Fallout Equestria: Diary of Lilac

Chapter 1

Lilac Oil sat on her bed inside of a room deep in the stable living quarters away from the main area. A pen was in her mouth as it slowly wrote down her thoughts into her newly acquired journal. Off to one side of her room was a doorway, and unnoticed by Lilac, her father stood there observing her.

Lilac hummed along to a tune in her head as she wrote down her thoughts from earlier. That is until her father cleared his throat, drawing her attention away from the book. "Lilac, what are you doing?" he asked with a tilt of his head.

"Just doin' like the doctor said." she replied around the pen, but it was a little bit garbled. Regardless, her father had already assumed that. He walked inside the room and sat next to the bed. Lilac set the pen down before slowly closing the book to give him her full attention.

"And what are you doing with that bag of stuff?" he nodded towards her saddlebags.

She wasn’t sure what to say, so she sat there thinking about various excuses. Eventually, Lilac smiled a little bit at an idea that came to her mind. "Just some things to trade in the mornin'."

"Uh-huh," Lilac's father sat on the edge of the bed and levitated her diary over to inspect it.

Lilac's ears dropped. "Father, that's private."

"You know the rules, no secrets." He flipped the diary to the first entry and started reading. After a few short moments, he frowned, but continued on.

Lilac bit her lower lip as she tapped her forehooves together in worry. Her gaze slowly wandered away from her father on over to her mostly full bag where she kept some flowers she had grown, some thick clothes she traded for, and a small pistol.

"So," Lilac's father began, drawing the purple earth pony's attention away from the bag. "You think I'm overprotective and what's this?" he turned the book around and pointed a hoof at the final entry. "'Gears and I are going to the surface'? Explain, now." The green unicorn loudly closed the diary and tossed it to Lilac.

She caught it and hugged it close while curling up. "I'm not a foal..." Lilac mumbled quietly. She took a deep breath and stared into her father's eyes. "Gears and I are going to the surface to pick something up he got in a trade."

"It is forbidden," her father crossed his forelegs across his chest and glared. "Lilac, the surface is a frozen hellhole with ponies that eat other ponies. You wouldn't last one minute out there."

"But I got protection," she nodded at the bag. "Thick clothes and a pistol."

Her father looked at the bag for a moment. He then looked at Lilac and grabbed her ear with magic, tugging on it as hard as he could without pulling it off.

"Ow! Ow! Ow! Father, stop it!" Lilac whined as she was forced to climb off the bed and follow the green unicorn. He levitated her bags onto his back and walked out of the room while dragging Lilac.

*** ***

Brass Gears was sleeping in his cramped quarters at the back of his shop like he always did at night. There was hardly anything in it beyond a bed and dresser along with his tool box. No door connected the shop from the bedroom, that way he could hear a pony if they came in the front. However, the bell did not wake him up this time. It was a rough voice whining like a foal that woke him up.

"Father, you're tearin' my fuckin' ear off!" Lilac shouted in a voice that echoed through the hallway and the repair shop before she even entered it.

Gears groaned as he awoke and placed a forehoof on his head to cover his eyes from the near blinding light. "I was afraid of this," he mumbled quietly to nothing in particular.

As Gears sat up, the green unicorn that was Lilac's father dragged her into the bedroom. Lilac’s father finally let go of her ear and glared at the yellow unicorn, who was rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "You better explain yourself."

Lilac gasped as the flesh rending tension was finally removed from her ear. She sat down and began rubbing it to make sure it was still attached, because it felt like it was on fire or torn off.

Gears tilted his head as he set his hooves down. "Explain what?"

"This," Lilac's father tossed her saddlebags to Gears. He barely had any time to register them before they hit him in the face. "Are you lying to my daughter to abuse her trust?"

Lilac rolled her eyes and began exploring the shop while they talked. After a few moments of searching, she spotted a copper robot that was mostly intact and standing upright.

"No, sir," Gears shook his head as he set the saddlebags to the side. "I would never do such a thing. Lilac is my best friend."

"Then what's this 'surface' business?" Lilac's father sat down and glared a glare that made Gears feel like the green unicorn was drilling through his skull. With a loud gulp, Gears set the map down on the bed next to him, pointing a hoof at the dot for Stable 45. Lilac's father walked over and looked at it. "What's this?"

