Since I'm badly stuck in a writing slump, and have been working on a Golden Thread sequel for years by this point with little progress to show, here's a collection of bits of funny dialogue I've written for it.
"I swear, I've never seen Verkan look so frustrated before," Gregory laughs. His mask is down around his neck so he can eat, and Julian enjoys seeing him laugh and smile without it.
"You'd think he'd be used to it by now," Julian comments mildly.
Gregory snorts. "You would think," he agrees. "For better or worse, Symonds continues to find new and exciting ways to be a nuisance."
Julian hides a grin by taking a bite of his sandwich. "I can't tell if you're resigned or impressed."
"Both, as well as jealous," Gregory admits. "I sometimes wish I had his improvisational talent."
Gregory starts snorting out a laugh. "Have Hikaru toss in a fireball," he giggles, "See what the ensuing chaos does, if they regenerate and come right back, or what."
"That's a great way to lose a forest," Julian laughs.
"Ah," Gregory strokes his short beard, "so then we should do it on Ricarten's side, and clear out the Goblins' Forest while we're at it! Two birds, one stone."
"There's no way this could go wrong," Julian agrees sagely.
"Sorry," he laughs, "sorry, sorry. I haven't cleaned up, yet."
"Cleaned up from what?" Golde demands. "You smell like you've been rolling in fish guts!"
Julian bobs his head from side to side, considering. "There was both rolling and fish guts involved," he allows. "Just not quite in the way you're imagining."
Golde shrieks and scrubs her face where it had been smooshed to his chest moments before. "Julian!" She bolts upstairs, presumably to the washroom, cursing and gagging all the way. Julian just laughs, and laughs.
"What in the world is going on?" His father asks, emerging from the kitchen. He frowns at Julian. "She doesn't usually run upstairs screaming ew! after seeing you."
She's cut off by a sudden commotion from just outside the entryway to the courtyard. A flash, shouted exclamations, and the telltale sound of someone losing their breakfast.
Hikaru sighs. "I really thought we'd get used to using those scrolls by now."
Gregory turns to him when the fighting is over and gives him a once-over with raised brows. "Did you actually just defeat a horde of mushrooms with a stick?"
Julian frowns and looks at the ruins of the axe. "No," he says. "It was an axe up until a minute ago."
"Right," Gregory snorts. "Look at you. You're not even wearing a proper shirt, nevermind your armor. I can't believe you jumped into the fighting like this."
"You can't?" Julian asks, raising a brow in return.
Gregory shakes his head, looking a mix of fond and resigned. "No, I can, I'm just trying to wrap my head around the depths of your stupidity."
(holy shit guys I wrote a Fake AH Crew fic for the first time since 2020)
It was always going to end this way.
The end is the true beginning.
It begins with a card.
 Two truths and a lie. The lie is not the one you expect.
Michael idly flips the card between his fingers. It’s a pretty thing, creamy white with golden script, bright white lace-like designs sprawling across the length of it. Two words on one side: be there. An address, date, and time on the other. What Michael should do is throw the card out and pretend he never saw it, pretend that it got lost in the copious junk mail that plagues his apartment mailbox. He should stay on the far, far side of town on that day and time, avoid sticking his nose into whatever is going on. He should expect that it’s a trap, a setup, a bad fuckin’ idea.
He should do a lot of things. Curiosity and cats, and all that, but here’s the thing; nobody ever remembers the end of that saying. Curiosity killed the cat, yes, but satisfaction brought it back.
Sue him. He’s curious.
And why shouldn’t he be? An inconspicuous little business card lands on his welcome mat. Solicitors leave pamphlets and business cards and shit by his door all the time—this one shouldn’t be special. The golden script, though. That makes him pause. Makes him consider. Makes him weigh his options carefully.
And in the end, there’s really only one thing to do.
See, gold is a recurring theme in Los Santos. It’s nothing out of the ordinary considering the millionaires, billionaires, movie stars, models, gold diggers, yada yada—the city is full of rich folks and folks wanting to be rich. Every third guy on the street has a gold watch. Every other lady has something gold—a ring, a necklace, whatever. Movie stars and gang leaders and girls dressed to the nines—they’re all flaunting golden jewelry, exotic cars, fancy clothes.
So why, then, did the color gold become such a tell in the city’s underground?
