//------------------------------//
// (Past Chapter 9): Next Level 
// Story: The Unique Properties of Dark Magic 
// by Shadestyle 
//------------------------------//

The first time I truly accessed the internet, it was just as I remember it.  Just a bit more... anime?

"Weiss, what is the meaning of this madness?!" Luna shouts, pounding on my dream-door.

"Luna, dear, I'm a bit occupied," I say, looking over status reports and screens, trying to save my projects before I let her in.

Her screams grow even louder.  "Weiss I will turn your Nightmares into Night TERRORS if you do not open this dream Now!"

I obey the violently angry demigod, manifesting the airlock and allowing her to step in.

She takes several deep breaths, before speaking simply as she stares me down.  "Would you care to explain why you've spread your sickening mockery of my realm to others?  Why you have locked me off from their dreams as well?"

I hold up my hooves disarmingly.  "I did no such thing.  The only thing that rests on my head is that I didn't restrict them.  The Moon Crystals I've been producing were for the use of me and select scientists.  Any other ponies using them did so of their own volition."

Luna still looks tense and pissed, but my words have calmed her ire with the promise of me not just infringing on her domain willingly.

She questions with some irritation.  "What could possibly drive a pony to cast aside their dreams in favor of this... thing."

Summoning up The Couch, I take a seat and summon up a mirror, displaying a few projects I've been working on in my sleep. "Sometimes there just aren't enough hours in the day, Luna.  We're still dreaming, aren't we?  And our dreams are still a way of revisiting the days we lead, aren't they?  I've merely taken some things with me into my dreams to help that along."

Luna gives the mirror, and then me, a very hard look.  "You will include limitations in the gems, such that ponies may choose true, unaltered sleep when they will.  There are parts of the mind that are left unrested in this place you've created.  Ones that can only be denied for so long."

"This is not a request, and I would ensure you have it done.  Your creations would make it challenging for me to do my duty.  I have seen the connections between them as well, You are unwittingly constructing a defense whose failure would harm all who rely on them."

I consider her words, before nodding.  "I'll announce a recall, Princess.  Equip them with on-off switches, and send em back out.  Is that good enough for you?"

She considers my offer.  "It will do, for now."

"Fare thee well, Weiss," She says, fading into stardust.

With Luna gone, I feel like a break would be a good idea.  Banishing my various plans and projects, I open up a port to Whittle's Moon Crystal to see what she's been up to since commissioning a bunch of equipment from R&D.





As I walk into Whittle's dream, I see that she's been busy.  The entire dream room has been restructured into floating platforms of gracefully and flowingly carved crystals, depicting all sorts of odd things, from ponies to flowers, surrounded by a landscape of clouds and giant snowflakes, with Whittle herself working from a gigantic and opulent cushioned chair.

"Christ Whittle, are you sure you're Ok?  That's..."  I stare at the screens, where Whittle Miss Priss has been using her Moon Crystal to remote control the golem-powered milling machines I had my teams produce for her.

When I offered her tools to improve her trade, I had never expected anything like what I'm seeing here.  Over one-hundred finished commissions of carved crystal, in a single night.

Whittle laughs at that.  "Weiss, I'm better than I've been in years.  My cutie mark practically feels like it's on fire, I've never been able to carve this much, this well before.  It's a dream come true... Literally!"

As she deftly commands the mechanical crystal arms to finish carving yet another ornate quartz door, I'm speechless at how one pony and some modern-ish equipment could do... this.

"And you don't feel like taking a break?" I say, with some concern.

She shakes her head.  "Nope.  It's not like running these mills takes much work even if I wasn't asleep.  And I'm having more fun with my job by the minute."

Turning away from her work to put her full attention on our discussion, she prompts me to answer.  "Just here to visit, or do you need some more work commissioned?"

I shake my head.  "Just took a break.  Thought I'd check in.   How is Glitter Bomb doing?"

She chuckles.  "He's been alright.  Too many chuckleheads in the mines, though.  He's had to unstick twelve ponies so far, after they started mining into Frozen Stones."

I tilt my head curiously at that.  I'll have to look into that.

"Listen, I got some word back that you probably shouldn't be using your Moon Crystal every night.  Be sure to set aside a few nights a week to sleep normally, Ok?" I say with some concern.

She shrugs.  "Alright.  I'll be sure to do that."

