My entry for the Walking In a Winter Wonderland AlMei contest on DA. Today's the last day to submit and entry XD But I did get it up, so HA!

Al watched, fascinated as the small Xingese girl dropped another collection of five knives in the snow. He had tried to help her place all the markers at the beginning of the affair, but she had to come by and correct his placement so often that she eventually took all her alkehestric markers back from him and was now finishing them all alone.

"Are you sure you don't want help?" he asked again, hurrying after her. She jumped slightly, as if she had totally forgotten he was there. She blushed slightly.

"Oh, no, Mr. Alphonse, I'm perfectly alright. You don't have to worry about me."

"Okay…" He continued to watch in silence. It was rather quite amazing, how she could just drop them into a perfect star. Well, not completely a star. The star would form after she activated it. But she did it with such confidence.

"Did you have to practice that long?" he asked, one again breaking the silence.

"Practice what?"

"Making the knives fall so perfectly like that."

She nodded. "Master Hishu had me practice until I could throw knives in a perfect pentagon until I could do it falling from the roof, blindfolded."

"… falling from the roof blindfolded?"

"If it worked, I would transmute a pillow to fall on. If not…"

"Wow. That's really… harsh."

Mei shrugged. "I learned quickly."

"He sounds like my alchemy teacher. Your alkahestry master. Teacher was pretty rough too. Before she even taught me and Ed anything, she dropped us off on a deserted island with a knife and left us there for a month. We weren't allowed to use alchemy at all."

"That's similar to the training they give to palace guards. They are taught how to detect qi, if they don't already know, and are then taken to the middle of the jungle, blindfolded, and told to make their way back to the palace. If they make it back alive, then they are trained with weapons and taught that their only priority in life is to protect the Emperor."

"Is that true for body guards too?" he asked, thinking of Lan Fan. He wouldn't have trouble believing that she could fight her way through a jungle blindfolded.

"I don't know, I've never had one," she said, shrugging as she dropped another set of five knives perfectly into the snow.

"Why not? Aren't you a Princess?"

"My family was always too poor to afford one. We could barely afford to keep any servants at all. But money always managed to come from somewhere. And most people don't consider my clan very important, so I've had a lot less assassination attempts than most people."

If Al had eyelids, he would have blinked. His jaw always probably would have dropped.

"How many times has someone tried to… you know."

"Kill me?" She paused and thought about it. "Eleven times since I was six I think. Most of my siblings have been attacked more than that."

"That's… horrible."

She shrugged again. "It's part of being an heir to the throne. But it will all be worth it once I get a Philosopher's Stone and become Empress."

Right. He had almost forgotten for a moment that she wanted the Philosopher's Stone as much as Ling did. If she did managed to get one before him and get back before their father died, she could become Empress. It was hard to imagine this little girl becoming the ruler of a powerful nation like that though. But it was hard to imagine Ling becoming Emperor too.

"There."

"Hmm?"

"We're done," Mei said, turning around and placing her hands on her hips. "I only have five markers left, which we're going to need for the control circle, so we're done."

Al turned around to observe their handy work and wished that he could whistle with the armor. There was a circle within three feet of any stretch of land in a good 50 foot radius.

"That's a lot of transmutation circles. Do you always carry this many on your person?"

Mei nodded matter-of-factly. "Now we just have to go and cover them."

"Oh, no need," he said quickly, clapping and touching the gauntlets to the snow.

In less than a second, every single one of them was covered with snow. It looked completely fresh. He nodded in appreciation for his well-done job, before turning around and seeing that the arrays weren't the only thing he had covered in snow.

"Mei!"

She looked entirely shocked. He froze, waiting to see how she'd react.

Then she sneezed.

"Mei…?"

She straightened to her full height (not that tall to be honest), brushed the inch thick layer of snow off her arms and shoulders, before beginning to work on pulling herself out of the drift Al had accidently caught her in.

He moved forward to help her get out… when a well-aimed snow ball knocked his helmet off.

"Hey!" he shouted, before scrambling after it. "That's not fair."

"Neither is using alchemy to bury me in snow!" she shouted back, throwing another one. He couldn't feel whether it hit him or not, but he assumed it did. He finally put his helmet back one just in time for another snow ball to hit him in the face plate.

"Hey!" he shouted again, this time picking up his own snowball and throwing it back at her. It hit her in the shoulder and she shrieked, quickly ducking down to grab another handful of snow.

Hers shattered harmlessly against his chest plate while he threw his. She turned and it her back as she began to scurry away from him. So naturally Al decided to chase her.

An hour or so later, Dr. Marcoh came to see if they were ready for Envy… and was instead witness to Al threatening to drop Mei head first into a large snow drift. She was shrieking and begging him not to, and while Al's armor couldn't actually make any expressions… Marcoh was sure that if it could, the youngest Elric would be grinning.

Happy New Years!