Within Canterlot’s royal castle, Prince Blueblood occupied the top floor of an entire wing of a building set towards the rear of the complex, furthest away from the public spaces of the castle – the throne room, the reception areas, the dining halls, all that. The prince’s chambers consisted of a private dining room, a living space, multiple dressing rooms, and a single grand bedroom positioned within a short tower extending out of the building. It was from this tower that soft, cooing noises could presently be heard.

“Oh Blueblood, you impress the Great and Powerful Trixie…” Trixie said in an excited, breathless voice.

“You have seen nothing yet, Ms. Great and Powerful Future Princess…”

“Oh Prince, sweep this Great and Powerful mare off her hooves!”

“Your wish is my command.”

“Oh, Prince! Oh, oh yes! Yes! Oh…oooohh…your horn is so biiiiig…”

“Um, Great and Powerful Trixie?”

The last line was spoken by one of the Diamond Dogs, who had entered the room and briefly managed to catch a glimpse of Trixie on the Prince’s bed, holding doll versions of herself and Prince Blueblood (available for $9.99 at your local toy store, comes with hairbrushes and fashionable accessories) in her hooves with the doll’s horns touching together before the Diamond Dog had to dodge a pillow violently hurled by force of magic.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie demands that you KNOCK ON THE DOOR BEFORE ENTERING!!!” Trixie screamed at the now cowering Diamond Dog. The unicorn’s face was crimson and her eyes were ablaze, an alarming contrast to the pale white of the Diamond Dog’s face.

“Sorry, sorry!” the Diamond Dog pleaded, hunched before Trixie with his paws over his head. “I just came to find Prince Blueblood, the newcomer wants him!”

“He’s not here,” Trixie growled. “He’s conducting some royal business, so the Great and Powerful Trixie decided to wait for him. Is that all?”

“Well…no,” the Diamond Dog cringed. “The newcomer wants to see you too. He wants to see all of us!”

“Fine,” Trixie huffed. “The Great and Powerful Trixie will grace this meeting with her presence. Just so long as you remember something very important: you didn’t see anything here.”

“Yes. I mean-no. I mean…I saw nothing,” the Diamond Dog whimpered.

***

“Okay, hold on…I’m very lost,” Twilight Sparkle announced to everypony in the room. “And I know I speak for my friends in this regard.” Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy gave nods of agreement, while Pinkie just kept turning her head this way and that staring at various objects in the room.

“Firstly, what in the wide world of Equestria is a ‘fanon’?” Twilight continued.

“Well, that’s actually kinda a tricky question to answer…” Lyra replied.

“Alright, remember what I was saying earlier about frameworks and trying to fit into them?” the Doctor asked.

Derpy cut the Doctor off. “Just call them ‘stories’ Doctor. It makes it easier to follow.”

“It’s like this,” DJ Pon3 started. “You all got your story, and we’re in that story too. But you have like an impact in the story and we don’t, but then a bunch of fans of your story were like ‘hey, let’s hear from those ponies too!’ which are us ponies. You dig?”

There was a silence for a moment as the six mares gave DJ Pon3 blank stares. Octavia facehoofed. “That…has to be the worst explanation I have ever heard.”

“Let me try,” Bon Bon said. “You see girls, all of Equestria is like a big story and you six are the main characters in that story. The six of us are also within that story but only vaguely defined, fitting in as background characters to your daily lives. But your story has a lot of fans who were interested in finding out more about our world, so they wrote little stories about us background characters. Eventually, enough of them wrote stories about us six that we began to have our own personalities.”

“Hang on…” Fluttershy said, panic creeping into her voice. “Do you mean to say that we’re all fictional? That none of this is really real?”

“I prefer to think of it more as being guided than being fictional,” the Doctor said. “Remember philosophy class Fluttershy – as Descoltes once said, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ You think, I think, all of us here are thinking, so we must exist in some form or another.”

“I never took a philosophy class…” Fluttershy mumbled quietly.