Michael can’t pinpoint the moment it started. Spray paint, metal plating, smoke, and ink. Something dripping gold sunk its fingers into the city in a way Michael’s never seen before. And while he hasn’t been in Los Santos overly long, he can tell you it’s not the norm. It wasn’t like this in Liberty City or in Jersey, certainly, and it wasn’t like this when he first arrived in LS. The city was gritty. Grey. The pollution is so thick you can feel it between your teeth, like grit after a fight or soot from an explosion. The cement buildings are grey, grey like the fog over the ocean, like the bleak alleyways and bleaker lives of the average people who live here. The first touch of gold was like a breath of fresh air in comparison.
Something stirs in the city of saints, and Michael wants to be there when it wakes.
 Jack’s cleaning up shop when she sees it. A little white business card, fluttering in the cool breeze provided by one of three fans she’s got spread in her garage. Every time there’s a heat wave, power cuts out in her neighborhood. There’s little to do besides power up the generator, grab a beer, and settle down to work on her cars. Machines are easy. People, less so. It’s for this reason Jack owns a garage—people drive cars, sure, but they don’t pay her to talk. They pay her to fix.
It’s odd, then, when this little white card flutters towards her, skipping along the floor with a bounce in its step that Jack hasn’t seen in years. This city has a way of beating people down. Even the lucky ones like her have fallen on rough times, and the golden script on the card is therefore what catches her attention.
Four words: I have an idea. A location, date, and time on the other side. Jack considers the card carefully before slipping it in the pocket of her shorts.
It’s a bad idea, is what it is. There’s no reason she should go looking for trouble. Times are hard, even for the lucky ones like her. But the gold script gives her pause.
There’s been a shift in the city, these last few years. Jack has lived here long enough to have felt it. It’s no different than a little rolling earthquake; the rolling sensation means it’s far away, but it shifts the ground and everything on top of it. Sometimes things fall, and sometimes the walls or pavement crack, but life goes on around the reminders of that little split-second event.
The evidence remains, however. Something has settled into the city, cracking the pavement and the walls, and slowly the cracks have filled with gold. Kintsugi, it’s called, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. Few people would look at the withered and broken city of saints and deem it worthy of repair, but something has. Gold slithers into the city like snakes, and it leaves its mark on things. An influx of exotic cars. Looser lips at the bar by the racetrack. The wealthy place bets like never before, on cars, on racers, and Jack notices.
If she has a chance to see where all this gold is coming from—why shouldn’t she?
 Jeremy’s lip curls up into a snarl when a waitress brings them a drink with a business card underneath it. She’s already disappeared back into the throng of the club, or they would have called her out on it. Jeremy lifts their beer in one hand and flicks the business card with the other, watching as it twirls away with a flash of gold.
Wait.
Jeremy reaches out with the toe of one boot and slides it back to their chair, picking it up carefully and quickly. The card itself is white with lacy designs spread across it. On one side is a time and location. The other side reads, Nice job out there =) Bored yet?
It draws an honest-to-god snort out of Jeremy. They take a sip from their beer and tuck the card in their pocket.
Not many people know what Jeremy does. Rimmy Tim is a fair bit different from Jeremy, with the wild getup and crazy colors and loud vehicles. Rimmy Tim just finished a job up in Sandy Shores, their fists deployed against a handful of rednecks with guns and drugs. Jeremy, on the other hand, because that’s who they are tonight—Jeremy has a job as a pizza delivery person and two clueless roommates they’re lucky enough to count as friends.
So who in the world figured out that Jeremy is Rimmy Tim, and vice versa?
It should be upsetting. It is, to a degree, but not in the way Jeremy would expect. Whoever sent the business card clearly wants something. The location and time are evidence of that. And Rimmy Tim just had a spectacular time with a drug bust. It’s more than likely that whoever is behind this wants their particular skillset. But why approach Jeremy, when Rimmy Tim is plenty easy to find on the frequent jobs they take? Why go through the effort?
The gold inscription on the card calls to mind a particular golden gun. Rimmy Tim has only seen it a few times, and never the person wielding it. It’s small. Silenced. And the hands holding it never miss a shot. The golden gun means a swift end to whatever opposes it, and not in the way that a bullet means death. No; that golden gun stops gang wars in their tracks, assassinates the most corrupt politicians, brings genuine fear into the eyes of the LSPD.
Jeremy sips their beer and steadies themself. Whoever is behind that golden gun is worth standing beside. Things in Los Santos are about to get interesting.
