McCoy said.

"He's recovering from Y. pestis," Kirk said. "And has a damaged knee. I'm sorry - which knee?"

"Left," Tony supplied.

"Plus the usual inoculations," Kirk finished. "And then we'll be out of your hair."

"Fine," McCoy said with a grumble that seemed to be exaggerated. He gestured to a bed with a monitor at its head. "Up you go."

Tony hesitated. "Don't I need to undress?"

"We're not barbarians," McCoy shot back. "On the table, and it'll all be over with before you know it."

It wasn't quite before Tony knew it, but it was certainly faster than he'd ever expected.

Despite McCoy's admonishment, he slipped his jacket off and put it over a nearby chair before he got on the bed. While he'd been doing that, McCoy had been fiddling with something at a table not far away.

He came back to Tony's bedside with something that looked like a cross between a needle gun and a flashlight in his hand, but McCoy wasn't looking at him. Instead he was looking at the monitor over Tony's head.

"Lie back," McCoy ordered, and Tony did. Like every hospital bed he'd ever been in, this one was only slightly more comfortable than a carpeted floor.

He supposed he should be pleased that not everything had changed in the future.

McCoy made another adjustment to the device he held, then pressed it against Tony's carotid artery. A minute later, Tony felt a sharp stinging sensation, and he clenched his teeth to keep from crying out.

"Broad-spectrum antibiotic, standard inoculations, and an immunity booster that should kick the last of the Y. pestis out of your system," McCoy said. "Now for the knee."

McCoy picked up another handheld device - it could've been a flashlight, or it could've been an ultrasound probe for all Tony knew - and ran its business end all around his left knee twice, then once around his right.

"Bones?" Kirk asked.

"I'm a doctor, not a diplomat," McCoy replied. "The left knee had signs of lingering trauma, but the right knee wasn't completely healthy. It is now. Bend and stretch them both," he added to Tony.

Tony extended each leg in turn, flexing his feet and pointing his toes, rotating his feet in each direction.

"Feels great. Thanks," he added with as much sincerity as he could muster.

"Stop back by before you leave," McCoy said. "I'll run a second scan to make sure everything's healing like it should."

He turned back to whatever he'd been doing when Tony came in, and Tony looked to Kirk for some idea what to do next.

"C'mon," Kirk said. "Let's go beard the lion in its den."