It was clear and sunny, with just enough breeze around to make this day perfect for going out and explore the city, something she had done many times since she arrived at Earth and became a permanent resident among human beings. That was mostly due to the fact Sunset was usually busy saving lives, studying for something or helping her friends in their wacky and unpredictable plans across the city of Canterlot to play the role of tourist. Now that she thought about it, she never really tried to see much of Equestria while she still lived at the other side of the portal, although the reasons she had back then were completely different to the reasons and responsibilities that she had now; oh the changes that could happen through the years.
Now that Sunset was out of High School and ready to step into the strange and unknown world that was college, Sunset had decided to take some time for herself and step outside of her known world, so she went gallivanting to the far out corners of the world; well, not really, she just decided to take a look at places she could find on Canterlot.
For having living in the city for several years already Sunset knew very little of the city beyond the group’s usual hanging places, like the mall, sugarcube corner and other half a dozen places the girls and her liked to spend time chatting. This time it wasn’t like that and Sunset had been visiting museums, places of local importance or where famous people used to live in; in the end it had been… fun, no, seriously. While most teenagers would have found her activity boring, Sunset had an appreciation to historical places more than historical documents; she also knew that if she had invited Princess Twilight over, the bookish royal would have tried to spend most of their time inside a library instead of walking everywhere and enjoy the simple act of visiting new places.
As her tour of the city went on, Sunset had found out an old house that haven’t been advertised in any brochure; instead, Sunset had spent some time online and found out about it thanks to some old photos of several decades ago. She could see a house and something about a Knight Foundation, which had disappeared 17 years ago. Apparently the house was still up, but with no real owner or a will, the foundation had simply ceased to exist after the owner of the house died, or that’s what most articles talking about it went.
To no surprise for those that knew Sunset Shimmer, she quickly took her things and went on a trip, finding the house almost intact; sure, the paint was chipped and there were several graffiti tags across the exterior, once she got inside, things were pretty much what she thought. It was an abandoned building with no security and suspiciously abandoned with no signs of vagrancy or anything at all; it was as if everyone that lived inside the city had taken their things and, just disappeared, leaving the place behind, it was as if the building had been static, frozen in time until the time someone could bring life back to it.
Sunset rolled her eyes at that idea, finding it too poetic and silly for her, but it was true that the place was simply amazing, with not even signs of being looted or robbed, so why? At first Sunset thought that maybe the place was haunted, but there was no sign of magic or anything supernatural about the place, so maybe it was just pure luck that the building had been left intact.
Inside, things were just like the patio, just with more dust accumulated on top of everything, but, it was eye-catching indeed, with many of the original furniture still present under thick plastic sheet; among the old luxury and good taste it was almost funny to see something as common as those things protecting invaluable heirlooms, but Sunset decided to leave them be, after all, she was only passing by and she had no desire of removing the plastic or mess around with the place; Sunset was only trying to understand all she could of her home and this was a pretty interesting place after all.
She didn’t want to stay for long, after all, she was sure there were several laws she was breaking by the mere act of breaking into the abandoned building, so after some sightseeing normal of a curious tourist, she was ready to abandon the place and leave the place rest, when the floor underneath Sunset disappeared. Well, to be precise, a section of the floor finally gave up after years of rot and humidity, plunging Sunset into a hidden underground level in the building.
So, there she went, falling into the darkness, taking her completely by surprise, first landing on top of metal and then bouncing into the hard floor, leaving her dizzy for several seconds; quickly checking to see if nothing was broken and thankful for having a body that was more resistant than the normal human being, Sunset Shimmer quickly dusted herself and stood gawking at what she had found underneath Knight Foundation.
It was a hidden research lab by the looks of it, with rows of computers running along one wall, while in another section of the place there were machines and dozens of tools that made something click inside Sunset’s brain; this wasn’t just a research lab, this was also a garage and those two things were probably connected.
While it was a still a little dark due to being underground, the hole in the upper floor was like a spotlight, slightly giving Sunset some much needed light, letting her see the unbelievable amount of dust gathered after years of inattention. Jokes aside, everything looked dated, yes, but it was a still impressive due to the amount of work that must have been done on it. So what was this place? Because, this side of the Foundation was never mentioned in the articles, or the kind of technology that the place had at their disposition; if this thing was made on the eighties, this place had the best technology for the time. Sure, right now that technology was left behind by newer and more powerful computers, but back then this place must been like working at NASA in terms of technology.
After spending some time gawking at everything in sight, Sunset began to search for anything that could be useful, which in this case was a large lever that after being pulled down, it made a whole section of the place light up; it were a collection of computers on a semicircle, all around a huge object that was protected under another plastic sheet, this one more like a whole tent due to its size, so what was it that it was so important; even more mysterious was the fact that it could be powered up.
Walking closer to the consoles she began to look for information, being able to work with them, even though it was very old technology; thankfully, the interface was easy to understand, quickly firing up the system. A minute later, Sunset saw the archives and the huge amount of data still recorded inside the console with one file being the most important from the rest.
“Let’s see, Knight Industries Two Thousand? What the hell is this thing? Well, there is a lot of different blueprints in here, so whatever they were doing here was pretty important to them, but what is this Knight In- I’ll just call it KITT; so, what is it?” whatever could be found inside the computers, Sunset decided to leave it for later, right now she had to see what was hidden underneath that sheet and after pulling it from atop the object, Sunset had to whistle. Sure, it wasn’t in one piece and there were many things missing, but this was starting to excite her “I don’t know what they were doing here, but this is one cool car.”