> Sunset Realizes She's Like 30
>  by Mike_Tubapun
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> The Realization
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Dear Princess Twilight, our friend Pinkie Pie is planning a birthday party for our other friend, well, Twilight Sparkle. We still gotta figure out a way to talk about her that doesn’t confuse things, but I get the feeling you’ll know when I’m referring to her instead. Anyways, Pinkie figured if it was our Twilight’s Birthday, it must be yours as well!! So she wanted to see if you could come over for a bit and blow out some candles, though I’m sure your Pinkie has plans for you as well. Still, she wanted to know how old you’d be so she could get Applejack to make the candles in the right number shape. I told her you’re probably 19 like the rest of em, I know you’re a little younger than me, but she seemed skeptical. That girl always seems to know stuff she shouldn’t, but hey, that’s just Pinkie Pie, right? Write back soon, Sunset Shimmer.”
The girl in the pleather vest laid down her journal to wait for the reply, Princess Twilight tended to write back with some delay, being, well, a Princess and all. Sunset was never quite sure what “ruling over friendship” actually entailed or why Celestia would let someone so young take over such an important responsibility, but hey, she was never the best student (much as her ego used to tell her she was) in that category, so who was she to question the Alicorn that literally moved the Sun.
Before Sunset could realize the irony of the previous line, she was thrown back by a bright smile taking up all her vision. It was of course Pinkie Pie, bubbly as ever, hoping for an answer to her query.
“Did she write back SunShim? I found a fanTASTic cake recipe for her!! It’s got all her favorite horse stuff!! I figured she must not be able to eat all the stuff we do cause, y’know, she’s a horse and so I bet she can’t eat meat, I mean not that you put meat in a cake but like I remember her asking for oats in her milkshake and-”
Sunset giggled at her friend’s ramblings, a common occurrence, but a delightful one. She’d known the curly-haired girl for going on four years, but only the last year and a half had been her friend. She often wondered how much she’d missed out on fun like this while she was too busy trying to take over the school through subterfuge and strong-arming. The rest of her friend group (just as recently attained) had arrived and helped her up (Pinkie fell on her face trying to get off her friend, in a 3 Stooges kind of way), they were all used to Pinkie’s lack of personal space by now. Still, they were just as curious, Princess Twilight was the one who’d brought them all together, save Twilight Sparkle, but they got to meet with her so rarely at this point, and almost never without some disaster looming.
“I hope she’s near that book-a-her’s this time,” Applejack twanged, “Them bees are mighty impatient, even with Fluttershy here helping me out. I need to know how much wax to get for those candles, a 7 takes a smidge less than an 8 y’know.”
“Indeed, Darling,” added Rarity, tossing a quarter into the jar Fluttershy held up (she was trying to break that verbal habit, but it was a useful word after all!!) “Considering I need to know what sort of rhinestones to add to her dress I’d like to get this question answered before the big day in question.”
The human Twilight pitched in as well, “I’m looking forward to it myself, I have some theories regarding the temporal shift necessary to convert horses into humans, since the two don’t exactly line up lifespan-wise!!”
Rainbow Dash spoke up next, “Yeah that’s a morbid way of putting that Twi, besides you could always’ve asked our resident Pony here, seems easier than waiting for the other you to cross a dimension, eh?” Twilight blushed a little, seemingly embarrassed that the brash sporty girl had actually made a point she hadn’t considered.
“Hey it’s no biggie Twilight, besides, I get the feeling you’d need a larger sample size than just me to actually get a decent result,” Sunset rushed to say. She cared a lot for the glasses-wearing girl, and knew she took her experiments seriously, at least since she almost destroyed two worlds herself. “Anyways, it’s like I told you girls, Twilight was about your ages, she was Celestia’s student after me after all, and I’m just turning 20 this year, so she can’t be any older than 19. Not to mention I was 15 when I came through and that’s about how old I seemed to the faculty when they had to get my paperwork for actually joining Canterlot High.”
“Wait,” Twilight inquired, “you’re almost 20 and a senior in high school? You’re just as smart as me, I thought you’d have graduated by now if that was the case?”
