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// Pinkie The Miner 
// Story: Sugarloaf Mountain 
// by Windrunner 
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"And she mines and she mines and she mines all day!" Pinkie Pie, mountaineer and miner extraordinaire sang to herself, as much as she could sing to herself with a pickaxe firmly held in her mouth while chipping away at the hard candy coating this lower plateau far up Sugarloaf Mountain. Good thing pony teeth were so durable, and their dentists so good at what they did. None of the other sugar miners would dare attempt to stake claim here due to the severe citrus rainstorms that often ravaged the mountaintops. She did not care, soon she would be flush and rich with the treasures buried here. The vast sugar troves she would extract and sell to the highest bidder, she need only reach it.
"Tilting my head this way all the time gives me such a crick in the neck!" Her neck cracked.
"Ouch! Ow! Owie!" Pinkie complained as she continued to hammer away at the surface.
"This is hard work! Maybe I should try something else." She complained, turning to a sledgehammer and chisel instead. The hard candy coating was difficult to penetrate at best.
"Wait, how am I supposed to hold this thing and hit it?" She found it difficult to place and hold the chisel with her hooves and attempt to swing the sledgehammer at it with her mouth, resulting in several near-misses. Pony necks are awfully strong, she thought.
"Grr." She then attempted to hold the chisel with her teeth and swing the sledge with her hooves, immediately losing her grip and sending it sailing clean off the edge of the plateau.
"Ooh..I hope that doesn't land on anypony, that might hurt a little bit! Oh right, this is an empty mountain. Silly!" Pinkie giggled, then struggled to think of a new idea, rubbing her hooves together.

"I know!" She rummaged in the numerous packs she'd hauled up here over the course of a few trips and pulled out several sticks marked 'Candy penetration caps' along with a detonator. She rigged the caps and wired them all to the detonator, a long way away behind an outcropping.
"Working in a candy mine going down down.." She sang to herself then stopped suddenly.
"This isn't a mine!...yet." Her eyes glinted as she prepared to depress the trigger, imagining the vast stores of sugar soon to be exposed, gazing off into the distance dreamily. Then, snapped back to the here and now.
"Here we go." Pinkie smacked the detonator bar down and then, absolutely nothing happened.
"Isn't there supposed to be like, a big boom or something?" She sort of peeked out around the edge. No big boom. No nothing. No nothing, at all.
"No boom? You're supposed to go like this. BOOM!" She flailed her forehooves while making boom noises, so wildly that she fell over backwards onto the detonator bar, making it shove further down into the box. This was followed by a large explosion, sending showers of candy bits flying everywhere.
"That's better, Mr. explosive!" Pinkie rolled off the detonator and waited for the candy dust to settle. Now, she would finally be able to actually start digging downwards. A strange rumbling was felt.
"Is that my tummy? But, I'm not hungry! Uh-oh." Pinkie looked up to see a slow moving sea of white approaching.

"Whipped cream avalanche!" She yelped as the topping flooded downwards towards her, fleeing inside the small storage shed she'd constructed earlier, where she waited. And waited. And Waited. Pinkie peered out through a small slot in the shed wall. It was still flowing towards the shed, slowly.
"I didn't know avalanches could be so boring! I guess I'll just get some sleep." There was just enough room for a pony to sleep in here, otherwise filled with various picks and materials intended for sugar mining.
"What's that sizzling noise?" Peering outside again, one of the terrifying citrus storms had also begun, making the approaching cream move much faster.
"Good thing I came in here, otherwise my eyes could be slightly irritated by that tasty tasty citric acid!..Which is also good for cleaning, and pies!" She lay down to wait out the delicious storm, nibbling on a small piece of the chipped rock candy mountain top before drifting off to sleep. The storm was wild, throwing waves of whipped cream dashing against the shed, making eerie noises as it slopped and splatted off the walls. Eventually, it ended. It was just approaching dawn when she arose.
"At least I have breakfast, and lunch..and dinner. Or, I could have dinner for lunch, and lunch for dinner and breakfast for lunch..I'm getting off track here." She took one of the heavy picks out to resume work, singing away.
"When the whistle blows each morning, and I walk down in that cold dark mine.." She stopped midway.
"Wait a minute, I don't have a whistle. Does this mean It won't be a real mine? I should get a whistle." She continued picking away.

Occasionally, she would have to stop and switch to a shovel to remove swathes of the hard candy chippings. Singing the day away. Chipping. Shoveling. Chipping. Shoveling. It all kind of swirled together.
"Come and listen you fellas so tall and so fine, and seek not your fortunes in the dark dreary mines.." She blinked.
"But, I'm seeking my fortunes here! Different song." This was taking so long. At least there was plenty to snack on.
"Searching for another dream to chase...." She huffed and chuffed and dug.
"Whew, this is tiring, but I'm so close to the strata layer where all that sugar is just waiting for me!" Digging and digging.
"In the mines, in the mines, in the blue diamond mines..Wait, I'm not digging for diamonds!" As she said this the pick struck through into an empty pocket and sent her tumbling straight down into the hole, head over hooves.
"Wheehee!" She landed atop a veritable ocean of sugar which she swam about in.
"I actually made it. Hurray, so much sugar. ALL the sugar! My sugar! Pinkie, wake up. What? Pinkie, wake up!" Pinkie opened her eyes to find herself on the floor somewhere in Twilight's castle.
"Hi Twilight! This isn't sugar." She said. Twilight was looking at her funny.
"Oh good, you're..what, are you okay? You really banged your head after you tripped over that sack of sugar for the kitchen." She did look rather concerned. So that's what happened.
"Oh I'm fine, sugar can't hurt me!" Pinkie sort of snorted and bounced off.

"Something wrong with that girl, I swear." Twilight said to herself and wandered off to continue some research. Meanwhile, on her way back to Sugar Cube Corner, Pinkie found herself sighing.
"Maybe I should lay off the sweets for a while..nah." She pronked home.

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