Anbu (Earth-1529)

The Anbu are covert operatives of highly powerful and skilled shinobi who are dispatched by their village leaders to perform S-rank and A-rank missions, which range from espionage, reconnaissance, and assassination.

There are no true ranks within the Anbu, with team leardership and hierarchy being solely based on personal merit and experience. Team leaders are known as squad leaders, and consist of high-profile Jonin.

Overview
Because of the highly sensitive missions undertaken by the Anbu, an individual's personality determines their eligibility to join the force, making many skilled shinobi whose personalities do not match that of the organization to be rejected desbite their abilities. As early as their bending academies, accomplished children are scouted to join the Anbu in the future.

During recruitment, shinobi are hand-picked by the hidden village's respective Kage for their individual capabilities and special skills, either being their strategic intelligence, a particular strong bending, or both. Age, background, gender, or previous rank bear no significance into the Kage's decision. As per Konohagakure culture and tradition, shinobi cannot join the Anbu until they are at least 13 years old with rare exceptions, such as was the case of Itachi Uchiha, who was conscripted at age 11. Once they join the force, these young shinobi undergo a tiring training process which include the study of the human body, and later start wearing masks to conceal their identities, leading them to take upon code names to identify each other.

Anbu members always carry classified and important missions either inside their own hidden village or in their nation, although there do exist cases where Anbu shinobi were sent for assassination missions in foreign nations. Their assignments consists of several A-rank and even S-rank missions, such as assassination, tracking, infiltration, surveillance, reconnaissance, and espionage. Duo to the sensitive and classified nature of Anbu's assignments, their members are expected to destroy their own bodies if they become too badly injured during a mission so that they cannot be captured by the enemy.