Nodding affirmatively, I exit the dream, and decide to check up on a few other ponies who requested Moon Crystals.





The next night, Eclipse, having read the crude manual that Weiss had his ponies write to describe the functionality and structure of the dream crystals, felt prepared to make an attempt to get in on whatever Weiss's current plans are.  

'While you can't use the crystals to read somepony's mind, you absolutely can read the history of any dreams that happened inside of them, and any information that the user chose to store inside deliberately.'  Eclipse thinks to herself, opening a port to Weiss's backup storage Moon Crystal while he's not using it.

Stepping into the digitally enhanced dream-room, Eclipse looks around, seeing an oddly arranged livingroom, with a bookshelf, couches, and a strange black mirror dominating the southern wall, strange, out-of-place boxes stacked underneath it.  There isn't even a fireplace in here.

"Now to figure out where he's keeping his plans so I can steal them."

At the word "steal", the black mirror lights up, startling her slightly.

looking at what appears to be some sort of magic mirror curiously, she watches hazy symbols and emblems appear on it, accompanied by the sound of smacks and crashes, before eventually fading out to the scene of some sort of racoon, leaping across stone buildings until it lands on top of a metal spire, and begins scanning the area cautiously.

At the top left of the mirror, some writing she can't read is overlapping a blue emblem.

"Sup,"  A voice behind her says, startling her even more.

Turning around, she immediately recognizes the pink mane'd filly who snuck up on her.

"You!  You're one of Weiss's minions, Glitter Miss Priss!"

The filly sneers at that.  "Is that what Weiss calls me behind my back?  I'll have to make sure to stuff extra snow in his bed tomorrow."

Before Eclipse can properly comprehend what Priss's non-sequitur means, the filly continues.

"What exactly are you doing here?" Priss says with a glare.

Eclipse immediately retorts.  "I'm Weiss Noir's prized student, what are you doing here?"

At this, Priss attempts and fails to hold back her laughter.  "You poor thing, actually having to learn from that dork."

"Weiss told me to come over and test a thing he was working on.  He hasn't shown up though, so I'm just waiting."

Eclipse is confused, but also a bit excited.  Could this unknown thing he's got his stooge here to test be part of his dastardly plan?

Eclipse doubts it could be that bad, if he's involving children in testing it, but she still needs to figure out what he's up to.

And it absolutely isn't at all because she's curious what amazing thing he's going to do with this old dream-catcher magical technology, it's because he's got an evil plan, and she will not allow it to come to fruition.

"Hey, what's that thing hooked up to Weiss's games.  Did you put that there?" Priss points out, a hoof pointed towards the big red button hooked to the box underneath the magic mirror.

Eclipse shrugs, looking at it curiously.  "I didn't put it there.  I just came to figure out Weiss's plans,"  She pops a  hoof over her mouth at that slip-of-the-tongue.

Priss giggles.  "Is that so?  Well, that sounds like it would annoy Weiss.  And that's always a good time.  What say we do some snooping, minion?"

Priss trots over to the button, picking it up and turning it over in her hooves.  "I have no clue what this is," She says with the utmost confidence.

"Well, give it here, I bet I could figure it out,"  Eclipse says, jutting out her own hoof, accidentally knocking it to the ground.

The two give each other a look, as the button clicks, and the Magic Mirror expands until it fills the entire room.

The two look around, Priss in confusion, and Eclipse in panic, as their surroundings turn to the balmy night of Paris France's scenic rooftops.

"Sly!  Can you read me?!" A voice shouts from somewhere they can't hear.  The voice is responded to by another, smoother tone.

"Yes Bentley, loud and... Very loud," The smoother tone says.

The nasal voice from before continues.  "Sorry, I'm just a little nervous.  Breaking into Police Headquarters will do that to you."

While Priss is beginning to realize what's going on, Eclipse's confusion only grows.  Her confusion causes the voices to change, now mimicking Eclipse and Priss instead of the Nasally tone and the smooth one.

"Get over it Priss, you're safe with me." The source-less imitation of Eclipse says, cutting off mid-sentence as though it had been about to say something else, but edited itself for continuity.

"I'm the thief here!  I've got to steal that file from Inspector Weiss Noir" The voice exclaims, glitching out slightly as it replaces whatever name it was going to say with Weiss's.

At this point, the real Eclipse speaks up.  "What is going on here?  What's with these voices?!" She shouts hysterically.