“I still don’t really understand.” Twilight said.

“You don’t really have to,” Derpy said in a comforting tone. “That’s the beauty of it – you can just go along your daily life and not worry about it, not even have to think about it.” She gave Twilight a warm smile, and this time the crossed eyes actually served to complement her intended message rather than detract from it.

“So how did y’all meet each other?” Applejack asked, clearly wanting to get off these highly philosophical and brain-numbing topics.

“The Doctor found us,” Lyra said. “As you can probably tell, he seems to know a bit more about this kind of stuff.”

“It’s a gift,” the Doctor winked.

“And what exactly do you do?” Rainbow Dash inquired.

“Oh, you know…save the universe, make sure the timestream for this world remains consistent, keeping an eye on you lot,” at this the Doctor gestured towards the six mares. “You know, typical timey-whimey, Doctory…stuff.”

“And don’t forget about me, the Doctor’s companion,” Derpy chimed in. “Who managed to save your hide more than once, if I’m not mistaken,” she added, nudging the Doctor.

“Lyra and I do a lot of the administrative and general support work here at Trotswood,” Bon Bon explained. “And Lyra is just so delightful at that wonderful instrument of hers!”

“Oh, go on…” Lyra said, waving a hoof nonchalantly but blushing nonetheless.

“Music and technical know-how, that’s what I bring,” DJ Pon3 smiled, adjusting her goggles.

“My specialty is also in music, though of a different variety of course…” Octavia explained. “However, I also do a fair amount of detective work for the League. It is incredible what some of these royal ponies say in front of the musicians when they think we’re just focusing on our music.”

“And how did you find out about us?” Pinkie asked cheerfully.

“Ah, well…” the Doctor said, keen interest creeping into his voice. “The TARDIS – that’s the blue box thing you came here in – picked up on some dimensional disturbances around Ponyville, particularly around Froggy Bottom Bog. But as we already explained, we couldn’t get in ourselves to find out what was happening, and any trace of what happened was wiped clean. Except…in here,” he said, indicating Twilight’s head. “Your memory just needs to be unblocked and we can learn what happened.”

“How in Equestria do you suppose we do that?” Rarity asked.

DJ Pon3 held up a hoof. “Just follow me, girls.” She turned around and started trotting to the back of the room, with everypony following her.

“So…” Rainbow Dash was walking astride Octavia and was leaning in to ask her a question. “Octopus, was it?”

“Octavia,” she replied curtly.

“Right, right…” Dash said. “So…I’m still not quite getting who you all are. I mean, this Doctor fellow, what’s so special about him?”

“Well, I’ve puzzled over that myself actually,” Octavia said, looking thoughtfully at the Doctor. “I believe he resonates so strongly with his fans because he embodies the ideal characteristics of a masculine figure: commanding and truly in charge of any situation, brave to the point that he literally laughs in the face of danger, relying not on strength of arms but on intellect and sharp wit, wise and clever beyond any measure…he is what every stallion wishes he could be and what any mare would look for in a companion.”

Rainbow Dash gave Octavia a blank look. “I meant more like…what exactly has he done?”

“Oh,” Octavia said. “I thought we went over this. He’s a time traveler who has saved the universe on multiple occasions.”

“Okay, that…that makes more sense,” Dash replied.

They proceeded to the back of the room, where there was a large bank of computers positioned around a circle labeled on the floor. The computers had blinking lights, multiple toggle switches and buttons and readout screens, but what their exact purpose was couldn’t be deciphered from the appearance of the machine itself.

“Right then!” the Doctor cried. “You lot, stand right here in the middle, in the circle,” he said to the six mares. “On you go, then!”

“Sorry, but what exactly does this machine do?” Twilight asked.

“It scans brainwaves,” DJ Pon3 said, giving a sly smile. “Anything in your mind, it picks up.”