"It's a map. We are this dot and the tunnel exit is here," he pointed at another one where a dotted line started to head towards the X. "I've been told that the surface has warmed up to the point where it won't kill you in five minutes if you're unprotected and that there isn’t much radiation anymore. But there is constant cloud cover."

Lilac's father stared intently at the map, soaking in all of the details he could see and absorbing them like a sponge. Despite the crudeness of it, he knew what town each dot was supposed to represent even though they were not named as well as they could be. He scratched his chin some while frowning. "You drew this?"

"No, it was given to me for payment. I repaired a pony's rifle this morning and he assured me this map would point me to a stash of items we needed here at the stable."

"Did he say what they were?" The green unicorn set his hoof down on the map where the X was. "Because this, from what my memory says, is a base for the Equestrian military. There’s a high chance that it took a direct megaspell hit and was wiped out. What did this pony look like?"

"Older than my granny," Gears replied. Lilac's father removed his hoof from the X and pointed at what should have been a town, but was a dot. "The pony called that place Prism."

"Prism… hm..."

While Gears and Lilac's father were conversing, Lilac was having a staring contest with the robot she spotted. The earth pony hadn't moved from where she had stopped earlier and appeared frozen in place, but she was actually thinking. 'Should I touch it or leave it? If I leave it, the fact that it's leaning like that is going to bug me every time I come in! But... It's Gears' bot, and if I touch it he'll get angry, so should I leave it? Except it might fall, but what if it explode-fuck it.' She took a deep breath and took one step forward.

In the other room, Gears looked at the green unicorn across from him with his ears back. "Sir, I swear on my life that I'm not trying to trick Lilac. Would I go with her if I was?"

Lilac's father scratched his chin again. "Tell me you weren't so naive to think this pony would give you this map if the information were true? He would have gone there himself."

Gears looked at the map as his ears slowly drooped. "I... I didn't think abou-" A loud crash of metal falling upon metal and stone preceded a near filly like squeal of fright. Gears looked over at the door as his ears perked up. "Lilac?!" he shouted in near unison with her father.

As they rushed out to see what the commotion was, they saw was a pile of partially repaired robot parts strewn across the floor and one of the robot heads slowly rolled over to Gears' repair desk. The purple earth pony was nowhere in sight.

"Lilac?!" Her father shouted as he galloped over to the pile and started using his telekinetics to lift up robot parts. Meanwhile, Gears pulled out a small medical kit and galloped over in case she was injured. "Lilac, if you can hear me say something!"

"I swear I didn't touch the robot," she mumbled from behind another pile of robots, drawing the attention of the two stallions. However they could not see her. "It was about to fall, so I went over to adjust it and it fell on its own before I even touched it."

Lilac slowly stepped out from behind her cover with her head hung low. Her father galloped over and hugged her as tight as he could without hurting her. She returned the hug and buried her face against his neck.

"That's okay," Gears smiled at Lilac. She blinked a couple times as she slowly looked in his direction. "I need to clean up this place anyway. This just makes the issue more urgent."

"Now," Lilac's father began as he let go of the hug, drawing her attention back to him. "About this 'surface' adventure."

Lilac's ears slowly folded back. "I know... it's foalish and forbidden. We can’t go."

"Well, I might be persuaded to let you two go on one condition." The green unicorn looked at a smiling Lilac, then Gears and back to Lilac. "You take adequate protection and come home if it feels too dangerous."

Lilac hugged her father as tight as she could, "thank you, thank you, thank you!"

"But," the earth pony's ears drooped, "I need you to search for something in return."

"What is it, Father?" Lilac tilted her head some at the odd request.

"A glass ball about this big," he held his hooves apart to show the size of a standard memory orb. "Don't ask what it is, and don't touch it with magic, understand?" Gears nodded slowly, as did Lilac. "Good. Now then, you'll need these."

Lilac stepped back as her father pulled a few items out of his bag and set them down. One of them was a 9mm submachine gun in decent condition with a few magazines filled with ammunition, the other item was a metal apple, which was a grenade. The remaining items were rope and a few other things for trap making like wood.

"Where did you get a grenade...?" Gears whispered almost to himself, but it was loud enough to be heard by the others.

Lilac, however, did not care about the grenade as her gaze was locked on the rope that she poked. "These look like part of the traps I've seen in the tunnels.”

“They could be from there, but does one rope not look like another?” Lilac’s father tilted his head. He wondered if his daughter knew that he sometimes would go out after they did and set minor traps behind them to keep them alert. Except, none of them were lethal.

