The first thing she noticed was her hands.
Too small.
Too soft.
Too… clean.
They rested on white sheets, unmarred by surgery scars or old chakra burns. No tremor. No stiffness. Her left knuckle didn't crack like it should. Her palm, usually marked with calluses, looked untouched.
But... She didn't panic.
Instead, she laid there in the too-silent hospital bed, watching the dust in the sunlight, and began cataloging everything she knew to be wrong.
Her chakra felt sluggish — not weak, just untrained. The weight of the Strength of a Hundred Seal was gone from her forehead. The ache in her spine (from that bastard Madara slamming her into a crater) wasn't there either.
In fact, there was no pain at all.
She flexed her toes. Swung her legs off the bed. The floor was cold.
Her breathing remained even. Measured.
Her voice, when it came, was quieter than she remembered — but sharper. Higher-pitched, untouched by years of alcohol and shouting at Hokage meetings.
"…shit."
She looked for a mirror.
There was one across the room — behind a counter cluttered with clipboards and chakra-sterilized instruments. She stood slowly, expecting vertigo. None came. Her body moved like it had never been broken.
Barefoot, in a pale blue gown, Tsunade Senju padded across the tiled floor like a ghost and stared into the mirror.
A stranger stared back.
Golden-blonde hair tied into lazy twin tails. Young face, unlined by war. No seal on her forehead.
Eyes the color of molten gold. Steady. Calculating. Familiar.
Eighteen years old.
Younger than she was the day Dan died.
Younger than she was when Nawaki…
Her stomach knotted, but she forced it down.
She pressed her palm to the mirror. Skin touched glass. It felt real.
"I'm not dreaming," she murmured. "And I'm not dead."
The door creaked behind her.
She was startled.
A nurse poked her head in — a civilian, unfamiliar. Probably someone from pre-war Konoha records.
"Oh! Lady Tsunade — you're up. Sorry, we didn't expect you to wake until midday."
"…Mm," she grunted. The title Lady Tsunade felt strange. Like hearing your own eulogy at a party.
"You can check yourself out after some chakra monitoring, if you're feeling well," the nurse added. "No complications from your last mission. Just mild chakra exhaustion."
"Right," Tsunade replied. "Mild exhaustion."
She let the nurse bustle in, take her pulse, chatter about the weather. Tsunade listened absently, already filing through everything she wasn't being told.
No mention of Dan. No mention of the Sannin. No clue she'd just died at 50-something in another life.
Good. This wasn't a genjutsu. No one was playing her. She was back.
And if she was back — here, now — then that meant she had time.
Time to save Nawaki.
Time to stop Danzo.
Time to derail Orochimaru before the madness set in.
Time to rewrite everything, before Konoha marched its children into another war.
The nurse finished fussing and left.
Tsunade stood in the mirror a moment longer.
She touched her stomach. No seal. No battle scars.
Just clean skin and burning knowledge.
She smiled.
A bitter, vicious smile.
"Okay, then," she said aloud. "We do it differently this time."
The nurse left. The door clicked shut.
Tsunade waited precisely six seconds, then moved. "Ah. sh*t, I wnna drink.."
She grabbed a loose coat from the wall — a long, gray outer robe meant for jōnin visitors — and threw it over her hospital gown. The fabric was scratchy, but she didn't care. Her bare feet padded across the cool tile.
No chakra flares. No surveillance seals. No ANBU behind the glass. Good.
She slipped into the hallway, navigating the building by muscle memory. The Konoha General Hospital hadn't changed much since this era. No digital tags. No automatic chakra locks. Just physical file drawers and old women with clipboards.
She took a sharp right into the medical archive wing and let herself in.
The records room was dusty, quiet. It smelled like disinfectant and ink. Perfect.
She moved down the corridor to the drawer marked "Senju, T." Her fingers hovered, then pulled it open.