 Trevor stares slack-jawed at the wallet in his hands. He’s got half a mind to chuck it off the pier and into the waves below, because it’s way too good to be true. Muggings don’t usually score him one thousand dollars. Either his unfortunate victim was loaded, or this is a setup. He shuffles through the bills quickly, and ah-ha! There’s a little white business card nestled between them.
Want more? It says in smooth golden script. The other side simply lists an address along with a date and time.
Trevor definitely should throw the wallet off the pier. He does, upon further consideration, but only after tucking the bills and card into his pocket. He may be an idiot, but he isn’t stupid enough to pass up what appear to be ten real hundred-dollar bills. After a quick scan of his surroundings, Trevor steps back into the crowds and blends right in. His victim is a quarter mile up the beach, and the LSPD have already given up their search for the mugger. Unfortunate, really.
Could his so-called victim have been the person behind the gold and white card? He wasn’t anything special looking. Messy brown hair so light it bordered on dark blonde, expensive sunglasses, nice clothes. One of Los Santos’ elite, or more likely the kid of one of Los Santos’ elite. Some rich shmuck with more money than sense who poked his nose where it didn’t belong. At least, that’s what Trevor understood from looking at the guy, and his intuition is rarely wrong. See, Trevor’s good at figuring people out. He’s good at finding what makes them tick, at learning how they move and act, and he’s even better at using that knowledge against them. Muggings are easy, then; give him a target, and he can have them all figured out after a few hours of observation. This guy was no different.
So why, then, is Trevor so unnerved by the presence of a little white business card?
The golden script gets his brain going. He pulls out the card again and turns it over and over in his hands, studying it. It’s high quality. The golden text is actually engraved into the creamy white paper, and a textured finish has been added overtop the card in a pattern akin to lace. Someone spent a pretty penny to make this card.
Someone with more money than sense.
Trevor considers this. Considers the fact that this job was a setup, and not an ordinary mugging. His judgement of character is rarely wrong—but perhaps he saw what was meant to be seen, and not what was truly there.
He smiles and whistles as he walks back to his apartment. It’s not the end of the world; he’ll just have to get a second look. And he has a convenient little card that gives him such an opportunity.
 Matt is going to scream.
Something’s wrong with his tech. And that’s decidedly not normal. He’s built eighty percent of this stuff himself. He knows his computers and his network better than the back of his hand. Nothing should ever go wrong with it to the point he can’t fix it.
Matt curses under his breath and locks his door. His roommates are home and he’d really rather not have them barge into his, uhm, gaming setup while shit’s going haywire. His lights turn off suddenly, plunging the room into darkness. Matt flicks the switch on and off a few times—no power. And it’s odd, too, because he can hear Jeremy and Trevor playing a video game in the living room. The apartment itself still has power.
It’s just Matt’s setup that doesn’t.
The thought sends an icy chill down his spine. He’s compromised. Someone found his location and managed to out-hack the hacker. Names and faces flit through his mind along with hastily cobbled-together escape plans. Who could have figured him out? Honestly, the weakest links in the chain are his roommates, but he’s been so careful and neither Jeremy nor Trevor have seemed off lately. And they’re perfectly fine in the next room, arguing loudly over Halo.
So who…?
Without warning, the printer comes to life with a godawful clattering sound. Matt shrieks and whirls around to face the offending machine. Fuck, he needs a new printer. If that thing made his whole goddamn side of the apartment short out…
But no, it appears someone is fucking with him after all. The printer happily slops ink on the fake ID he’d been in the middle of designing, spitting the card out with a horrid rattling scream. Matt picks the card up with shaky fingers and flinches when the lights flick on again, allowing him to read what’s been printed.
Lovely little place, it reads in golden ink. The other side lists a day and location.
The computer flickers back to life along with the rest of Matt’s tech. All of his screens should be displaying CCTV footage, but each individual camera’s footage has been replaced with a stylized sunglasses emoji, gold lines stark against a black backdrop.
Matt sits down at his desk and smiles sharply at the screens. Game on, motherfucker.
 Jack scouts the area from her Entity. It’s a nondescript little building up the Great Ocean Highway, well outside of town. She pulls into the nearby gas station at sunset, buys a soda and some snacks, and settles in for a stakeout. She doesn’t plan to go in, but she plans to see who does. She’s got a gun in each of her thigh holsters, a full tank of gas, and a pair of sharp eyes that miss nothing.