With a shake of her head, Lilac put the ropes in her saddle bag along with the other parts to make a few traps, and nodded. "I think we are ready."

"How good of a shot are you?" her father asked quietly to them. Lilac's ears drooped to the side of her face. "Thought so."

"We'll be fine," she replied with a sigh. Gears levitated his 'new' smg in the air and began aiming it around at the robots in an effort to figure it out before he had to use it. "Gears has has more practice shooting things than I have."

"Ever kill a pony?" her father looked at Gears.

His ears slowly folded back as he bit his lower lip. Then slowly shook his head. "Just the rats and other things in the tunnels mostly."

"I killed a radroach the other day!" Lilac explained proudly with a nod and a grin. “Stomped it flat!”

"A radroach, and mole rat, are not ponies," Lilac's father explained grimly, causing her smile to fade. "A pony is an intelligent and highly dangerous opponent. They are not mindless beasts. They will have others there to watch their back. And they will also have weapons. Something a rad roach does not."

"What do you mean, father?"

"What I mean, is that you might come across some ponies intent on taking what you have. And you might need to defend yourself. To do that, would mean shooting them."

"How do you know what is out there?"

"Stories, guesses, and a hunch," he shrugged. "But, we don't have the ammo for you to do any practicing. So I hope you two can aim properly."

"I can!" Lilac grinned.

Her response caused gears to facehoof, recalling one of the first adventures they had into the tunnels outside of Stable 45.

***===***===***

Gears slowly walked along the tracks of the tram tunnel. A whole wall to his left had collapsed, causing concrete and dirt to bury the rail cars. Some were knocked off the track and blocked their path, while one was sticking out of the dirt. The rest of it was crushed.

Lilac was behind him. She had her father's borrowed pistol in her mouth. Her eyes darted this way and that way in an effort to spot a predator in the gloomy light. However, all she saw was the backside of Gears and the mound of dirt.

She looked over at the partially crushed passenger car and wondered if there was any loot inside worth finding. The purple earth pony stopped, thinking about if she should tell Gears or not. After a few moments of a heated debate, she looked over and said, "hey, Gears we-"

A shot rang out in the tunnel, illuminating the immediate area around Lilac and echoing for some distance. The bullet slammed into the unicorn's right hind leg and burrowed its way in as the leg collapsed.

As the pistol recoiled in Lilac's grip due to an accidental discharge from tonguing, it slammed back and jarred her jaw, causing her to drop the weapon. It clattered to the ground and bounced, firing a second time at a rail car.

Lilac did not have any time to register the pain in her mouth, nor did she have time to respond to the painful cries of her friend in complete agony at having been shot in the ass. The bullet struck the metal rail car at an angle shallow enough to cause it to ricochet.

The red hot lead dart tumbled out of control for an instant before slamming into a rock. Lilac heard the whistle of the tumbling bullet a split second before it tore its way across her back, grazing her and slamming into the wall. Ending its journey there in a shower of concrete dust.

"Fuck!" The purple earth pony screamed in pain as she began prancing in place. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! It burns!"

"No shit," Gears groaned. Lilac hopped around the dropped pistol in an effort to cool her back off. It didn't work. "You shot me in the ass!" the stallion shouted, removing a small yellow kit with three pink butterflies on it.

"On accident!" Lilac hissed through her teeth.

"How could you shoot me, your best and only friend? What if you hit me in the head?!" Gears tried to look at his wound and frowned when he couldn't see the bullet due to it being near his tail.

"Gears... I..." Lilac collapsed on her belly, throwing up a sight dust cloud. "I think I'm dying... It's so dark." Gears, however, had a full view of her back when she rolled on her side. "Tell Father I love him."

The unicorn rolled his eyes. "Lilac, you grazed yourself. So you're not dying."

She turned her head in a way that allowed her to look at him, but upside down. "The fuck I ain't! My whole back is burning and I can feel it bleeding everywhere!"

"Got a mirror?"

"Of course I've got one." Ignoring the pain to her back, Lilac sat up and quickly dug through her saddlebags. After some digging, the purple earth pony pulled out a makeup mirror and held it out.

"So you're dying, huh?" Gears grinned at the fact that she was standing on her own. "Seems like you're not hurt that badly."

Lilac's ears slowly drooped to the side of her face. "What'd you need the mirror for?"

"To get the bullet out."

***===***===***

"But I really can!" Lilac whined as her ears folded back. "Just ask Gears, he's been there when I've hit stuff."

