15 May 1920

Al was in the middle of practicing remote transmutation when the Empress interrupted his lesson.

He didn't even notice her approach, since he was so focused on creating a box in the area marked by the five knives about ten feet away. He vaguely noticed Rikui stiffening out of the corner of his eye, but other than that didn't waver in his focus. This time, this time for he sure. It had been a failure almost every other time he had tried, but he was sure to get it this time.

Let go of the alchemy. Let the qi guide you, he reminded himself. This isn't a normal transmutation, you have to use the energy around you.

He took another deep breath, and then activated the array.

The circle he had his hands pressed to lit up bright blue, sparking energy everywhere… unfortunately there was no activity whatsoever in the array ten feet away.

He sighed, dropping his head and letting his hair fall in his face. No doubt Rikui would chime in with her encouragement about how he would get it next time just like the other three hundred times.

He appreciated what she was doing for him, he really did. His frustration had nothing to do with her, it had everything to do with him. He had been so excited when he went to Ed and Winry's wedding to tell them about how he could now sense qi. Ed had congratulated him, telling him with his arm around Winry's waist and a grin on his face that it would be no time until he had remote transmutation down.

No such luck.

Even with all the warnings that it would be hard, and continual insistence that it took most people years of study to be able to learn alkahestry, Al was still dissatisfied with the results. True, it had only been two months, and he had been warned plenty of times that it took most people years to learn, but he had learned alchemy when he was four years old. And he figured out how to sense qi, surely that was the hardest part! Ed and Winry were already expecting a baby and he couldn't even make a simple box a few feet away! Why could he not understand this?

He was about to urge Rikui for the chance to go again, when he realized that she wasn't even looking at him.

"Your Majesty, you honor us with your presence." She bowed perfectly at the waist, bringing her hands together and dipping her chin to her chest. Al hastened to his feet to copy the movement. However the Empress just waved her hand quickly and they straightened.

Al was surprised to see that she was only accompanied by one guard (and Xiao Mei of course). Usually she had a whole army of them following her everywhere she went. She was still wearing her Imperial robes, complete with massive crown, though.

"How are your lessons going, Ambassador?"

"They are… proceeding, Your Majesty, thank you for asking."

"You haven't gotten remote transmutation yet?"

"No I have not, Your Majesty."

"But Rikui tells me that you do read qi."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

Her dark eyes looked at him as if she was considering something.

"Rikui."

"Yes, Your Majesty?" It was almost amazing to Al how she could bounce between such a stiff and formal demeanor to being playful so quickly.

"Have you explained Xionxi's Principle to him yet?"

Rikui flushed. "No, Your Majesty."

The Empress nodded. "Would you permit me? You are his teacher after all."

"Of course you may explain, Your Majesty. Your Majesty may do whatever she wishes."

Oddly enough, the Empress paused at her cousin's words. She stared at the ground, before raising her chin and nodding.

"Thank you, Cousin. Ambassador, Xionxi's Principle states that the act of sensing qi is no different than that of using it to transmute. Although I am not proficient in alchemy myself, I am familiar with the way it works. Unless I'm mistaken, you're trying to use qi as some sort of directing force aren't you? You're trying to use the flow of the Dragon's Pulse to carry your transmutation to the distance."

"… Yeah, how did you know?"

She smiled, probably the first time Al had seen her smile since he had first arrived.

"Well, as an alchemist that's about the only way you would know how to do it. But if remote transmutation worked like that, I probably wouldn't have been much help during the fights with Father. I would have been doing alchemy just like everyone else in Amestris only transferring it. That wouldn't have worked against his methods."

He frowned. "But I thought you were supposed to use the qi to direct the transmutation."

"Well you are, but you're not supposed to perform the transmutation and expect the qi to carry it to where you want it to go. It doesn't work like that."

"Then how does it work?"

She came closer to him, bending down so that she was crouched over the dirt. In the space of maybe three seconds she had dropped five knives (Al didn't know where on earth they had come from but there they were) into a perfect pentagonal shape and drawing a likewise perfect circle and pentagram connecting them all.

She barely glanced up before throwing another set of five across the area so that they stuck out of a tree.

"You're not going to tell me that 'now you do it' are you?"

She cast him a single smile before returning to a serious expression.

