The ANBU initiation chamber existed in a space that felt removed from the rest of Konoha — deep beneath the Hokage Tower, where stone walls absorbed sound and secrets with equal efficiency. Thirteen-year-old Keisuke stood in a line with five other recruits, all facing forward as the Hokage himself presided over the ceremony.
Hiruzen Sarutobi looked older up close, the lines around his eyes deeper than they appeared from a distance. But his gaze was sharp as he studied each recruit, as if reading their souls through their skin.
"ANBU," the Hokage said, his voice echoing in the chamber, "is not an honor. It is a burden. You will do what others cannot. See what others should not. Carry what others would break beneath." He paused, letting the words settle like sediment. "From this moment forward, you are shadows. Your names are secondary. Your faces are forgotten. Only the mission matters. Only the village survives."
One by one, they were called forward to receive their masks.
When Keisuke's name was spoken — his real name, perhaps for the last time in this context — he stepped up to the table where dozens of porcelain masks lay arranged like sleeping faces. His hand moved without conscious thought, drawn to a hawk design with red accents that swept back from the eyes like flames. The moment his fingers touched it, something clicked into place.
Hawk, he thought. Wings to fly above. Eyes to see clearly. Talons to strike precisely.
Beside him, Itachi received his mask — a weasel, sleek and understated, with subtle purple markings. When their eyes met through the eyeholes, something passed between them. Recognition. Understanding. The acknowledgment that they'd crossed a threshold that couldn't be uncrossed.
"Welcome to ANBU," the Hokage said, and it sounded more like condolence than congratulation.
Mission Log: Target — Takeshi Nomura, Missing-ninClassification: B-rank AssassinationTeam: Hawk, Weasel, Wolf (Shisui)
The safe house was in a village three days from Konoha, tucked between mountains that made surveillance easy and escape difficult. Intel suggested Nomura — a former Chunin who'd defected six months prior with classified information — would be there.
Keisuke, wearing his Hawk mask, perched in a tree with his Sharingan active, tracking heat signatures through the building's walls. Two guards outside. Three inside. And in the back room, their target.
Just a man, Keisuke told himself. A traitor who endangered the village. This is justice.
The rationalization felt hollow even as he thought it.
Through hand signals, Itachi coordinated their approach. Shisui would handle the guards — his speed made him ideal for simultaneous neutralization. Keisuke would secure the perimeter. Itachi would take the target.
It went smoothly. Too smoothly. The guards dropped before they could raise alarm. Keisuke's kunai found the throat of a lookout who'd been smoking in the shadows. And through the window, he watched Itachi's blade find Nomura's heart with surgical precision.
The man's last words were cut short. His body slumped. The mission was complete.
Twenty-three seconds from breach to extraction.
On the journey back to Konoha, none of them spoke. Shisui's usual humor was absent. Itachi moved like an automaton, mechanically efficient. Keisuke found himself staring at his hands, seeing blood that wasn't there but feeling its weight regardless.
This is what ANBU means, he realized. This is what shadows do.
Mission Log: Target — Mercenary Band "Red Moon"Classification: A-rank Elimination
They were barely older than Sasuke. Sixteen, maybe seventeen, with faces that still carried the softness of youth beneath the hard edges that violence had carved. The mercenary band had been terrorizing Fire Country's border settlements, and the elimination order had come down with cold finality.
Keisuke's Sharingan tracked their movements as the team closed in. The mercenaries were skilled but undisciplined, their formation sloppy, their perimeter poorly maintained. Easy targets.
Too easy, some part of him thought. They're just kids playing at war.
But ANBU didn't make distinctions between kids and killers. Only between mission success and mission failure.
The fight was brutal and one-sided. Keisuke's blade found flesh three times — clean kills, efficient, exactly as trained. He watched a boy not much older than himself realize he was dying, watched the light fade from eyes that might have been brown or gray in better lighting.
"Please," the boy gasped. "I was just—"
Keisuke didn't let him finish. Mercy wasn't leaving them alive to beg. Mercy was making it quick.
When the last body fell, the forest was quiet except for their breathing. Keisuke's hands were steady as he cleaned his blade. His heartbeat was normal. His Sharingan catalogued every detail with clinical precision.
And somewhere beneath the mask, beneath the efficiency, beneath the perfect execution of duty, something in him cracked.
Three days after the mercenary mission, Keisuke found Itachi in Training Ground Three at midnight, moving through kata with mechanical repetition. His hands were bleeding — knuckles split, palms raw from striking the wooden posts without wraps or mercy.
"Itachi," Keisuke called softly, his own Hawk mask hanging from his belt.
Itachi didn't stop. His fist drove into the post again, and again, each impact accompanied by a sound that was half exhale, half sob.
Keisuke moved closer, catching Itachi's wrist before the next strike could land. "Stop. You're hurt."
"I can still feel them." Itachi's voice was hollow, spoken to the post rather than to Keisuke. "Their fear. The moment they knew they were going to die. I can see it every time I close my eyes." His Sharingan was active, tomoe spinning slowly. "The curse records everything. Makes me watch it over and over."