Priss just laughs, looking at Eclipse's new outfit, a beret, domino mask, and baggy dark clothing.  "Well 'Sly', it sounds like the voices are to set the stage.  I recognize this.  It's one of Weiss's dumb games.  He must have somehow made it so the dream crystal itself can play the game with us in it."

Eclipse looks around at her surroundings properly, the same surroundings that were displayed on the magic mirror before.  "This is some kind of game?  Wait, Weiss was creating dream-twisting technology to... enhance make-believe games?  That's so stupid, it can't be right!"

"...What's with the turtle shell?"  Eclipse says, noticing Priss's new, blocky glasses and the large shell on her back.

Priss just shrugs.  "Heck if I know.  I guess unless you want to get caught by Weiss snooping around, we should try to find a way out of here."

"Only one way to go,"  She finishes, seeing only one path across the rooftops suitable for pony travel, covered in boards and floating coins.

Suddenly, they hear Priss's voice pipe up again now that they've finished speaking, as a building at the other end is focused on somehow.

"To get inside, we're going to have to go through that air vent," Priss's voice explains factually.

Eclipse's disembodied voice responds.  "Alright, we're going in."

A third, hammy voice pipes up, its voice occasionally lilting differently at certain lines..  "And don't forget, you've got me at the wheel, you two, all you've got to do is grab the file, and get back to the cart.  I'll do the rest."

"Just keep that engine running Murray, we'll be down there in no time,"  Actor-Eclipse finishes.

The actual Priss shrugs. "I guess that's our cue."

With that, Eclipse reluctantly follows behind the other filly, who, instead of trying to simply leap over the buildings, instead climbs a nearby water tower.

"Why are we going this way?" Eclipse questions.

"And what's with the glowing ledge?"  She questions further.

Priss just shrugs.  "This is the way we're supposed to go.  You just sort of sidle up against the wall and..."

In a feat of acrobatics the filly could never have performed in the waking world, she leans up against the ridges of the water tower and slides around it, making her way to a series of platforms that offer a more advantageous route to the vent.

Eclipse is confused at this feat, but, upon touching the glowing blue lights, discovers that she can do it too.

"This is incredible, like we're some kind of ninjas!"  Eclipse says as they leap from rickety antennae to antennae to reach the vent.

"It's still a dream, minion.  I'm pretty sure we can do anything we put our minds to here," Priss says blithely, rearing back to buck the vent cover, and trotting inside when that one kick shatters it into nothingness.

Eclipse frowns.  "Stop calling me that, please.  I'm trying very hard to not end up one of Weiss's minions like you."

Priss shrugs, as Eclipse follows her into the air-vents.  "You're closer to a minion than I am, I just hang out with him and keep him on his toes.  You're actually like, one of his underlings."

"Only so I can figure out his plans and thwart them from the inside!" Eclipse protests, as they exit the vent, seeing a web of lasers and platforms below them, with a strange red bulbous metal contraption at the bottom of the drop.

"Ok, so you're a stereotypical minion,"  Priss snorts a bit with laughter.

"Watch out for those lasers.  I don't know if they'll hurt, but they're supposed to."

Eclipse nods, and they both carefully jump down, weaving between the yellow beams by jumping from outcropping to outcropping in the tall metal room until they land on the bottom of it.

Priss walks up to the red metal alarm and smashes it, forcing the barred door to open.

Eclipse tries to get her words together as the filly leads the way deeper into this strange, metal and wood building.  She had only ever seen crystal and rock buildings before.

She finally comes up with something as they walk down the halls, looking for whichever room contains the files.  "I'm not stereotypical, I'm subverting that by trying to use his training to come up with ways to stop his evil plans."

Priss giggles at this.  "Have you actually figured out any of his evil plans, yet?"

"Found the door," She says, pointing to the red door that they had spotted, and the open window balcony next to it.

Giving it a sharp kick, Priss thinks for a second when it doesn't open.  "We'll have to go around."

The duo climb out of the window, sidling along the stone ridges of the building's exterior, eventually reaching another balcony from which they can enter the locked room.

Eclipse, by that point, had been slowly getting more and more annoyed at Priss's constant poking holes in her own plans.  "No, but I'm going to, that's the whole point."

Priss shrugs, as she walks up to the safe in the middle of the room.  Before she can speak, her actor starts speaking up for her.