“Basically,” the Doctor began. “The mind scanner will locate your blocked memories, and I’ll use my screwdriver to unblock them so you can remember them. But then they’ll also appear on the monitor here so that we can see them too.”

“Now then…” the Doctor continued, turning to the other members of the League. “This is going to have to be a group effort. Octavia and Lyra, I need you to get your instruments ready.” The two musicians nodded and galloped off. “DJ, I need you to keep an eye on the monitors.”

“On it, Doc!” DJ Pon3 said, giving the Doctor a mock salute.

“Oh, don’t salute!” the Doctor shuddered. “And no ‘Doc’ either, you know I hate that…”

“Sorry sir, you know I forget,” DJ replied, snickering slightly. The Doctor grumbled in response.

A moment later Octavia and Lyra returned with their instruments in tow and proceeded to tune them. “Right then…” the Doctor said. “The experience of having your memories unblocked is a very traumatic one, especially if they’re important in any way. But soft music has a way of making the whole experience much easier to bear, so I need you two to play something soothing while we do this.” Octavia and Lyra nodded as they finishing tuning their instruments, then after a moment began to play a quiet melody.

The Doctor turned back to the six mares. “Now I’m not going to lie, this is going to hurt a little. But close your eyes and try to concentrate on the music, okay?”

The six mares nodded and closed their eyes, listening intently to the wafting notes of Octavia and Lyra’s song. Pinkie seemed to recognize the tune, as she was bobbing her head back and forth in time to the music, humming along softly.

“Doc, I found them!” DJ shouted, pointing at a collection of red icons on the brain scan on the screen.

“Alright…” the Doctor looked at the screen to memorize the location of the blocked memory cells, and then pointed his sonic screwdriver at the six mares. “On three then, ready? One…two…three.”

Twilight had tensed herself for the moment, finding it difficult to focus on the music in her state of anticipation. For a second she heard the noise of the sonic screwdriver before she felt a searing pain in her head, so strong it felt like her head would burst. Something was forcing its way inside her brain, pushing in deeper and deeper. Twilight clutched her head in agony, forcing herself to pick out the distant notes of music she could just barely heard. She tried to focus on them, not thinking it would do much good. But to her surprise, the more she focused on the music the more the pain receded. It didn’t vanish, but it was numbed, and that was good enough.

And then, she could remember everything.

***

Twilight was battling one of the Diamond Dogs, blasting one of them back with her magic and shielding herself from a blow from another. It was tough, but she definitely had the upper hand, and it would only be a matter of time before she had them beat.

“STORY TERMINATION SEQUENCE INITIATED.” The chaos of the battle suddenly ceased with the overwhelming sound of a loud, robotic voice. Everyone in the room froze, looking for the source of that sound as alarms and sirens suddenly began to ring out.

“Well, not this isn’t fun…” a bored sounding voice echoed through the room. “But I think I’ve had just about enough of this nonsense.” Prince Blueblood yelped and dove on top of Trixie, cowering in fear of this new voice.

Suddenly there was an ear-splintering crash as the ceiling exploded. Twilight braced herself to dodge or magically block any falling pieces of the ceiling, but somehow they never came. The sky was now exposed as the ceiling seemed to just vanish, and it took Twilight’s eyes a moment to adjust to the brightness of the sunlight.

When her eyes finally adjusted, she saw a powerful-looking figure hovering in the air. It was a dark green alicorn the size of Princess Celestia with a long, silvery horn and a majestic wingspan, a mess of blond hair for a mane and a tail, and glinting eyes.

The figure’s horn glowed and suddenly what was left of the Legion of Gloom’s lair began to fade away, leaving only the swamp behind. There was a flash of brightest white, and Twilight suddenly found herself back in the library, her head lying on a desk with a bottle of apple cider and a plate of eaten treats nearby.

One last detail returned to Twilight. The alicorn had said something in a lofty, casual tone as he cast his magic.

“Greetings to you all, My Little Ponies! Allow me to introduce myself…my name is John. But you can just call me…The Author.”