//------------------------------//
// Emil's Lode du Jour (Admiral Biscuit's "The Soup Must Flow") 
// Story: Never the Final Word (Vol. 2) 
// by FanOfMostEverything 
//------------------------------//

"Why the long face, kid?" The grizzled crew boss gestured at the dozens of ponies swarming over the machinery of the new pipe connections. "Your first project as lead  prospector, and you strike a major soup dome that's got enough internal  pressure to flow easy even if we didn't have a substation here! Less than four hundred barrels of leakage before we got that gusher locked down, and now we're set to pipe eighty times that daily for at least fifteen years! I've heard veteran engineers say a strike like this would make their whole decade worthwhile, Bounder, and you're acting like a little turd when you should be promising the soupjacks free drinks all week once they get off shift."

Boundary Layer shook his head in frustration. Anyone else speaking to him like that would get a reminder of who was in charge of this project, but Auger was the closest thing he had to a father. A dozen years ago, the short, stocky Earth pony had risked taking on a skinny pegasus orphan barely into his mid-teens as an apprentice soupjack—colt had a hungry look and bright eyes, Auger had claimed. Four years after that, Auger had shoved his featherbrained plot into taking the Trottingham University entrance exam, and when results came back, insisted that he take the university's scholarship offer because "Bounder, you're too smart to be a dirty soupjack like me your whole life."

"I know I should, Auger, but remember how, after I got my first paycheck, I told you I'd never eat this kind of soup again?  And now, after four years in school for an engineering degree, two more to get a Master's in soup geophysics, and two more as an assistant prospector...my first score is acquacotta?" Bounder would've kept ranting, but Auger cuffed him on the back of his head.

"I been mining soup nearly forty years, kid," Auger said. "Ponies love bragging about how they once tapped a vein of Bird's Nest soup or lobster bisque, but there isn't enough of that stuff discovered each year to feed a little town like Ponyville for a week. But acquacotta? The Crown buys all acquacotta strikes so that no pony, no matter how broke, ever has to go without soup. There'll be a lot of ponies in Canterlot and Manehattan who'll be thankful for this. Including your old orphanage."

Bounder exhaled. "You're right, boss. Tell the crews that dinner and drinks are on the company's bits this week. And after we finish up, tell them we'll go by Ponyville and I'll pay for a couple days of cider season before we start the next job."

Auger smiled. "Good lad."