Sunset winced a little at the accidental backhand she’d just been provided, but offered an explanation regardless, “Yeah... turns out when you drop into a world with no idea what hands are, a completely different base for the numbering system, and a history that has a lot of the same names and none of the same events? They kinda hold you back once or twice ‘til you get the ‘hang of things’” She added air quotes to emphasize the casual nature she was trying to broadcast, but her friends all got the feeling that it was maybe a sore spot and dropped the subject.
Making that drop a little easier was the sudden buzz of a book, and the shouting from Pinkie that accompanied it. She dove for the book, but Sunset had grabbed it up already, resulting in her friend’s second face plant of the afternoon.
“My dear friend Sunset, I would be honored to attend! As you mentioned, I will have to ensure my Pinkie schedules in some time for it, but I am sure she will be accommodating. I may have to bring her back some of your world’s cupcakes for her to try though, as she is convinced they have secret ingredients you just cannot get here. With regards to my  my age though, I will be turning 24 this year. I am flattered you think I look so youthful, though I suppose the human world has that affect. How old is the other me turning? I suppose you are all in High School, so she must be 17, right?”
Sunset looked at the page astonished for a moment, Princess Twilight was older than her? That didn’t track at all. Why would Celestia take on a protegee with more experience outside her gaze. She wasn’t a controlling pony per se, but she definitely liked being able to mold her students, and Sunset had joined fairly young herself.
“Our Twilight is 17 this year, yes, but you’re joking on your age, right Princess? I’m only 20 this year and I don’t remember seeing you in any classes ahead of me back when I was Princess Celestia’s little trouble student. I was  15 when I left after all, so, like, you would have to have been out of school by that point?”
Pinkie Pie had of course already read the initial message over the confused girl’s shoulder, and was already squaring orders away at the others “DOUBLE THE BEESWAX APPLEJACK AND FLUTTERS, THE CURVE ON A 2 NEEDS EXTRA SUPPORT, AND RARITY YOU MAKE THOSE RHINESTONES SPARKLES IN A WAY THAT SAYS ‘I CAN RENT A CAR’!!”
Sunset was too focused on her own thinking, but Rainbow Dash seemed to echo the sentiments in her head.
“24? But she was so clearly in our class!! Heck, I figured she’d skipped a grade like our Twilight, makes sense since you two are the smartest girls I know. Maybe her lack of glasses kept her back?”
“That’s not how glasses work Rainbow Dash. They only make me smarter in that I can actually see the board instead of vague chalky mush. But I am perplexed, after the Friendship Games when I met her, she didn’t seem almost a decade my senior. But I had a theory the portal wasn’t just affecting physical appearance, like I mentioned with the life-spans-”
Sunset interrupted, “I don’t think that’s it though, I mean the average pony life-span over there is between 80 and 90, it went up recently when we created the tetanus vaccine, so it’s not like a horse here in terms of aging.”
The girls sat in thought for a moment, awaiting the buzz, which came quickly enough that I didn’t have to add any more activities between the fun stuff.
“Oh Sunset, nice try on the prank there, I had to message Celestia to be sure but she said you were 15 when you left, and that was almost 15 years ago!! I had only just gotten my cutie mark after all, so  I remember the year fairly well”
Sunset stared at the page in horror. She knew Celestia had gotten more comfortable with jokes, but this was too much, even for her. 15 years? She’d only been in the human world for 5, and not even quite that!! But Princess Twilight (though not the Element of Honesty) wasn’t known for lying about this kind of thing. She turned to look at the other girls around her, finding her Twilight doing some clearly strenuous mental calculations. Rainbow Dash, meanwhile, had done all the math she felt she needed to do, and was laughing up a storm.
“30 years old!! Sunset is 30 years old HAHAAA~!!” her hoarse laughter seemed to fill the entire suburb, or maybe that was just ‘cause it was ringing in Sunset’s head. This made no sense!! She had only spent 5 years in this world, how could 15 have passed in Equestria? Sure there was a slight discrepancy the few times she had visited recently, after all she had been able to traverse most of the kingdom with barely 2 hours passing in the human realm, but she traveled much faster as a pony, and surely it hadn’t been 6 hours... But it’s not like she’d had a watch on her fetlock...