"Way to go, Eclipse, this is where Inspector Weiss Noir stashes all his important files.  I hacked into the police security mainframe and discovered this vault's combo.  Try dialing in 'Four, Two, Zero',"  her Actor says, giving the password to the safe.

Eclipse walks up to the vault and finds that she can't actually read the numbers on the vault door, as they just look like a hazy, unrecognizable mass.  Nonetheless, she instinctively flips the dials into what "feels like" the correct combination, and the safe swings open, allowing her to safely snatch the goods, a manila folder filled with black papers.

The actor named "Murray" speaks up as she grabs the folder to a suite of triumphant music.

"Nice job! - You got it!  If you come down through the fire escape, and head through the parking lot, I'll be waiting in the getaway cart!" "Murray" says.

Priss and Eclipse, for once, manage to give each other a look that isn't vaguely bitter, after successfully snatching the files.   As they walk out onto the balcony again, a familiar voice rings out, constructed from their memories and expectations.

"Criminal!" Weiss's voice rings out accurately, though on some level, they subconsciously realize that this Weiss is a fake.

The dream-Weiss leaps up onto the building across from the one they're on, holding a lightning charged crossbow in his magical grip.  "You foolish ponies, I've caught you red handed!"

Eclipse's actor speaks up.  "Ahh, Weiss, I haven't seen you since I gave you the slip in Tom-Bay."

"That reminds me, you need to return the Fire Stone of Spindia to its rightful owners," Actor-Weiss says scornfully.

"Aw, and here I was going to give it to you as a gift,  Oh, that ballista you've got, very nice.  It suits you." Eclipse's actor retorts.

Actor-Weiss replies with some sarcasm. "You think?  This crossbow packs a paralyzing punch, you aught to try it.  Might snap you out of your crime spree."

"This dialogue is so cheesy," Priss giggles behind her hoof, while Eclipse shushes her, trying to get invested in the story this "game" is weaving.

She only manages to catch the last lines from her own actor after Priss's interruption.

"Love to stay and chat, but I just came here to pick up the files on your next dastardly scheme.  I think you've had them long enough," Actor-Eclipse finishes.

Eclipse 'oohs' at that. "I'll have to remember that one!"

Priss's face pales when Actor-Weiss actually starts using that crossbow, firing electrically charged bolts at the Fire Escape they've climbed down onto.  "I don't think we've got time for pondering witty one liner's here, minion!"  She says, dodging a particularly nearby bolt that breaks one of the planks serving as a ramp.

Needing no further prompting, the duo scramble to get down from the building, dodging electricity and blunted crossbow bolts alike as they attempt to reach the parking lot and escape the crossbow-toting Inspector.

One of the bolts successfully strikes Priss as she leaps over one of the carts flooding the parking lot, making her light up like a Hearth's Warming Candle with electricity as she yelps.

Not one to leave a pony behind, Eclipse rushes back and grabs her, dragging her towards the open cart that promises escape at the end of the parking lot.  "Are you alright Priss?"

The other filly shrugs her off.  "I'm fine, it didn't actually hurt, it just sort of made me act like it did for a second.  I think it's part of the game."

They both jump into the cart, which squeals off as the Actor-Weiss yells after them.  "You can't escape me, racoon!"

As the cart sped off, the pair found the world around them fading into black, and before long, they were back in the dream-room they were in before, the magic mirror displaying cartoonish artful scenes of the cart speeding away, and the narrator explaining how they had found the files and successfully stolen them, sarcastically explaining how the inspector took it surprisingly well, while showing a picture of their snarling face.

Priss is the first to notice that Eclipse is still holding the folder she took from the "Game", a label on the front filled with unreadable text that they both somehow know says "Project Arcana Nox"

"Huh.  Looks like you actually got something out of this,"  The filly says, as Eclipse quickly sends the file to her own crystal to read over later.

"Yes, it seems you did,"  A voice says from behind the two fillies, making them yelp.

Eclipse grins sheepishly at the unamused Lord Weiss.  "I don't suppose you saw that, did you?"

Weiss gives a smile that is absolutely at odds with his next words.  "Oh I didn't see anything too important.  Just a security hole I'll have to patch up with running videogames inside a Moon Crystal.  I do hope you'll at least have the courtesy to send me a copy of those files.  I sort of need them to help the Shadow Realm."

Eclipse withers under being discovered, nodding nervously.