"Then don't close your eyes," Keisuke said, the words inadequate but all he had.
"I have to sleep eventually." Itachi's laugh was broken. "And when I do, I see them. Every target. Every mission. Every choice that was called duty but felt like murder."
They stood in silence, Keisuke still holding Itachi's bleeding hand, both of them breathing the cool night air that tasted of grass and training sweat and something darker that might have been shame.
"Is this who we are now?" Itachi asked finally. "Is this what we become?"
Keisuke had no answer. Because he'd been asking himself the same question, and the silence that followed was its own terrible response.
The training ground where they'd first made their pact felt different now — not holy exactly, but significant. A place where innocence hadn't quite died but had transformed into something harder, more complicated.
Shisui sat with his back against their usual tree, his Crow mask set aside, his expression more serious than Keisuke had ever seen it. When Keisuke and Itachi arrived, he gestured for them to sit.
"You're both struggling," Shisui said without preamble. "I can see it. The weight. The way you move like you're carrying corpses on your shoulders." He leaned forward, elbows on knees. "ANBU breaks people. That's just truth. But it doesn't have to break you completely. You just have to remember the difference between the mask and the man."
"How?" Keisuke asked, genuine in his desperation. "How do you separate what you do from who you are?"
"You don't." Shisui's answer was surprising. "Not completely. What you do shapes who you are. But who you are shapes why you do it. The missions are necessary evils. The killing serves a purpose. We eliminate threats so that children can sleep safely. We operate in darkness so others can live in light." He paused. "The moment you start enjoying it, or stop feeling the weight — that's when you lose yourself. The guilt means you're still human."
Itachi absorbed this, his expression thoughtful. "The guilt is proof we haven't become monsters."
"Exactly." Shisui stood, stretching. "Now, I want to show you both something. Something I've never shown anyone outside ANBU command. A technique that might offer... alternatives to some of what we do."
He activated his Sharingan, and Keisuke watched with fascination as the tomoe shifted, merging into a new pattern. A four-pointed pinwheel design that seemed to spin even while stationary. The Mangekyo Sharingan.
So that's what it looks like, Keisuke thought, equal parts awed and disturbed.
"Kotoamatsukami," Shisui said softly, as if the name itself carried weight. "The ultimate genjutsu. It doesn't just alter perception — it alters will. Changes what someone believes, what they want, who they are."
He demonstrated on a bird that had been roosting nearby, catching it in his Mangekyo's gaze. The bird went still, then began moving in patterns that were clearly unnatural — landing on Shisui's outstretched hand, preening despite its obvious wild nature.
"I made it believe I'm its flock," Shisui explained. "Changed its fundamental understanding of reality. And it will never know the difference. To it, this is truth."
The bird flew away after a moment, released from the technique, and Keisuke felt cold despite the warm night.
"Why show us this?" he asked carefully.
"Because I think..." Shisui chose his words with visible care. "I think there might be a way to stop conflicts before they begin. To change hearts instead of stopping them. If I can make an enemy believe in peace, isn't that better than killing them? If I can alter someone's intentions before they commit atrocities, haven't I saved lives?"
Itachi's eyes gleamed with something that looked like hope. "You could prevent wars. Stop attacks before they happen. Create peace through understanding, even if that understanding is... manufactured."
"Exactly." Shisui smiled, but it carried an edge of something dark. "It's the ultimate tool for peace. The power to rewrite hatred into love."
But Keisuke felt his stomach turn. "It's also the ultimate violation. You're not changing their mind — you're destroying their will. Making them puppets who think they're free."
Both Itachi and Shisui turned to look at him, surprised.
"Even for peace?" Itachi asked. "Even if it prevents bloodshed?"
"Even then." Keisuke's voice was firm despite his uncertainty. "Because a peace built on controlled minds isn't peace. It's just slavery wearing a gentle mask. The moment we start deciding people's thoughts for them, we become worse than the enemies we fight."
Silence fell between them, heavy with philosophical weight.
"It's a tool," Shisui said eventually. "Like any weapon. It's the intent that matters."
"Intent shaped by a power that removes another's ability to have intent," Keisuke countered. "That's not power for peace. That's power for control."
Itachi looked between them, caught in the middle. "If it prevents a war—"
"At what cost?" Keisuke interrupted. "Our humanity? The principle that people have a right to their own minds? Where does it end, Itachi? If you'll control one person for peace, why not ten? Why not a hundred? Why not reshape the entire village to believe what we think they should believe?"
The question hung there, unanswered. Because the answer was terrifying in its implications.
They didn't resolve the debate that night. They simply let it rest, a seed planted that would grow in darkness, waiting for the moment when philosophy became practice and choice became action.
Mission Log: Surveillance — Uchiha CompoundClassification: S-rank Intelligence GatheringTeam: Hawk, Weasel
Keisuke read the mission brief three times, certain he'd misunderstood. But the words didn't change. Monitor clan meetings. Report on conversations. Identify individuals discussing rebellion or coup.
Spy on his own family.
He looked up to find Itachi reading his own copy, the paper trembling almost imperceptibly in his hands.
