Dark twist for the modern verse
In his last year of university Sasuke screws up. His grades are good, he’s on his best way to graduate with honors, almost exactly the same as his brother - except he’s one year older than Itachi. And there’s no government agency trying to offer him a deal.
He’s frustrated, honors, praise from professors, being way younger than the rest of his class, nothing seems to really matter. No one’s surprised, Itachi has already done it, looks like the little brother is close up, it has lost its novelty.
Sasuke is tired of being dismissed, compared, stuffed in a category. As much as he still loves Itachi, he wishes to do something that is not ‘just like your brother’.
The moment comes when he’s interning at a downtown precinct, helping along with a small drug bust case. (No one would involve him in tactical strikes of course, but they welcome his help with research.) At first glance the case is unimportant, the regular trafficking. But he discovers traces, crumbs really that might lead elswhere that garner his attention. It is more of a feeling and everyone else dismisses it, a chuckle, a pat on the back, telling him he’s too eager.
He goes snooping on his own and the crumbs lead him to something that is much, much bigger.
A respected scientist and researcher in contract with several well respected universities. However the man’s morals are not quite what are placated up front. The man has a whole morgue, not just a closet of dead bodies. Surgery procedures, drug development, body enhancements, anything geared to improve medicine, lengthen a human lifespan, enhance strength or health. The man’s working on it, without a single regard to human rights.
And the man knows how to hide his trail. Sasuke can’t find a single piece of solid evidence that would tie all his information together and prove in court. He knows he has no right to ask for any court orders either, he may have the allowance to read case files under supervision to help, but otherwise he’s a plain civilian.
In the end, he pokes his head in too deep. He ends up facing Orochimaru directly and unfortunately for the first time really, someone recognises him for himself - and wants him. He can’t back out anymore, part of him perhaps doesn’t even want to. After being subjected to one of the drug tests against his will, he decides to stay willingly, pretend to work along and to secretly try and build a case that would bust Orochimaru in the end.
The charade keeps up for two years. After his graduation Sasuke takes a gap year to ‘travel’, which he does, on Orochimaru’s orders. The year after, he starts at the police academy, but one day half way into his first year the government agencies have a break through. Itachi. He’d been working at it as well, however he had managed to keep a safe distance and not end up half of a lab rat.
During the bust, Sasuke had managed to wound Orochimaru, it had seemed fatally, but the body was never found.
For the fact that he had stood up in the end and that he was medically proven part of the experiments, he did not receive a jail sentence, but it went down in his record and thus was let go from the academy as well.
The popular fanfic and RP trope, standing there with a university degree that clearly was geared for law enforcement, Sasuke was clueless. Going into social work was out of the question, he knew his personality was unfit and did not deny that either. He also had not a single interest in becoming a PI, nor did he want to dive back into criminal affairs.
However, Orochimaru’s first experiment the one Sasuke was not willingly participating had left him with a small tattoo near the crook of his neck. Marking him for what had been put in his system so everyone would know. He found Suigetsu again, one of the other subjects his age that had managed to slip away and Suigetsu was hiding with Juugo, who was - one couldn’t lie - a rather safe choice, as long as you knew to get the hell away and hide if he had one of his anger flashes. But even if he hadn’t and was his docile, gentle self, Juugo was big enough to scare most people away.
Suigetsu also didn’t mind showing Sasuke around to the big man, since he was one of two people that had proven capable of reeling Juugo’s instable outbursts right back in, making him even safer.
Joking around, eventually led to plans, which lead to fooling around, which then lead to a serious idea. No crooked business, no shitting around with the law. And the small tattoos they all had received to be branded, ended up being the spark for them to open a small tattoo parlour that eventually also got a piercing corner when Karin joined them.
Sasuke had never been an artist before, but he had a calm hand, well developed fine motor control and an eye for details. Tattooing also had a meditative quality to it and so he was slowly settling down with it.
The works on his own body aren’t extensive however and he keeps his face, neck and hands unblemished, still capable of cleaning up and looking perfectly normal when he wears something with long sleeves and a tighter collar.
