Beginning Notes: In case it's not obvious, any and all future tense changes will be on purpose.
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In Propria Persona---
Tattoo ceremonies were once held in the basement chambers, between scroll-lined walls and the confidential bookkeeping. Inductees would be instructed to arrive donned in loose apparel; barley tea was served warm in small ceramic cups. Witnesses would arrange themselves into half-moons, arching their eyes as the privilege of ANBU and Konoha joined together at a senbon's piercing tip.
It never lasted more than ten seconds. A twinkle of pain shot through muscle fibers and charka veins. Blood streams and biochemical clots against caustics. But the resounding clapping afterward would feed the new badge for hours, tingling, pulsing. Orchestrations of sharp adrenal delight.
The entire process was a tradition to be indulged seminally by Shodaime, who was rumored to have even performed the rites of initiation himself in order to ensure the knowledge of who comprised his force. Knowledge in those days had the predisposition to translate into power, after all.
At least, that was what Itachi would have liked to believe.
By the time he had enlisted, paperwork had grown to become a sufficient substitute for corporeal attendance. No one of significance had been present when the heated senbon seared into his shoulder, whittling his skin and coiling the brand of Leaf in its stead. The incumbent Hokage and village council had been dissuaded from handling such trivialities now that cross-country wars loomed by the hour. There were allocation of resources to worry about, the appeasement of clan families, jounin training camps.
Missing-nin.
In the decade following the defeat of Kyuubi, nominal peace pacts were established in lieu of the expansion of the east and west countries. Politics had mounted the language of power, and nothing spoke louder than the money a country grossed from its mission work. It was money that represented the number of bodies able to carry out missions ranked B or above, and it was the number of advertised and accomplished high-ranking missions that was Fire Country's primary leverage over all her neighbors. Recruiting ANBU en masse yielded a greater edge. Whether or not shinobi as inexperienced as chuunin actually did qualify was the least of the daimyos' concerns. A six year old was a statistic to be weighted equally with those ten years his senior, provided that he could properly wield a kunai or spew chakra-flames.
Itachi would have liked to believe that passage into ANBU symbolized entrance into some elite coterie. As if the spiraled leaf etched permanently into his flesh was supposed to hail the height of heights, its elliptic roundness tempting comparisons to his own superior Sharingan eyes. Burning red when hot, stone-black when cold. Village standards were now toted on his shoulder as on his hitai-ate; Uchiha ambitions were sewn onto his civilian garments, daily reminders of to whom he owed his existence. He would have liked to believe he wasn't just one of many, would have liked to boast in the growth that beckoned to him now that he was in the force. Bloodline legacy. Genius. Prodigy. He had even expected to find his potential between mark and mask limitless and hungry, running ever deep beneath the underneath.
Which was why it had come to him as no surprise when he discovered that it did.
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