Unfortunately for her brain’s already overloaded status, Rainbow’s raucous laughter had brought the other girls back up, though the looks on their faces made it clear they had mis-registered it as sobs (which considering she seemed on the verge of choking, may not have been too far off.) Sunset searched for words to explain the emerging situation, but Twilight’s loading ring seemed to unfreeze at just that moment.
“SUNET’S A COUGAR!!”
The words hung in the air a little too long, but who else but Pinkie followed them.
“No, silly, Sunet’s a pony, we all know that!!”
The tension broke with some giggling from all, something Pinkie always seemed able to provide.
“Sorry Sunset, I didn’t mean it like that, but welll.”
“No, it’s okay Twilight. What she means girls is, I’m not 20. Or at least, I shouldn’t be? Apparently with the time difference in Equestria, I’m actually, like 30? But because I’ve been here for so long without returning home for more than a visit I’ve only lived 5 years instead of 15. And I couldn’t tell from anyone else cause Celestia barely ages, and I didn’t know any of the other ponies at the time...”
“So,” asked Fluttershy, realizing I hadn’t given her anything to say yet, “I get why you haven’t aged, but why does Princess Twilight not look 24 when she comes over here?”
Twilight picked up the ball on this one. “Well if my hypothesis is accurate, the portal makes anyone, er, anypony who comes to our side resemble their counterpart in this world, so as to avoid a disruption on the atomic level. Perhaps that also results in them de-aging to match what our world has stored as its ‘Base State’.”
“That makes sense for her, but then why did I come to this world as only a little older than the rest of you? I’m 6 years older than Princess Twilight, but only 3 older than Twi here, and that doesn’t match the discrepency we calcuated earlier.”
Rarity chimed in, “Well Princess Twilight had mentioned that she was surprised to see Sweetie Bell in the same school as me. It seems in her world she’s only 11, and if her Rarity is the same age as her then I would imagine she’s aging fabulously into her mid-twenties as well, so clearly the ages aren’t bound to any formula.”
“Y’say ‘aging fabulously’ like mid-twenties is some inconvceivable elderly state Rares. A mite inconsiderate since we got our very own dirty-30 here to plan.” Sunset noted the smirk forming across Applejack’s face as she said it, teasing as she tended to do. But Sunset was surprised that it didn’t sting like it would have even a few minutes ago. Sure the news was shocking, but it didn’t really effect anything about her. She was comfortable knowing it even, it was just another joke ready to form, she could already feel her ability to call the others whipper-snappers surging within her, but she figured she’d hold off to clarify what it really meant to the others.
“Look girls, I am abso-freaking-lutely gonna use this as an excuse to get you to carry stuff for me for ‘my joints’ but let’s be clear. I’m only turning 20. Sure I would be 30 if not for this whole magic portal business, but I also wouldn’t be your friends without that portal, so I gotta keep it in mind. So I’m good to joke about it now, but I’d like to not skip a decade of Pinkie Pie Parties, or have to rush em all in before my next actual one, y’get me?”
The other girls all nodded in agreement, though their smirks made it fairly clear they were taking the permission to joke heavily in mind.
“Can’t you just be 30 when its convenient though? It’d make it a lot more fun if you could get us some alchohol now instead of in a year!!” Rainbow Dash half-whined, half-snorted.
“OOOH!! I have some really good recipes for Amaretto-based cupcakes!! But my folks don’t drink, so I haven’t been able to test em out properly!!”
Sunset laughed at the suggestion, knowing that it was almost a serious one made it even funnier. “Now Rainbow Dash, what kind of example would I be setting for your generation if I let the youth partake so frivoulously?”
“Uhh, an awesome one?”
The girls all laughed, then set to work setting up for the double party to come by the week’s end, jokes abound. Sunset smiled the most, knowing that the strange time dilation meant she’d be sure to have plenty of time with those she treasured most.