The next day, Sunset had a bit of a break from her fate. When she got to class, all her friends were too focused on how excited they were from their gifts to pay her much mind. This was doubly so for Pinkie, who got far more than the others and seemed to be stuck in a positivity feedback loop. There was the possibility of how it might lead to a problem later, but the amber teen wasn’t going to look it in the mouth.
At least, this was the case until lunch.
Having decided to go back to the lunch room, instead of the roof, the six were idly chatting over how their trip to Equestria went. Rarity was bordering on being a bit too loud when doing so, much to the group’s worry. “Oh my goodness, Sunset, why didn’t you tell us how beautiful Twilight’s castle was!?”
Pulling her friend down into her seat, which Rarity had practically stood up from with her excitement, Sunset gave a calm smile. “Well to be fair, the last time I went through the mirror, it was in a different castle. That was the first time I’ve seen Twilight’s place myself.”
Rainbow stretched her arms and legs, before getting a forkful of their spaghetti, the choice meal of the day. “Well, I’m just glad that I’m not so short anymore. Like, for real! How did the other me stand to be so tiny!?”
Applejack adjusted her hat a bit and chuckled. “Wasn’t much of a difference between here and there, to be honest.” At the indignant squawk from Rainbow, the group shared a good-natured laugh at the athlete’s expense.
Fluttershy played with her food a bit after the laughter died down and frowned a bit. “I was surprised at how much older they were than us.”
Sunset rubbed the back of her head and smiled awkwardly. “Yeah, that was one of the weirder parts of traveling through the mirror to get here.” Her gaze moved to the windows, and the forest behind them. “One second I was pretty much the equivalent of a second-year college student being taught by the highest authority in the country, the next I was a prepubescent troglodyte, and that was more than five years ago.”
Pinkie had grabbed Sunset by the cheeks in a blur of motion too fast to track and pulled her to be face to face with the party girl. “Really!? Have I been getting the number of candles on your cake wrong this whole time!?” The twitch in the pink girl’s eye made Sunset worry.
The question her friend posed, however, did make Sunset pause and think. “Pinkie, I... honestly don’t have an answer for that.” Getting free of the pink one’s grasp, Sunset took a moment to rub her chin and look at her arm. “I’m not even sure what age my body would be considered right now.”
Rarity tapped her lips in thought, a frown gracing her face. “But, you looked about the same age as Twilight and her friends when you followed us through though.”
Sunset shrugged a bit and went back to her food. “Well, yeah, but that shouldn’t have been the case. Princess Twilight should be at least in her early-to-mid twenties right now. That would put me at almost thirty.” The table paused, Sunset included, as she blinked down at her spaghetti. “...Wow, I’m old.”
“Wait wait wait. Hold up!” Rainbow waved her arms wildly, getting the group’s attention. “Are you telling me that you’re seriously that old?”
Sunset looked to the side and idly scratched her cheek. “Uh... I think?”
The amber teen was grabbed by the shoulders, something getting a bit more common as she hung out with her friends, and Rainbow looked into her face, unable to process her thoughts. “Then how are you failing history so badly!? I’m doing better than you! I thought old people knew that kind of stuff!”
Frowning as she placed a hand on Rainbow’s face, Sunset pushed her friend back into her seat and glared. “Kinda hard to apply the history of a different dimension to my exams, Rainbow.” Huffing, she tried to go back to her food. “And my grades aren’t that bad anymore. I’ve been putting more effort into doing well.”
Realizing that she was still standing, and noticing how her outburst had drawn most of the lunchroom’s attention, Rainbow sheepishly sat back down. “Oh yeah... right. Eh heh, sorry.”
A snicker made the girls all look to Applejack, who was busy trying to hide her face. “Ah’m honestly surprised that’s the direction your brain went, Rainbow. Especially after ya tried to sneak into the Apple Cider last year.”
“Hey, just because I’m brash doesn’t mean I’m jumping at the chance to get drunk!” Rainbow scowled at the farmgirl before looking off at something in the distance. “Seriously, it’s not as great as you think.”
Rarity raised an eyebrow and leaned forward. “And how exactly would you know that?” The tension was palpable. Rainbow was glaring daggers at Applejack and Rarity, and the two were giving her looks of their own, either of amusement or judgment.
Thankfully for all, Pinkie popped her head into the center of everyone’s attention, smiling just a bit too wide. “I have the perfect topic change!”
The girls all stared at their irrepressibly excited friend, blinking dumbly. Sunset happened to be the first to get her wits back from the sudden interruption. “Uh... Yeah, pinks?”
A coy smirk grew across Pinkie’s face as she leaned over the table, head propped on her hands as she nearly laid across the surface. “Care to explain how you know so much about our Principals, Shimmy?”
Fluttershy blinked a bit in surprise, looking at her pink friend. “Sunset knows what?”
As eyes moved to Sunset, she felt a bead of sweat drip down her cheek, and her face paled ever so slightly. “Uh...”
Rainbow joined Pinkie in her smirking. “Oh, this is going to be good.”
Applejack wasn’t much better, resting an elbow on the table to lean in. “Now I’m curious.”
Frantically waving her hands, Sunset tried her best to get up from the table without making to big a deal out of her panicking. “I-It’s nothing. Really!”