Weiss smiles more genuinely.  "I'm very proud, even if you didn't intentionally figure out a crack in my systems, you still did it, and you were still trying to do it."

"If you were anyone else, your little... playthrough... would have crippled and exposed a plan I would strongly prefer not be in enemy hands.  Now I can patch that vulnerability, and you can mark this down as a win for yourself.  Good work, Eclipse Flash."

"Now, if you both would, I need to look over the footage and see why exactly you were able to access secure files from inside the Sly Cooper virtual zone I was working on."

"I expect your Foeship Report within the week, Eclipse Flash."

The two of them nod, opening ports to their own dream-realm crystals and walking with intent to exit to them.

"See you around, minion," Priss says with a smirk, making Eclipse give a glare and a smirk back.

"I still got his evil plans, lesser-minion,"  Eclipse taunts, as she hops through the port, and returns home.





A few minutes after I send the two fillies out, I summon up the extra copy of the files for the Arcana Nox I kept off-site.   I may not have known that my Moon Crystals could have their security breached like that, but I wasn't so dumb as to only have one copy of my plans on hand.  Ever since I discovered Frozen Stone, and its reaction to the Black Flame, I knew what I could do with it, I felt it in my goddamn bones.  A feeling like that warrants a few copies of any files I make on it.

Holding a digital dream replication of a Frozen Stone in my hoof, I chuckled to myself.

"Upon this rock, I will build my church," I quoted.

Screw controlling golems in my sleep.  While being able to cast spells by controlling golems enchanted with those spells had a niche use, its uses in combat turned out to be a bust, for a number of reasons.

And screw the Divine Words, where a few floating lenses and crystals might have doubled my abilities in combat... This next discovery, this next plan...

It would make me a god if it worked.

Who would have thought that such a humble, ordinary rock that my miners had been avoiding could have been so useful?  How terrifying a substance it was, despite ponies barely registering it as more than a nuisance.  Even if I did embarrass myself a bit when I first encountered it.





I stared at the frozen pony in front of me in confusion.  He wasn't frozen in the sense that he was encased in ice, but rather, frozen in place like a video on pause.

I turn to Glitter Bomb, who had become the leader of this mine's sector.

"So this rock, it just freezes things that touch it?  Is that pony alright?"  I ask carefully.

Glitter just chuckles.  "No, sadly, he's a bit dumb.  But he's unharmed, if that's what you mean."

Walking over to the frozen pony, Glitter Bomb turns and bucks them off of the rock, unfreezing them and making the rock turn from bright blue to a dull grey.

"So why are you so interested in this stuff, anyway?  If you're thinking it could be useful in a fight, it's not really.  The rock runs out of power fast if it's got anything alive touching it."

I shake my head.  "I'm just curious.  I'd like some-"

I freeze, my hoof placed on the grey rock, having thought it was inert.

"-mined up and sent to my lab for testing," I finish, having been pulled off of it, with a bunch of ponies now chuckling at me.

"It can still freeze things when it's grey, can't it?"  I question with some woe.

Glitter Bomb nods, still laughing a bit.  "Don't touch it, boy.  I'd hate to hear you losing a few hours in your lab because you went and poked the stuff.  We usually just avoid it or wall it up.  I don't know what you think you'll get out of it.  It's hard to move around and do stuff with it in the first place, it likes to hang in the air when you try putting it in carts."

I shrug.  "I'm sure I'll find a use for it."

It's only hours later that I obtain my first bottle of Stoppered Time, after burning away the Frozen Stone with hatefire creates a puddle of empty, liquid, frozen time.

While this liquid seems incapable of freezing solid objects on contact any more, I refuse to leave it at that.

There's something more important that I could do with this liquid, I sense.  It's certainly worth testing.

I grab some sheets of black paper, and start writing, with a bold, English title at the top.

"Project Arcana Nox"





Lord Weiss Noir,

Today I learned that even ponies whose personalities and positions conflict can be brought together by the mutual desire to humiliate a third party.  I am unsure what to call this exact form of relationship, but for now, I will simply say that I now have a Cooperative Rivalry with Glitter Miss Priss, your annoying minion who is entirely too comfortable with letting your plans go unopposed, even when she is presumably in on them herself.  If nothing else, she seems to be good at testing my various qualities, chief among which is my patience.

Your treacherous student, Eclipse Flash.