"You aren't using the qi to carry the transmutation from Point A to Point B, you use the flow of qi to perform the transmutation at Point B. You use the two different areas as anchor points. This array," she tapped the one she was crouched over with a single, ringed finger, "allows you to access the flow of qi that runs right to the other one. When you access the qi that runs through that point, you harness it to change the potential of Point B."

"You lost me at harnessing the potential."

"Every object has the potential to change. It's part of matter, it's a part of energy. Things change. Nothing will stay the same forever."

"Sort of like All is One, One is All. We all die and become a part of something else which will then die and become a part of something else. A rock might become a part of me, and I might become part of an ant, and an ant might become a part of the grass."

"Sort of," she said, nodding her head – no small task with the crown she was wearing. "That tree isn't always going to be a tree of that exact shape or size. It will get bigger, it could decay, it could get cut down. It has the potential to be something else or take a different form. By using the anchor point of the five knives, you have the ability to change the flow of qi around it, thus affecting its potential and changing it. Does that make sense?"

He winced. "I think so, but… I could use an example."

"Alright," she said, leaning backwards a little. He noticed that the skirts of her robe were getting dirty with the dust of the space they were in – about the only place in the palace that Al nor Rikui felt bad about using for alkahestry lessons/practice.

"Do you remember when we first met, when you first saw me use alkahestry."

"Of course." It was hard to forget something like that. She looked around, before lowering her voice, probably so her guard couldn't hear what she was saying. It probably would not do well for Xing to know some of the situations their Empress had gotten herself into.

"I blew a hole in train, releasing the coal dust into the air."

"I remember. But the train doesn't have a sense of qi."

"Wrong, actually. It was steal, and steal is made up of iron and carbon, both key components of the human body. You have no idea how much of it might have once been a part of some living thing. Everything has some sort of qi signature. The mountains, the rock. Even if it's only had contact with life, it has a qi signature. But that steel… forgive me for being metaphysical, but it wanted to be free. It had the potential to change like it did, to bow out. I used the qi to change the shape, just like you would in an alchemic transmutation. Only instead of changing the direct composition, deconstructing and then reconstructing it, I used its qi and the qi around it to manipulate it."

"Okay, I think I've got it," Al said after a moment of silence while he processed what she said. "But… just to make sure, could you give an example? I mean I know you're busy but…"

The Empress blinked, then glanced back at her guard as if only now remembering that he was there. Then she turned a slight pink color and quickly stood up.

"I… I'm sorry, Ambassador, but I shouldn't…"

"But I really think I almost had it there, I just want to see."

The Empress glanced backwards at her guard once again, but he only stared forward, expressionless.

Then she bent down once again and touched her palm to the array.

Immediately both circles, the one on the ground and the tree, lit up brilliant blue. Al jogged over to the tree in time to see a likeness of Xiao Mei mold itself out of the bark. He grinned, before pulling the knives out of the tree and handing them back to her.

"Thank you for the demonstration."

"Of course," she said, smiling once again. "Now you try. You can watch and study as much as you want, but unless you actually try—"

"Your Highness!"

All three of them (Al had almost forgotten Rikui was even still there) turned at the voice. The guard stayed expressionless and facing Mei, though.

"Hai, what is it?"

"Your Majesty, we have been searching for you everywhere! You should not run off so."

"I informed Lien Ti that I was going to check up on the Ambassador's alkahestry lessons." Just like her cousin, Al had to be amazed at her skill to jump from a helpful instructor to formal dignitary once again so quickly.

"With all due respect to the Ambassador, Your Majesty, there are far more pressing matters to be taken care of than watching an Ambassador struggle to learn our art. There is the agreement with Xiongnu, and we have yet to make the quota for our payments to Gondappi. The Feng representative is coming in three days and—"

"I get the picture," the Empress snapped, shutting the man up. Almost immediately though, her shoulders slumped slightly. "I am sorry, Hai. You do your job well, and I should not lash out at you because the news you bring is unpleasant."

"You do not have to apologize to one as lowly as myself, Your Majesty," Hai said, bowing his head to her.

"My position is no excuse for my behavior. Please, inform me as we walk."

The man nodded, then fell into step slightly behind the Empress and they walked away. Al was left standing there, staring after them with his mouth almost hanging open. The guard followed behind them, leaving him and Rikui together again.