Gears blinked, slowly focusing back on reality and less on the time his friend managed to shoot the both of them despite being an earth pony. He nodded slowly at Lilac's words. "Yeah, she can hit things." he mumbled in an effort to avoid the subject of actually hitting something that was hostile.

Lilac's father looked at Gears, then his daughter and back again. "Gears," he began with a deep sigh, drawing the unicorn's attention away from the floor. "She's all I've got left, understand?"

"Yes, sir," Gears nodded.

"You know what that means?" Again Gears nodded. "Tell me what it means then."

"You want her protected from harm, from anything that would want to hurt her-"

"To smother me in a protective blanket like I'm some tiny filly," Lilac added with a whining voice that would do any young filly proud, if that filly had a voice like gravel. "I'm not a foal! I have a store, a cutie mark, and can take care of myself!" she began putting everything into her bags.

"No, you can't," her father shook his head. "You don't know what it's like out there."

"And you do?!" Lilac hissed, tossing her bags onto her back and tightening them down. "Father, you haven't been up there either."

"There was a time when I was young too," he replied with a nod. Then pointed his hoof at her. "But if you think for one minute that-" Lilac shook her head and galloped towards the front of the repair shop. "Lilac Oil, get back here!" Her father shouted and stomped a hoof down, cracking the stone a little. When she didn’t turn back, he turned his head to glare at Brass Gears.

The unicorn gulped and quickly put his new things away before following after Lilac. He scrambled out of the shop, turning towards the direction of the purple mare's hoofsteps. Stable 45's lights were dimmed to provide a 'moonlit' state of pale lighting. As such, Gears could just barely make out Lilac's tail before she skidded around a corner.

Her father stepped out of the shop and removed a pocket watch from his stable barding. He glanced at the time of 11:58 p.m. and sighed. "I hope you two know what you're doing."

"Lilac!" Gears shouted. He scrambled after the purple mare as best he could, which was not as fast despite him being slightly taller than her. "Slow down!"

Lilac, however, did not look back. She galloped through the grey stable halls, trying to get out before her father caught her and locked her in her room to 'protect her'. The earth pony did not know that he was not following her.

*** ***

Hoofsteps echoed through the halls, signaling a pony's arrival to the stable door long before she arrived there. The guards sat behind a barricade that faced outwards in case the door to the outside were ever breached. At least that is what they told the stable ponies. Unknown to the residents, and anyone outside of the Overnare or security, the door would not close. Stable 45's door was designed to open after ninety years and the mechanism would weld into the open position, forcing them into the outside whether they wanted out or not.

Instead of a stable door, there was a series of narrow barricades in a zigzag pattern that extended out into the tunnels for some distance. Forcing any would be attackers to navigate the maze while under fire. Should they get close to the old door, they would have found themselves funneled into a single armored door that rose upwards. If the defenders found themselves needing to fall back, they would cut the cables, causing the door to stay in the closed position.

Keys, a pale pink, almost white unicorn in security barding, looked back at the noise. His shotgun lay on the floor next to him, but within easy reach of his telekinetics. A fact he easily demonstrated by slowly levitating the weapon up to eye level and racking the pump back and forth to noisily chamber a shell.

The purple earth pony slid to a stop at the sound, or tried to at least. Her forehooves caught in a bump on the metal floor, tipping her over into a faceplant that hit her in the face like a sledgehammer. Keys did not move save for a slight smirk. "Lilac."

"Owww..." she mumbled into the floor as she began recovering from the shock of the impact. "Can one of you pointy heads invent flooring made from cake or something so it tastes better?"

"Nope," Keys shook his head. He waited for Gears, because he knew the other unicorn would not be far behind. As Gears helped Lilac to her hooves, Keys said, "what are you two doing here at this hour?"

Gears was panting heavily and out of breath. Sweat poured down his face and matted his fur, making him appear as if he had just stepped out of the shower. Lilac shook her head, pushing Gears away. "We're going into the tunnels." she said and her friend nodded in agreement.

"How long?" Keys tilted his head. One of the guards near him glanced at a clipboard and looked at all of the names to see who had come and gone recently.

"Four days," Gears gulped down some air.

Keys glanced at the guard with the clipboard. She nodded slowly. "They haven't gone outside the stable for at least two weeks."

"So we can go then?" Lilac grinned.

