"You make this seal, then this one, and then you say the name and concentrate your chakra! Easy. Come on, try it." Naruto grinned; he always loved to share his technique, and they had nothing better to do so long as Kakashi-sensei wasn't there yet.
"Well, that's good for my dexterity at least." Duo imitated him lazily, an amused smile on his lips.
"You're putting your fingers wrong."
Duo tried again, rolling his eyes.
"... Did I do it right?"
Naruto made a face, and leaned back in the grass, huffing. "Yeah, but you didn't put any chakra in it, so nothing happened."
"Yeah, well, I still don't get how you can control your... charkra-something."
"Cha-kra," Wufei snapped, and looked up from the sword he was sharpening. "Your chi."
"Still not ringing a bell, Fei. Hey, maybe I don't have it; didn't start training in martial arts from birth like you lot seem to."
Wufei growled. "So long as your heart beat, you have it; and you do know how to control it to a small extent."
"... I do?"
"He does?" The pink-haired girl straightened up from her seat, interested, and wilted briefly under Wufei's gaze before smiling valiantly at him. "Usually people have to start training early, or else they can never grasp it right... and if I am right, you -- Duo-san? -- you haven't had any formal training, right?"
"He's a thief. A spy."
"Yeah, and a damn good one, but I don't see what that's got to do with it."
"You never thought weird how rare it is for the enemy to look right at you when you don't want them to? How easily you pass for other people?"
"...huh. That's chi?"
"In its subconsciously manipulated form, yes."
"Neat. Tr--zero three is probably kickass as hell."
Wufei shrugged and turned away to take care of his sword again.
"Bah! I don't believe in chi anyway. No wonder it isn't working."
Wufei's back tensed up. Naruto opened his mouth, Duo waved at him to keep quiet, a devilish gleam in his eyes.
"Chi and chakra are the same thing, and you saw them use their... chakra."
"I saw them use their chakra, yeah," Duo drawled. "But I've never seen proof positive that all that chi business isn't a pile of new-age bullshit. And if they can use it and we can, looks like to me that what we've got ain't no chakra at all."
Wufei sheathed his sword slowly, deliberately, and stared at Duo with narrowed eyes.
"Oh, really."
"Yeah, really." Duo was leaning back on his hands, and seemed to be losing interest. "After all, you say I've got chi, and I can't make that jutsu-thing work at all. Not even a tingle." He shrugged, snorted. "Naruto says it's easy; like, this hand shape, and then this one, and yet nothing's happening."
"You don't channel your chi into it."
"Yeah well you said it's willpower, yeah? I willed it to work and it didn't. So, bullshit. We may have chi, but as it doesn't do jack shit, I'll keep waiting to see to believe, if that's alright with you." Duo yawned, and stretched on his side, his head in his palm. "Yeah, so far, chakra ten, chi zero."
Growling, Wufei shaped a seal, and then a second. And channeled his chi.
There was a puff of smoke, and he widened his stance, suddenly uncomfortably aware of blatant changes in the flow of his chi. He had never altered his internal energies that much; he wondered, a bit late, what that particular ninja art did.
"...well."
Duo seemed to be unable to breathe right.
"Well. I'll be... You're right. And I'm wrong. Naruto?" Duo grinned
wide, and waved the smoke away. "You're right; he does make a surprisingly
hot babe."