The sun sinks below the waves and casts a lovely pink hue across the sky. The light fades slowly to purple, then grey, then the inky blue of night. Stars wink into existence. The time stamped on the white business card in golden script fast approaches, and one man approaches the building across the highway on foot.
 Michael eyes the run-down building by the side of the highway as he approaches. It’s old and worn and grey, and from the looks of it, nobody’s been living or working there for a long while. The windows that aren’t boarded up have been shattered. Headlights from the highway illuminate a sea of glass on the concrete foundation. The back corner of the building is nearty tucked into the hillside with a high concrete wall with thick barbed wire warding off any attempts at break-ins. He can’t see inside, but Michael would bet money that there’s no easy way into that back corner from the inside, either.
And Michael has never been the lockpick kind of guy.
He hefts his rocket launcher with a grin, aims, and fires.
 Matt’s in.
Despite being abandoned for twelve years and eight months, someone has kept a CCTV camera running in a little decrepit building on the coast. The building itself used to belong to some loan servicing company that went out of business. Everything useful seems to have been stolen from the building, according to LSPD reports responding to break-ins. Except—Matt found plans, blueprints for a room in the back of the building. It has no entryway.
Seems like someone had something to hide.
Matt watches the camera like a hawk for days leading up to the date printed on the card. Nothing changes until five minutes prior to the printed time, when an explosion rocks the building and debris tumbles down the hallway. Through the opening provided, a solitary figure slips inside.
 Trevor slinks through the shadows and into the previously sealed room. Someone had blown it open from the far side, causing the rest of the wall to cave in. It allows Trevor to get inside easily. The explosion was a surprise, yes, but Trevor knew there was a possibility of others being here, of this being another part in the setup he’s allowed himself to walk into. The thousand bucks he got the other day will keep him and his roommates fed for several months, easy, but if there’s more…
Well. Trevor knows people. And he knows how to keep them away from his score. Whoever fired the rocket will wait for a response before entering. The woman staking out the place at the gas station has a loud car that he’ll hear long before it approaches his position. And the buff guy with the gun and parachute backpack crouched high on the hillside above will have to get past both of them in order to get down here. Unless—unless they’re teamed up. Shit.
A thump on the roof has Trevor regretting every decision that led him here. He pulls out his pistol and backs himself into a corner, surveying the room around him. Nothing stands out, no briefcase, no vault, no treasure. Nothing to hide behind. He grits his teeth and flicks off the safety.
 Jeremy’s pretty sure they’ve got about thirty seconds before the guy with the rocket launcher reaches the building. So, they do the most stupid thing and jump in ahead of him, hoping to secure whatever’s in the sealed room and make a stand inside. Maybe not the brightest idea when they’re up against a rocket launcher, but they’re banking on the hope that rocket-launcher-guy wants this score as badly as they do. Jeremy dives into the room and eats a bullet with their vest.
“Oh, ass!” Jeremy shrieks. They scramble further into the room, away from rocket-launcher-guy, only to roll out of the way of a second shot. Fuck, oh fuck, the gunman is inside the room!
An engine roars. Heavy footfalls in the rubble outside draw closer, closer, and Jeremy swallows thickly. Rocket-launcher-guy comes into view with his own gun in hand, and while it briefly points at Jeremy, it quickly trains on the gunman further in the room.
Fuck. Jeremy whips out their own pistol and points it at the gunman, wincing at the realization that a CCTV camera is pointed directly at the commotion. Not only that, but there are more footsteps making their way through the building.
Oh, they are so fucked.
 Jack’s glad she brought multiple guns. She trains one on the tall and thin gunman in the corner of the room, and one on the garishly colored guy crouched in the rubble to her right. The man who’d blown the building open snarls at her, and aww, isn’t that cute?
“What the fuck is going on here?” Jack demands. “What’s the big idea?”
The gunman in the corner shrinks in on himself. Poor guy has three guns trained on him at the moment. Jack doesn’t envy him.
“Fuck!” the guy blurts. “I came for the score! Jesus Christ, you guys can have it!”
The gunman to Jack’s right freezes. “I’m sorry, Trevor?!”
Trevor, if that’s his name, points his gun at the walking fashion disaster. “Jeremy?” he demands.
As if by some unspoken agreement, both of them move. Trevor points his gun at Jack; Jeremy points their gun at rocket-launcher-guy.
“Dude,” rocket-launcher-guy says. “Which of you told me to be here? This is confusing as fuck.”
