#and a cute forest and a colder area with a lot of stone for mining

[yo9urt]

more minecraft updates...it tests my patience -_-

[thegayfromrulid]

How about a Yujikiri oneshot where they're in the real world, Eugeo misses snow and since they can't just make it snow, Kirito gets some really rare item in Alfheim that makes it snow wherever they are and uses that for a VR date with him.

Hello, anon! This was such a cute prompt! <3 I really enjoyed writing this. I had a lot of fun brainstorming the rare item for this, as well as imagining these two cute boys having fun in the snow! 

           “Does it ever snow in Saitama?”

           The question seemed a bit out of nowhere to me, as I finished loading the dishwasher and hadn’t been talking about climate with Eugeo prior to this moment. I looked up from what I was doing and saw him gazing out of the window, looking around at the world. It was still summer, even after spending an incredibly long time inside of the STL as a member of the Underworld. I wiped off my hands and went to stand over beside him, giving him a grin.

           “Yeah, sometimes,” I said. “Usually in the winter we’ll get some decent flakes. Why?”

           There was a sad look on his face, one that made me start to think. He was eager to see snow again. Eugeo had lived in Rulid, which was at the northernmost tip of Norlangarth. He’d lived at the foot of mountains, which meant that he was used to colder winters. Since he’d left that village, he’d not seen as much snow in the warmer capital city. It had been, in a sense, ages since he’d seen snow.

           Eugeo brushed it off, though, acting as if he wasn’t missing seeing it. I shouldn’t have expected anything less. Eugeo was the sort of person who never talked about the things troubling his heart. I would just have to do something about this. I told him it might not be as long as he thought before he saw snow again, to which he laughed and told me there was no such thing as a cryogenic art in the real world. I just laughed and saw him off, eager to get a plan in motion.

           I did a bit of online searching with the help of Suguha. As it would turn out, there was a very rare item in ALO that had the power to make it snow anywhere in the world. It was a stone, a mate to similar stones with different weather properties: summoning rain, clearing the skies for a sunny day, summoning a tornado or a hurricane or a tsunami. These stones were meant to give certain fairy races advantages and disadvantages in a PvP fight. I figured they would work just as well for a little date-time surprise.

           The entire group agreed to help out with the mission to recover the ‹‹ Snær Stone ››, so-called for the runes that decorated its surface. They spelled out the word “snær,” an Old Norse name for snow, Suguha told me. In order to earn the stone, we had to complete a rather difficult quest in an area of ALO called Niflheim called “The Hunt of Ullr.” In the quest, the patron saint of skiers, Ullr, offers players sets of skis and asks them to hunt down wolf-type monsters to protect the local NPC population. As a reward for the quest, each player would receive money, special snow resistant gear, the skis themselves, and, to the player with the most kills, the ‹‹ Snær Stone ››.

           Alice offered to keep Eugeo busy and offline for the duration of the quest, giving the rest of the group time to head out to the Niflheim area and complete the quest. It proved to be particularly tricky, as expected, as the act of skiing wasn’t as easily picked up as was sword fighting with the assist system. Much like riding horses or driving vehicles, this action in VR required some real-world practice—of which, to my surprise, Klein had the most. We spent a fair amount of time learning how to ski, and once we sort of had that down, the best player wound up being Sinon, whose bow gave her a serious advantage over the rest of us when hunting down the wolves. The gang agreed to let me have the last attack on each monster, though, so that I would end up with the stone.

           The stone felt well-earned by the time Ullr was placing it in my hands. I wanted to fall over from fatigue, but I was reminded that this was only the first step of the plan. I had to exit the dive, meet up with Eugeo, and then convince him to come back to the log cabin with me for a special snowy date. I stayed behind with Asuna, staring at the stone in my palm as I thought.

           “Do you think this will really be enough for him?” I asked her.

           She gave me that knowing best friend smile, and then she reached over to me and closed my fingers around the stone. Our eyes met, and she smiled at me, nodding.

           “He loves you, Kirito,” she said. “Don’t panic. He’s going to be very happy that you put in this much effort for him.”

           I felt my confidence increase just a bit. Asuna always knew what to say.

           “Now, go give your boyfriend a present he won’t forget!” she told me.

