Author's Notes: Yes, yes, this story has a lot more swearing in it than what I usually do. It's only to keep Lori and Kei in character. (nods to RBO music) Um..okay, what's with Fanfiction's new uploading/editing system? Man, I leave for a few months…Ah! So confused! (swirly eyes) My goodness, I didn't realise that as default, M rated stories doesn't show up in the category. Geez, it used to only be R (which got taken out), then MA15+ (which also got taken out). And to be honest, this fic is definitely not my usual T rating. Damn. And I rolled over my foot with my wheelie chair. Take note, I usually don't update this fast. XD

Disclaimer: Don't own Ragnarok, but I have a 17atk Knife! Oh wait…the poring took it. Oh noes! Ah, wait, you can have a large jellopy! (smiles happily) Although some people don't believe it exists…

Reviewer Responses

dark drow – lol, thanks. I'll try to update when I can, but there are lots of distractions in the world. Hey, look! A butterfly! (chases)

Skye Mihalak – Hehe, thanks! I'm gonna see how many people I can mislead with the prologue. (evil grin)

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Ragnarok Online – Things Unforgotten

Chapter 1 – First Meetings

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An argument,

Two opposing sides.

Only two outcomes.

Something gives,

Or something breaks.

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Lorianne Sharielerin was not happy, meaning woe to anyone within five feet of her. The female knight was notorious for her quick temper and baiting people into fights. It was only logical that the Chivalry would eventually kick her out, no matter how good she was at fighting. Not that Lorianne would admit they kicked her out; she declared that she was leaving the Chivalry because 'it was full of boring sops and pompous old bastards who didn't know freedom if it kicked them in their teeth.'

The short haired, brunette knight spat in disgust as she left the gates of Prontera behind. A poring slowly bounced along behind her, somewhat concerned with her anger. Most people would have made fun of a knight having a poring as a pet, but they had learnt long ago that making fun of Lorianne's poring was the quickest way to earn themselves a black eye and a broken rib. And to rub salt in their wounds, they'd receive a mocking grin from the poring on top of all that.

"Tch!" she scowled, cracking her knuckles. "I don't need them! Those goody-two-shoes can go fuck themselves." Seeing a tree, she punched it with her studded gauntlets as she walked past. The pain in her hand helped to ease the anger that she was feeling, but not much.

Shuffling uncomfortably at the more vehement-than-usual anger, the poring looked up at his master worriedly. Seeing the expression on the blob-like creature's face, the knight felt her rage slowly ebb away. "Sorry, Poing," she apologised, attempting to soften the harshness in her voice. "It's not your fault they can't see beyond their abnormally long noses."

The poring still looked uneasy, but seemed to be satisfied with her words, happily bouncing off to chase the caterpillar-like fabres. Lorianne continued walking, although she kept an eye on her poring, which gleefully attacked the scared creatures as they tried to crawl away. Now that she was no longer part of the Chivalry, Lorianne supposed she now had more time to take these kinds of walks with Poing. Hell, while she was at it, she might as well take an extended walk and go adventuring for a while. That sounded like a good idea. Screw Prontera!

"Come on, Poing!" she called to the poring. "We're leaving this hellhole behind!"

With a curious glance up at his master, the poring reluctantly left the throbbing pupa he was watching and took his usual spot bouncing just behind Lorianne's heels. They spent a good deal of time travelling through the mountains north of Prontera known as Mount Mjolnir, where it was believed that the great hammer of Thor, Mjolnir, was created. However, Lorianne soon got hungry, and even though she was used to disgusting food as all soldiers were, she didn't particularly want to try argiope steak anytime soon. Lucky for Poing, there were plenty of ripe, fallen apples to sate his hunger, but his master wanted something more filling.

Stomach rumbling, she set off for the nearest city, which was…she wasn't really sure what the nearest city was. Frowning, she tried to recall what geography that noisy bard was babbling about before he smashed his guitar on a drunken blacksmith that was trying to grope him several times. Most of what she could recall was an all out brawl in the bar during that incident though. Geffen was…east? Or was it north? West? Unsure of where she was heading, Lorianne chose a direction at random and headed that way, decimating any monster that was stupid enough to cross a hungry knight. She suffered a few minor scratches from those encounters, but they were nothing compared to some of the injuries she had had experienced in the past. Poing often stopped to silently mock the fallen creatures and in the case of the rockers, sometimes paused to loot their violins.