"Yeah, fine." Keys stepped aside as he lowered his shotgun and kicked at a nearby lever, causing a rusty screech to precede some gears turning.

Slowly, the armored door rose up with a faint shriek of metal sliding on metal to allow the two travellers to pass. Lilac nudged Gears before bolting into the passageway. The unicorn sighed and quickly navigated the maze behind her.

As they left the maze behind in the dark tunnel, their mood became less enthusiastic and more serious. Lilac stayed right in front of Gears with her ears on a swivel, listening for anything out of the ordinary. All she heard was their hoofsteps, the water dripping down onto some rocks, and their breathing, which had become much slower.

And so they walked along the gloomy and debris filled tunnel for a few hundred meters until they arrived at the first station. The faint green glow of the sign was lost in the flickering lights that illuminated the underground ruins.

Lilac did not know, or care, why they had built Stable 45 next to a station with easy access to the surface. All she cared about was that the bunker had saved her family when the balefire bombs dropped.

As Gears slowly stepped out of the 'maintenance' tunnel, he quickly glanced right and then left. His eyes were constantly looking around while the 9mm smg floated nearby with the safety dropped. The ruins, like so many others, were looted constantly and yet ponies still found items. He found it odd, but did not question it because it kept him and many other ponies in business.

Lilac's ears swiveled towards the crack of a pony stepping on broken glass. She slowly looked over at a grimy advertisement for the Ministry of Morale. The shattered glass lay below the picture of Pinkie Pie, head of the MoM. Her wrinkled face held a smile that Lilac could not help but shudder when she looked at it. Underneath it was the words 'Pinkie Pie is watching you forever', but somepony had written fuck with an arrow between you and forever.

An icy, howling, wind blew in from the stairs leading to the outside, causing a shiver to run the length of Lilac’s spine. As the earth pony turned her head away from the picture, the invisible pony moved, except she made sure to step around the glass this time.

The invisible watcher kept an eye on Brass Gears as he dug through a trashbin near the outside gate, eventually producing a dirty box of snack cakes. "Goddess," the blue alicorn whispered inside her own mind. "We do not understand your infatuation with this one."

"DO NOT QUESTION ME!" the voice reverberated inside the blue's head. "I, The Great and Powerful Goddess, want you to observe him. Test his abilities and see if he is fit for Unity."

"Yes, Goddess," the alicorn nodded. "We will do as commanded, but..." she looked over at Lilac. "His companion has seen Us."

"She is of no concern."

"We have... communicated with her. She thinks highly of Unity, and We believe she could be useful in convincing the other to join if he is hesitant."

There was silence for some time. The blue alicorn observed the two ponies rummage around the wreckage for various items. Even going so far as to find a hat that somepony had missed, but it was tattered and near useless. Finally, the Goddess spoke to the unnamed alicorn. "Is she a unicorn?"

The question threw the alicorn off. She had assumed, like all of the other Unity alicorns, that The Goddess saw all and knew all. But she did not hesitate in her reply. "No Goddess, she is an earth pony.

"Then she is of no concern. Do not talk with her further, or there will be severe repercussions." came the reply like ice that cut into the alicorn’s mind.

She cringed at the threat, but nodded. "I will do as commanded, Great and Powerful Goddess."

Lilac Oil, nor Brass Gears, heard the conversation between the blue and the Goddes due to it happening inside the alicorn's head. The earth pony adjusted the hat on Gears' head and smiled at him. "That looks good riiiiight there."

The unicorn rolled his eyes and tossed the hat to the side. "Lilac, it's trash."

She was about to reply when a fierce wind blew icy air into the tram station, causing Lilac to shiver violently as it cut through her fur. The purple earth pony looked over at the rubble partially blocking the fencing that stood as a door to the outside. "I wonder if we should go home?"

Gears glanced at Lilac then the door. "It's past one in the morning and we already told the guards we were leaving for four days, I'm not going back. That would screw up our chances to leave in the morning."

As Gears had talked, Lilac took her bags off and pulled on her jacket. She tightened her saddlebags down again and nodded. "I was just testing you, but I do wonder what it's like. Princess Luna says that The Goddess is trying to fix whatever is wrong out there."

Gears pulled on his jacket and rolled his eyes. "Lilac, can you leave the crazy at home for this trip? I'd like to go one day without hearing about it."

"I ain't crazy. Y'all just ain't seen her yet."

"Right." Gears adjusted his bags and took a deep breath, nodding at the gate. "Let's do this."