Warnings: spoilers for Chapter 669, profanity, character death
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me
is a miracle.
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am
touch'd from
— Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"
+2
"Hey! Fuck-face!"
Tenten's tone is deceptively light, betraying little awareness of the unburied remains piled by her feet, the fact that Lee's head is over there while his arm is here and God knows where his legs are.
He turns, manic-haughty face sneering, blood in his eyes and on his lips. She hates him, harder and rawer than she's ever hated. Her killing intent bounces off Madara like a ping-pong ball.
That makes his mouth curl and his guard come down by a fraction of an inch:
"Yes, little girl?"
His eyes widen as his feet slip off the ground and up toward nothingness. For a second gravity is suspended as he falls into a vacuum and funnels into the Kohaku no Jouhei.
(It had been easy enough to explode a hole into the battle-scarred ground, move the pot in, and cover it with corpses.)
She smiles, though she can no longer feel her hands or feet. Unconsciousness comes in a flood, and she welcomes it with the tired grace of one who has foreseen the end. There was only ever a less-than-impossible chance that she would have enough chakra to seal the maniac and survive.
Tenten doesn't believe in miracles.
+1
Gai-sensei is nothing but a zig-zagging black blur, dark on dark, the space around him bruised and battered. If Lee didn't know any better, he would think his sensei was warping space and time.
His shadow flutters, like a moth unfurling its wings
(or a moth struggling hopelessly in the last moments before death, its will exceeding its lifespan.)
When that charred figure crumples to the ground, Lee does not go to him, does not check the cinders-and-bones body for a pulse. Opening the Gate of Shock is every bit as painful as he'd expected it to be.
Lee doesn't believe in miracles.
-1
It would take divine intervention to save him, them, a deus ex machina.
Neji leaps. His eyes are open, and he barely flinches when the spikes lacerate skin and muscle and organ. It all happens so quickly, the blood loss, the unrehearsed last words.
(Father, was dying as easy for you?)
He doesn't believe in miracles.
-2
Neji hears (well, lip-reads) people calling them "the miracle team".
Do they mean "it's a miracle they haven't killed their sensei", or "it's a miracle all three are still alive", or "it's a miracle they, Gai included, ever graduated and passed the necessary psych eval"?
Perhaps all three, and more.
By the time he makes jounin, he stops guessing. It's an ironic nickname, considering their work ethic, their collective distrust of luck, and the relative realism of their ambitions.
Team Gai doesn't believe in miracles. And that suits them just fine.
Notes: Is this my prediction for what will happen in the manga? Not at all. But the idea sank its teeth into my leg and would not let go until I wrote it. Feedback is always appreciated.