Several hours passed until it was getting close to sun down, yet she still hadn't found any sign of a city. Muttering profanities that would put a pirate to shame, Lorianne threw a rock at a flora in frustration. Opening its mouth wide, the flora promptly ate the stone, chewing noisily on it before it regurgitated the pebble on a fabre. Lorianne flat out refused to eat giant caterpillars, mantises, hornets were too disturbingly human looking, dragons just sounded painful to eat and bigfoots were just big. Their size usually wouldn't deter her from killing them, but cooking them, even in parts, took a long, long time, longer than she would be willing to wait.

Another hour passed. Poing had taken to sleeping contentedly in Lorianne's arms as she carried him through the mountains. The knight herself was starting to wish she was a poring, seeing how happy and satisfied her pet was. Her stomach rumbled hungrily, reminding her she still hadn't eaten since the morning. Just about ready to scream, 'stupid fucking piece of crap mountains!' and go skewer a bigfoot to fry it, Lorianne nearly cheered when she saw lights in the distance. Lights meant humans, which meant FOOD!

As she ran towards the lights, Poing sleepily made a sound of annoyance from the sudden movement, tiredly rousing himself from his place nestled in his master's arms. Seeing this, the knight grinned. "See that, Poing!" she cried, pointing to the lights. "It's another city! With real food!" The poring made a complaining sound, but stayed where he was, unwilling to bounce quickly along the ground in order to keep up with his master if he jumped from her arms.

Drawing nearer to the city, Lorianne realised she was at Al De Baran from the banner hung near the entrance. Great, just fucking great. She was at a city of bloody self-destructive alchemists with a whopping big-ass clock tower as the main feature. Why the hell they needed such a goddamn big clock tower, she would never understand.

Upon arrival at the bridge to the central square of the lake-river city, however, Lorianne was greeted with an unusual sight for a place that was known for being peaceful, aside from the minor explosions from the alchemists. An alchemist wielding a light throwing axe known as a tomahawk, was surrounded by an angry mob of people, the only things keeping them at bay being his three summoned floras. The gigantic, man-eating flowers snapped at the mob, their roots sending cracks in the pavement on the street. As Lorianne drew closer, the angry shouts became more understandable.

"Get out of here! You're not wanted here, you despicable, dropout alchemist!"

"What are you trying to achieve with your stupid experiments, Themofast?"

"Oh, so being able to create marine spheres and floras is fine with the alchemist guild, but trying understand why some pets can speak human tongue is not?" he indignantly snapped back. "And creating standard, pitifully weak explosives is fine, but trying to improve on them is not? I'm goddamn sick and tired of your close-mindedness! Tradition? Fuck tradition if tradition is using old out-of-date medicine books! You lot can stay as potion-brewing merchant bitches, but not me! Hell no! The day I do that is when it starts pissing Baphomets all over Rune-Midgard!"

Lorianne felt the corners of her mouth turn up in a smile as there were more angry shouts at his words. Here was someone that was in the same predicament as her and besides, she liked the way this alchemist spoke already. Only one thing she could do…

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Author's Notes: Ew, flora puke. Damn, and it seems my disappearance from the writing world has made my chapters shorter than usual. This chapter's LESS THAN HALF my usual length! I find it's really difficult to get over 4k words per chapter. (sighs) Oh yeah, and what's this I hear about Yuno being the capital of Schwarzwald Republic? Huh? CoNfuSIoN! Never heard of there being a Republic in RO.

Oh yes, before I forget. If you have an RO character that you would like to see as a cameo in the collaboration, Woosh!, please post your character name (an 'actual' name as well as a 'screen name' is preferred. For example, an 'actual' name could be Tyler Li, and his 'screen name' could be The Reindeer Man. Please don't make the screen name too complex, unpronounceable and/or 'silly').

Okay, so if you wanna see your character in a free for all fight in Woosh!, post your character's name, job, fighting style, weapons used and a bit of their personality. We'll try to get your character in character based on how we imagine your character to act from what you've told us, but please don't flame us if we're miles off the mark. We'll choose which characters to cameo in if we get too many, and at this point in time, we're favouring vitality type character over agility type characters. Also, sorry for people with spellcasters (mages, wizards, sages, high wizards, professors and casting supernovices), we can't cameo those. Their spell spammage will be too much for our poor arena. Sorry. And no, your cameo, no matter how uber s/he is, can't win the fight.

Comments and critique welcome.