Disclaimer: What is obvious needs not be told. Yet there are customs which one must follow. I do not own these characters. Seek the master, Masashi Kishimoto.
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Author's Note
This will eventually be a poem-fic/song-fic. But this first chapter at least, will be used to set up the situation and the mood.
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There will be a POV from each character before the start of the series of poems.
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I guess I'll start with Neji.
Neji's POV -
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When we are young, our teachers teach us in classrooms.
They teach us principles.
We learn about them, and we practice the basics.
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But in the end there's the real world.
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In the classroom, we learn by ourselves.
Teachers encourage us to compete with other students.
In competition we improve our battle skills.
But in the process we neglect another.
The skill to relate to others.
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There's a reason why high level jounins
are often assigned to teach genin groups.
It is because it is such an immense task.
The young are bold, and the young are foolish.
We assume too much about the world.
We act as if we know it.
We know nothing.
I knew nothing.
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I knew nothing about love.
I knew nothing about emotions.
All I knew was my will to become strong,
for my own personal reasons.
I never saw the people around me,
struggling as hard as I was, or even harder.
I hurt people. I missed opportunities.
If it had not been for the important people in my life now...
Today, I would still be the same person I was then.
The thought scares me.
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Tenten once remarked that with Lee and Gai on our team,
sometimes she feels almost as though
we are part of a circus troop, rather than a ninja team.
I'll admit, Gai and Lee tend to a bit showy and flamboyant in their ways.
But through the years, I've come to acknowledge them as true ninja,
skilled in their method of combat.
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It's true that for Lee, this is the only style he is accomplished in.
However the dedication he applies to it, at certain points
exceed even my own towards the Hyuuga style.
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Some years ago, it would have been impossible for me to admit this.
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But I've changed.
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It took years of pounding at the gates,
but the walls which I had surrounded myself were finally cracked and torn.
Hinata-sama was the unfortunate victim in the raging waters that followed.
Ironically it was Naruto who stopped the flood. He, a shinning light,
who out of all of them was the most similar to Lee.
And he was one of the so-called 'losers'.
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"Prove to me that what you say is true."
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And he did...
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"You're not a loser like me..."
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If not for that eye-opening battle, I doubt there would have been a chance for me
to initiate the dramatic changes within my internal self which were to follow.
After the waters receeded I was left lying on the banks of a new world
which I had never explored before.
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Like a new born baby, I was willing to try out new things.
The opportunity for such just so happened to come in the form
of one of Gai-sensei's most ridiculous ideas yet
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... poetry.
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Continuing
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It all started with Lee.
Well specifically him and his little crush on the female member of team 7.
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A few weeks before, as a team we were forced to attend
one of the local festivals in a nearby village.
This festival was a little bit different from your typical festival.
Besides the usual dancing and music performances,
there was also a tournament held by this village annually,
which attracted many people from all over the country.
The festival held an annual poetry competition,
where all the lords and ladies who came
could compete against each other in front of an audience,
using their literary skill in the art of verse.
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While watching the competition, Lee all the suddenly got inspired by one of the poets
who had written a beautiful love poem dedicated to some unknown lady.
He wished to write a similar poem for Sakura-san.
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"For sure if I profess in such a fashion she will come to acknowledge me and my love!"
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The first person he asked for help was Gai.
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Gai-sensei then decided that we would all write poetry, about one another...
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Author's Note
There... next POV will be Tenten, and then Lee's after that. Then the actual poems will start.