A hand landed on Sunset’s shoulder, sending a wave of fear down her spine as the white digits curled towards her collarbone. “Darling.” Rarity’s words sounded normal, but the undertone of fresh, delicious gossip had brought out a side of her that was nearly unstoppable. “There is absolutely no conceivable way for you to keep gossip this juicy from me.” Gently, Sunset was pushed back into her seat, and Rarity’s second hand grabbed her other shoulder.
Seeing no possible way to escape, Sunset slumped with a sigh, head nearly landing in her food, if not for Pinkie pushing it away in time. “Fine.” She blushed a bit and started rubbing her arm. “So uh, since I’m from another world and all, I might not have had a place to stay when I first got here. So I might have been squatting in the woods outside the school.”
A small gasp from all her friends preceded the light massage Rarity gave her shoulders. “Sunset, that’s terrible!”
Nodding in agreement, Sunset sat up a bit straighter. “It was, and for a while, I was living off the streets like a rabid urchin, trying to piece together what I could and couldn't eat.” Her blush got a bit brighter, and a smile started to grace her lips. “Then, one day after I fixed up where I had been hiding out, Principal Celestia may or may not have found me.”
Now, the school could say what they wished about Rainbow Dash, but this was one of the moments in which she pieced together the implications almost instantly, and an amused smile grew across her face as she placed both hands on the table. “No... She didn’t!”
A laugh and a nod from Sunset answered her unvoiced question. “It seems both versions of Celestia have hearts made of golden suns, cause she took me in without a second thought. Even in my worse years, and after getting tested to see what grade I was ready for, she was patient with me to a point, or even asked much of me.”
Rarity’s massaging stopped, and Sunset was about to complain until she felt her friend give her a hug from behind, that was soon accompanied by her other friends joining in. “I doubt it was that smooth, darling.”
A barking laugh escaped Sunset as she shook her head. “Oh Tartarus no! There was so much tension that for years you could cut it with a knife!” The group shared in the laughter for a while before Sunset could talk properly again. “I mean, the person who took me in and is trying to be nice to me just so happens to be literally the same person I had a massive falling out with that lead me to run away in the first place. I wasn’t exactly in a mindset to cooperate willingly.”
“I’m just glad you have a home right now.” Fluttershy smiled that kind smile of hers.
“So am I.” Sunset contently sighed as she felt the group slowly stop hugging her.
Applejack paused for a moment as a thought occurred. “Okay, but there’s something else that’s been buggin’ me that kinda ties into all a’ that.” The group curiously turned to the farm girl, and she started pointing at the table in various spots as she explained. “Going by what Sunset said, and what we just went through, she should have come through the portal looking as she does now, but years ago when she first ran away, right?” The girls all looked to each other, thinking about the farmer’s words as she sat back up and scratched her head in confusion. “So why did it make her the same age as us, and not already in high school? Why make her an eighth grader?”
Rarity could only blink as the thought repeated again and again, before joining Applejack in her pondering. “You know, that’s actually a good question. Why did it do that?”
Sunset rolled her eyes and sighed, rubbing her temples as she turned to her orange friend. “Applejack, I’ve spent so long trying to figure that out, I gave up before I even tried to steal Twilight’s crown, and took it as a blessing in disguise. Sure, I got to go through puberty twice, but I’ll live for a few years longer than I would have in the end.”
The entirety of the group paled, and a shudder ran through them all. “Oh god, twice!?” Rarity nearly fainted, but instead turned to the party planner of the group and pointed. “Pinkie! We need as much chocolate as you can find!”
Getting off the table, finally, Pinkie saluted. “Aye Aye, Captain!”
Before she could run off though, Sunset managed to get a hold of her skirt and keep her at the table. “Girls, let's agree that human biology is an absolute nightmare for women and leave it at that. I really don’t want to talk about it.”
Rainbow and the others agreed before it was Rainbow’s turn for a eureka moment “Hey, you said the portal has a mind of its own when it comes to what you look like on the other side, right?” As Sunset nodded, Rainbow snickered and leaned back as much as her seat would allow. “Maybe it just made you a little kid back then cause you were acting like one.”
The silence that echoed across the table could be felt by the other occupants of the lunchroom. Several of the tables had their attention diverted from their food to the sudden unease radiating from the center of the room.
Sunset immediately stood up with a glower on her face. “Where’s my sledgehammer?”
In a moment of unified worry, the five girls all grabbed onto Sunset as she struggled to get towards the lunchroom’s door. “Sunset no!”
Slowly powering through and dragging them with her, the amber teen’s frustrations were proving to be quite the potent source of strength. “Sunset yes!”
Fluttershy was barely clinging to Sunset’s ankle as she cried from the ground. “How would Twilight get here if you smashed the portal?”
That was enough to stop the fiery-haired teen’s march of vengeance before she stood in place and grumbled. “The portal’s lucky we need it.”
With a collective sigh of relief, though annoyance would be a better word in one’s case, the girls all went back to their lunch. It was also a small show of mercy for Sunset that the rest of her day went rather smoothly, almost mimicking the start. It kinda annoyed her, but at least she did what Celestia asked in the long run.
Besides, there was that Friendship Games thing in a few weeks, right? She should probably ask the girls about that later.
Hopefully, there wouldn't be any shenanigans from with the portal during all of that.