A Perfect Combination [Sugar Sweet]

"D-you think it'd be possible to automate this concept?" She fired back quickly, "Buttons, levers? Something anypony can use. It's not going to be any good if a zebra colt can't use it whenever he needs a drink, you know?"

Apparently, her thoughts had turned back to the water purifier she needed to perfect, and would perfect with the help of these sigils.

"I already have a self reliant crystal battery," Sugar said irritably, "It's in the purifier right now, did you not listen to my explanation at all?"

Indeed, she'd used dark magic to power the core (Black magic to her, she knew the difference between dark and black), designed to draw energy from the world around it, but altered to exclude living beings. In fact, looking towards the purifier, the last few dredges of energy from the leylines had just finished being absorbed by it.

"recharging it with unicorn magic would have been inefficient!" She retorted just as spiritedly (geddit?), "If I'm giving this design to the zebras, how would they recharge it huh? That's just silly!"

She took a deep breath to calm down, and slowly took stock of the question posed to her.

"I took the basis of a soul siphon spell and altered it," She said slowly, "So that it retained energy enough to cast the altered version of the spell, only on the leyline's passive radiation rather than living beings. It was a process that took me years to perfect, and the Committee turned it down on the basis that it 'could be used for evil purposes', like nothing else could."

"Oh don't be stupid!" Sugar yelled back, angry now, "No magic is evil! There is no such thing as evil magic! The only thing evil about magic is the intent behind whoever casts it! It's not my fault that narrow minded ponies such as yourself only see in black and white!"

She stomped her hooves angrily and snorted defiantly.

"Soul Siphon is a Black spell, yes," She continued yelling, "But it's purpose was not originally to kill! It was to siphon energy from one source to another! Yes, that turned into siphoning the life force, or 'soul', from one pony and add it to another's, thus increasing their power, but it's not doing that now is it!?"

She thrust her hoof out to point at the purifier.

"I am using this magic for the good of other ponies!" She roared, "And I am sick and tired of being told time after wretched time after wretched time that nothing can come of my use of magic, black, white, blue or whatever else you can think up of!"

She glared at Spirit, her part said, before finally bursting into tears as everything, her life, her problems and the constant dismissal from the Equestrian Safety of Services and Civilians Committee of her many and varied inventions hit her like a hammer and she turned to run away, all thoughts of her purifier now forgotten.

A fragile mare in a harsh world, with a brittle mask. So easily broken, and so quickly replaced, but never repaired.

For half a second, Sugar almost relented. She almost cried into the coat of the pony who had damned her work again. Who had, in no direct but certainly insinuated words, called her mad. Told her she was crazy for using the magic she was using to help ponies, because ponies thought it was evil.

But only almost.

With a powerful shove, she pushed away from Spirit, tears still in her eyes. She might not have been able to break through the walls normally, but she still had something Spirit seemed to have forgotten.

She rushed over to the drill she so coveted, whipped it up, aiming at the wall, and fired. With a thunderous thump, the inactive drill thundered into the wall and busted through it, leaving a hole large enough for Sugar to fit through... if she squeezed herself through.

"Oh, and I'm supposed to take comfort in that? That you're sorry?"

Sugar stopped trying to escape, and started snapping again instead, tears streaming freely down her cheeks.

"You called me a necromancer! I'm not even capable of magic! Not even capable of performing the slightest hint of physical magic! How could I possibly be that huh?"

She gestured wildly around as she spoke.

"You're like everypony else! Obsessed with right and wrong, good and evil, black and white. To you, there's only good, and there's only evil. It's ironclad! It always has been, and it always will be! Because none of you are willing to face change or the idea that you might be wrong. It's petty, it's stupid, and I hate you all because of it! My life..."

Her hooves found her chest and she pressed against the already faint outline of her ribcage.

"My life has been ruined because of ponies like you! Because you judge without even bothering to observe. Because you blindly follow your faith in all things good and evil, because you believe you automatically know something must be bad, or it must be good, because of its tools, or its looks, and it's stupid! All of you are stupid!"

Sugar's mind normally ran off of logic. Momentarily back there, she'd let her emotions cloud her judgement, and now, it was coming back to bite her in the ass. Coming back under control, she forced her emotions to one side, ignoring them (as she'd done for so many countless years now) and faced the situation with her intensely logical mind.

I reacted in a negative fashion after she did so herself. This interaction was much like an explosion. Fuel, ignition, explosion. What was the fuel?

It only took her a second to decide that the fuel for this explosion or flame was most certainly pent up frustration with the Committee not taking any of her inventions with the good intentions she poured into them.

Alright. Ignition?

Definitely being accused of being a black wizard, or a necromancer, in roundabout terminology. Certainly not something she appreciated, and then being told that it was evil what she had done.

Right. Ignition. That lead to the explosion, and collateral damage. Potential business dealings are in severe danger. Fires are still needing to be put out. My words were driven by emotion, and therefore cruel and unnecessary. Spirit Weaver (so I assume, she said as much, again in a roundabout way) has attempted to apologise, with little success in my emotionally distraught state. I wonder if there's a way to rid oneself of emotion altogether? Irrelevant. Fires must be extinguished.

With a quick look around, her eyes fell on the drill launcher she'd let fall from her shoulder earlier, and, even though it wrenched at her heart, she spooled the drill back up, reattached it to the launcher, set it on her shoulders, and trotted brusquely after the mare.

"Wait!"