Their ANBU captain — a man whose face they'd never seen, whose name they didn't know — stood before them with arms crossed. "You have a problem with your orders?"
"These are our people," Keisuke said carefully. "Our clan."
"Your loyalty is to Konoha first," the captain replied, his voice flat. "Or isn't it?"
The question was a trap and a test simultaneously. Answer wrong, and they'd be removed from ANBU. Possibly investigated. Certainly marked as unreliable. But answer right, and they'd be confirming that clan meant less than village, that family could be sacrificed for abstract duty.
"Our loyalty," Itachi said slowly, "is complex. We are Uchiha and we are Konoha shinobi. Those should not be opposing identities."
"But they are." The captain's tone allowed no argument. "The Uchiha plot rebellion. The village requires information to prevent bloodshed. You are positioned to provide that information. This is not a request."
After the briefing, Keisuke and Itachi walked through Konoha in heavy silence, still wearing their ANBU gear, masks hanging from their belts like the faces of people they used to be.
"We're not building trust," Keisuke said finally. "We're tools. Weapons pointed at our own people."
"I know." Itachi's voice was barely above a whisper. "But what choice do we have? If we refuse, we confirm their suspicions. If we comply..." He didn't finish.
If we comply, we betray everyone who shares our blood.
They ended up in Itachi's room in the Uchiha compound, sitting on the floor with their backs against the wall, separated by inches that felt like miles. The mission brief lay between them — accusation and impossible choice rendered in neat script.
"Where does it end?" Keisuke asked, echoing his earlier question about Shisui's power. "Today they ask us to spy. Tomorrow? Do we arrest our cousins? Execute our elders? At what point does loyalty to the village become betrayal of everything that makes us human?"
"At what point does loyalty to the clan become betrayal of thousands of innocent villagers?" Itachi countered, his voice strained. "If the Uchiha coup succeeds, civil war erupts. Other villages invade. Thousands die. How many lives is clan loyalty worth?"
"And if we help them destroy the Uchiha? How many innocent clan members die for the crimes of planning? Children. Elders. People who just want recognition, not revolution." Keisuke's hands clenched. "There has to be another way."
"Name it." Itachi's challenge was desperate, not aggressive. "Name a path where everyone lives. Where the Uchiha get respect and the village gets security and no one has to die. Because I've calculated every angle, and I can't find it."
Keisuke opened his mouth, then closed it. Because he couldn't name it either. The math was brutal: clan or village, family or duty, loyalty or betrayal. There was no equation that balanced both sides.
The door creaked open, and Sasuke toddle in, perhaps four years old now, with chubby cheeks and eyes that still held pure, uncomplicated joy. He'd been playing outside, evident from the dirt on his clothes and the leaf stuck in his hair.
"Nii-san!" Sasuke beamed, rushing toward Itachi with arms outstretched. "Play with me? Please?"
Itachi's expression transformed — the weight lifting just enough to show the brother beneath the shinobi, the human beneath the mask. He reached out, and for a moment, Keisuke thought he'd gather Sasuke into his arms and say yes, say he'd play, say anything to keep that innocent joy intact.
Instead, Itachi's hand moved to Sasuke's forehead, two fingers extending to tap gently just above his brother's eyes.
"Forgive me, Sasuke," Itachi said, the words carrying more weight than a child could understand. "Next time."
Sasuke's face fell, disappointment clear, but he nodded. "Promise?"
"Promise," Itachi lied, and something in his voice broke.
Sasuke left, shutting the door carefully behind him, and the silence that remained was suffocating.
"He doesn't know," Keisuke said quietly. "Doesn't know about the meetings, or the plans, or the knives being sharpened on both sides. He just wants to play with his brother."
"I know." Itachi's fingers remained extended, still touching the empty air where his brother's forehead had been. "And I'd do anything to keep it that way. To let him grow up innocent. Safe. To give him a future where clan and village aren't enemies, where being Uchiha doesn't mean being suspected."
"Then we find another way," Keisuke insisted. "We're pack, remember? We don't abandon each other. We don't choose between impossible options. We find a third path."
"And if there isn't one?"
The question hung between them, heavy as gravity, inevitable as dawn.
Keisuke looked at his friend — his brother in all but blood — and saw the fractures forming. Saw Itachi calculating, always calculating, weighing lives on scales that couldn't balance. Saw the moment approaching when calculation would demand choice, and choice would demand sacrifice.
"Then we make one," Keisuke said, but even he heard the hollowness in the words.
Because they both knew. In the space between clan and village, family and duty, love and loyalty, there existed no third path. Only the terrible mathematics of survival, where someone always had to lose.
Outside, the sun set over the Uchiha compound, casting long shadows that looked like bars on a cage. And in Itachi's room, two ANBU operatives sat in silence, masks set aside, faces exposed, both knowing they were standing at a crossroads where every direction led toward betrayal.
The mission brief lay between them, unburned and damning.
The choice loomed ahead, inescapable.
And in another room, Sasuke played alone, waiting for a brother who would never come home the same.
The shadows lengthened.
And beneath them, innocence died by degrees, one impossible choice at a time.