           In a flash, she was gone, leaving me alone with my thoughts. She was right. Eugeo knew that there was no magic in Japan. He would never fault me for using ALO as the date location for snow because of that. There was nothing for me to worry about. Nodding to myself, I quickly slipped the stone into my inventory and logged out to go and text Eugeo.

           He agreed to meet up with me at a game shop close to my house. I told him to bring along his Amusphere so that we could get in some gaming time together. He went along with it. I think playing ALO reminded him of how we met. The fantasy world, even though it wasn’t at all the same as the one he’d been raised in, made more sense to him than my home world did. We checked out a few new titles at the store and then headed back to my place. I urged him to dive from my bed next to me.

           “If you insist,” he said. “But there’s more room if one of us takes the couch.”

           I laughed and shook my head.

           “We’ll be diving,” I said. “Do we really need that much extra room?”

           He just smiled at me and shook his head. He knew just as well as I did that it was an excuse to lay beside him. We climbed onto the bed, laying side-by-side, and slipped on our Amuspheres to dive into the log cabin. We shouted the log on command in unison, and seconds later, we were standing in the living area, right where we’d logged out. I smiled across the room at the blue-eyed Undine boy. I hurried over to him and grasped his hand. Eugeo let out a slight yelp and then a laugh as I tugged him along after me into the forest.

           “Where are we going, Kirito?” he asked, smiling over at me.

           I picked a spot in the woods that had a little bit of a clearing, and I stopped to remove the stone from my inventory. I’d read over the item’s instructions for how to use it. I recited a spell that had been given to me in those instructions, making sure to pronounce everything carefully as I spoke. I turned back to Eugeo, who had a quizzical look on his face, and I waited. I slipped the stone into my pocket and reached one hand out to him. He took it, still confused, and he smiled at me.

           “What kind of a spell was that?” he asked.

           I pointed my other hand up. He slipped his fingers into my hand as his eyes followed my gesture. I watched his eyes start to sparkle as he realized what was happening. Gentle snowflakes started to fall around us, landing on the ground, the trees, and our avatars. Luckily for me, this particular spell caused an area effect that would turn this place into a wintry landscape. The ground started to turn white with packed snow, and the trees held just enough to look like an old-fashioned Christmas card. Eugeo started laughing and put out his hand to catch a few of the snowflakes.

           “How did you do that, Kirito?” he asked.

           Pulling the stone out of my pocket, I opened his palm and set it down in his hand.

           “With this, we can see snow anytime we like,” I said.

           Eugeo clutched the stone in his palm and then threw his arms around me, tackling me with a hug. We fell down into the freshly fallen snow, sending up a powdery spray as we landed. The both of us laughed, now covered with icy crystals. Eugeo leaned forward and slipped his lips into mine, stealing a warm kiss amidst the cold now swirling gently around us. I cupped his face in my hands, feeling his cold cheeks start to fill with warmth.

           His eyes opened a little as he pulled away from the kiss. Our noses were barely touching. The snow falling around his face made him look less like a fairy and more like an angel. Some of it stuck to his hair, and the sunlight hit those crystals, making them sparkle. I smiled. He looked so handsome in the snow. It had been so long since I’d seen him smiling the way he’d smiled at me back in the Underworld.

           “Thank you,” he whispered. “I missed this so much.”

           I chuckled.

           “I’m glad you like the snow,” I said.

           Eugeo shook his head.

           “No, not just the snow,” he said. “I missed us just enjoying the simple things in life together.”

           I pulled him in for another kiss.

           “Me, too,” I admitted.

           I rolled us over in the snow and hopped up to my feet.

           “Now,” I said. “Are we going to enjoy this weather, or are we just going to sit and kiss in the snow?”

           Before Eugeo could respond, I was already tossing a bit of snow at him. He laughed like a child and jumped up to start throwing it back at me. We frolicked around in the snow, tossing it at one another, rolling around in it, and building little snowmen, completely lost in a little corner of winter that we’d made for ourselves. When we’d tired ourselves out, we went back into the cabin to log out, and we curled up against one another, gently dozing off as we warmed one another up from the virtual chill.

           A glimpse of Eugeo’s face before I fell asleep told me everything I needed to know. He was smiling brightly. I cuddled up to him, grateful that this VR snow day had brought him such a happy smile.