Nobody answers.
Rocket-launcher-guy does a double take. “Wait, seriously? Then who the fuck was it?”
“Wasn’t me,” Jeremy says. “But I bet you it’s whoever is watching through the CCTV camera.”
Jack looks over her shoulder and, sure enough, there’s a camera pointed right at them. Shit.
“Nope,” a distorted male voice says through whatever shitty intercom system was left in the building. “I also would like to know what the hell is going on.”
Jack lowers her guns. “Did none of you send the business card?”
Rocket-launcher-guy lowers his own gun and fishes a white card out of his jacket pocket. “Not me,” he says.
Jeremy and Trevor lower their guns and pull out their own white cards.
“I got one, too,” the guy on the intercom says. “Someone used my printer to print it out.”
Jack holsters her guns and frowns. “What was the score, anyways?”
Trevor shrugs. “I dunno,” he admits. “I mugged a guy with a grand in his wallet, plus the card. I figured there’d be money in this place.”
Jack fishes out her own card and shows it to them. “That’s not what mine said.”
Rocket-launcher-guy crosses his arms. “So there’s nothing here? Well, that fuckin’ blows.”
“Aww, Michael,” a new voice coos. Jack whirls around and has both guns up and aimed at the newcomer before he can blink. “I wouldn’t say there’s nothing.”
Jack hears the sounds of guns being raised behind her, but the newcomer seems completely unintimidated. He leans back against the wall of the hallway, arms crossed loosely over his chest, smirk on his face. He’s got messy brown hair, a blue dress shirt, jeans, and sneakers. He’d look completely uninteresting if not for the golden sunglasses, the golden gun holstered at his hip, the golden watch on one wrist.
“You’re the guy I mugged,” Trevor says. “Who the hell are you? And what do you want?”
The golden boy grins. “I had this idea,” he says. “There’s this lovely little place that’s never successfully been broken into. I’ve robbed every other bank in the city. I’m bored. I want more. And I need a crew if I’m going to pull this off.” His grin turns sharp, menacing. “Will you be there?”
 Los Santos has a way of beating even the most stubborn and resilient of its citizens down. It’s easy to get lost in the grit and grey of the city, what with the pollution and fog and bleak concrete everywhere you look. But something, someone, looked at the city and saw an opportunity. A fresh start.
The end is the true beginning. And it was always going to end this way.
 The true beginning, then, was not with the card.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 6/?
Fandom: Priston Tale
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Characters: Original Characters, seriously it's all ocs, there's a smattering of npcs from the game but they are side characters
Additional Tags: Violence, Blood, character injury, mature language, Fire, Angst, This one's heavier than what I usually write, Character Death, Please read the notes before reading
Summary:
Pillai is the most serene place in the world. Julian never wants to leave. An invasion of monsters threatens that serenity, though, and when the city's ruling council becomes gridlocked while the guards die night after night, Julian makes plans.
They're terrible plans, really, and it's a wonder he gets anyone to agree to them. Without the backing of the council, Julian assembles a group of young warriors to deal with the monster horde. And of course, because things are never easy, the horde becomes the least of their worries.
Hi, all! It’s been a while. I can’t say I’ll ever go back to writing Fake AH content, as the whole RH thing left a really bad taste in my mouth. After deleting everything I was proud of here and unlisting everything on ao3, I just felt exhausted and defeated. One man ruined all of the things I’d created. I didn’t want to write ever again if my content could be ruined by someone else like that.Â
A friend of mine suggested I write about my OCs back in January. It took me a while to get on board but I did, and now I’m 57k words into a story about my first OCs, characters I made when I was 5 years old. Given that these characters are nearly 20 years in the making, I have had a lot of time to work and rework their story and I’m excited to share the finished version.Â
If OC content from a universe you’ve probably never heard of is not your cup of tea, that’s a-okay. Thanks for the ride--I enjoyed sharing my Fake AH content while it lasted, and this community is filled with some of the kindest people I’ve ever met. Thank you for reading my writing and supporting me.Â
After removing every good thing I've created in the last two years, I'm upset. I'm angry, I'm heartbroken, I'm defeated. I just had to hide the evidence of every good thing I've ever written because one man couldn't keep it in his pants.
I need a break. Possibly a permanent one. Maybe I'll come back, maybe I'll make an entire new account and leave this shitstorm behind, maybe I'll leave forever. Thank you for reading my writing and supporting me, it meant the world to me.