"Al? Do you want to try what the Empress suggested?"

"What? Oh. Right. Yes."

Even though he knew he probably shouldn't actually be going to seek an audience with the Empress outside of court, especially not for something as trivial as this… but despite the way she had acted so aloof towards him the past months, he really felt like it was news she'd want to hear.

He had done it. It had taken a couple of tries after she left, but he had done. And then he had done it again.

Both Al and Rikui were thrilled. For different reasons though. While glad was absolutely glad that he had learned how to do exactly what he had come here to learn… he had learned what he came here to learn. What with his experience with medical alchemy from trying to bring his mother back to life and what he had studied during the war in case Mustang's protection didn't prove to be enough, it had literally only taken Al the rest of the day to get a hold on being able to heal the cut that Rikui had given herself to see if he could heal. He was so exhilarated he felt like he was about ready to fly all the way home to Amestris.

Which was what he intended on doing.

Well, not flying. That would be impossible. But certainly going home.

He had learned what he wanted to learn. And while Xing was amazing and it was the experience of a lifetime, and an incredible one at that… he missed home. He was going to be and uncle in seven months, and he wanted to be there to help Ed and Winry out. They would need someone to watch the baby when they got too exhausted. Ed probably wouldn't know what to do with himself after all.

Rikui had looked like he had just slapped her when he told her, and she had gapped for a while before asking if he was sure while he just confirmed it.

"Are you ever going to come back?" she had asked and he had to confess that he didn't quite know. He had once had hoped to travel all of the East and explore and learn about everything out there. But after the war the only people as unpopular east of Xing as the Xingese were Amestrians. So there went that plan. But since he was technically Ambassador, he would probably be showing up again.

Now to tell the Empress. He wanted to thank her for her hospitality, and most of all thank her for explaining everything to him yesterday. There was no way he ever would have thought about it like that without her help. Without her he probably would have struggled with remote transmutation for another nine months.

As he approached her door, however, he was told that she wasn't in her chambers. But court wasn't in session, so she couldn't be in the throne room. He supposed she could be in her own bedroom, but that wasn't like the Empress at all. She usually woke up before the sun. It was almost noon. And she didn't take naps.

He was surprised however, after giving up on the proposition of going to see her in favor of taking a walk in the gardens, to find her among some flowers he honestly did not know the name of. They were pink.

He opened his mouth to greet her, when he realized she was talking to her small panda cat. Well if there was something he had learned in his brief moments in her actual presence it was that while interrupting her was a capital offence, interrupting a conversation she was having with Xiao Mei was almost crime enough to have you sewn into a sack with a rabid dog and thrown in the river.

Not something he enjoyed doing on his days off.

So he stayed silent, disappearing behind a bush of imported roses.

"—and they all want answers but I just don't have them… Xiao Mei I don't know what I'm supposed to do. There's no way to make the quota for Gondappi. We just can't get that much to them that fast, and they're going to be furious once we don't. I knew I should have tried to bargain more to get those prisoners back, but the people were already furious they had been left there so long, I had to get them back. And now we're stuck with this debt, and we never quite paid off the ones from the war.

"Meanwhile, Drachman businessmen are staring us down like the next bear they need to take down to be declared warriors. They're trying to undercut our markets, and right now it's working. There aren't enough jobs to go around. And not enough money either. But I can't let us go bankrupt… But I don't know what to do…"

Al swallowed. He was no supposed to be overhearing this conversation. This was not stuff he was supposed to know.

"And I'm pretty sure the Feng's are out to kill me while they're here at the palace, which means another two weeks of not bathing and wearing that awful perfume I hate to cover up the smell. As if I need one more thing to go wrong and annoy me."

He recognized the slight chitter of Xiao Mei's incomprehensible response. Well, incomprehensible to any normal human. Mei and the panda has a special connection.

"Except I can't, Xiao Mei. I just… can't. And I don't know how I'm supposed to. And of course on top of all of this, I'm supposed to be hosting another 'let's make Xing do whatever we want them to because they're too defenseless and poor party—"

Al stuffed his fingers in his ears and decidedly turned away. This was something for Xiao Mei's ears alone, and he would respect that.

He couldn't keep the words she had already spoken out of his ears though.