Name: Tsunade Senju
Age: 18
Status: Active Duty / Elite Medic-Nin
Recent Injury: Mild chakra collapse – probable stress / overuse
Mission Roster: Three B-ranks. One A-rank (pending report)
Family: Nawaki Senju (younger brother – enrolled Academy)
Assigned Team: Jiraiya, Orochimaru – under Sarutobi Hiruzen
She exhaled through her nose.
So it was real. At least it feels real.
Her medical records matched the exact point in time she'd hoped it would be. Just before everything went to hell.
Back before Nawaki died. Before Dan(no name character). Before Orochimaru vanished into blood and ruin. Before the war, Before Konoha cracked.
And now?
She had room to move.
She returned the file, relocking the drawer with chakra. Simple. Elegant. No trace.
Downstairs, she passed the main training bay — a wide, open space where medical interns practiced chakra stabilization and field triage. A few familiar faces trained genin on how to apply pressure to arterial wounds. Sloppy, but earnest.
Her steps slowed. A memory tugged at her chest.
He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, halfway through a wrapping demonstration, tongue out, brow furrowed in concentration. His bandages were crooked.
He laughed too loudly when his teammate tripped. Smiled with all his teeth.
Nawaki.This annoying brat, his sister is going crazy and this brat is laughing...
Alive. Whole. Not crushed beneath rubble. Not lying in her arms with blood pouring from his mouth.
Her throat locked. Her vision blurred.
She turned. Walked away. Found a quiet stairwell and sat down three steps in.
For ten long minutes, Tsunade didn't move.
Not because she was shocked.
But because every part of her screamed to run to him, hold him, tell him the truth, warn him.
But she couldn't. Who knows what will happen, the future knowledge is her power.
He might even tell someone. If she trained him too fast, ROOT would notice.
If she cried.. ugh.. not my style at all..
So she sat there, gripping her knees, breathing hard
She'd already confirmed her location. Her timeline. Her body.
Now came the harder part:
.... making things right
When she finally rose to her feet, her heartbeat was steady again.
She had a village to outmaneuver.
And a brother to keep alive — even if it meant breaking his legs..
Tsunade left the hospital through the west exit — no ANBU in sight, no one trailing her. That was a good sign… .
The air outside was warm, Late summer.
The street was full — vendors, children, shinobi. Nothing remarkable. No missing limbs, no funeral parades.
She walked briskly toward the Senju compound, tucked near the north edge of the village, across from where the Uchiha district would one day be isolated. Her sandals tapped against stone, and for a moment, it felt like the weight of the world wasn't digging into her spine..
She casually pressed her hands against her chest. "Smaller, yeah definitely the weights.."
The compound gates were sealed. It was quiet.
She placed her palm on the engraved crest — a spiral maple leaf bordered by four strokes — and pulsed chakra.
Then the gate creaked open.
Inside was everything she remembered: the koi pond Hashirama built in a drunken bet with Tobirama, the wooden walkway where she broke her toe fighting barefoot, the training field Nawaki never got to master.
Empty. But intact.
She walked past the old war masks and dusty scrolls and entered her quarters.
Clean.
She stepped inside. The wood smelled of oil and old sun. No scent of blood or sake or medicated salve. No signs of anyone living here regularly.
She found her old desk tucked under the window. Same drawers. Same scratchy wood grain.
Inside: mission records, old notebooks, a copy of the Shinobi Code of Conduct she once used as a coaster.
Then she saw it — the calendar.
Pinned to the inside cover of a mission ledger, next to a slightly dried inkbrush.
She pulled it free.
Year: 43 After Founding (AF)Month: Early Harvest Moon
Tsunade's fingers curled around the paper.
That was two years before the Second Shinobi War began.
Two years before Nawaki died. Two years before everything crumbled.
She let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.
She'd always assumed if she got the chance to go back — really go back — she'd land during the war. Or right before Naruto's birth. Or just in time to stop Orochimaru's first defection.
But no.
She was back before all of it. Still she not enough to prevent the downfall of Senju.
Which meant she didn't need to race the future.
She could outwalk it.
She sat down, spread the calendar flat, and began mapping every major event from memory, not exact dates, but she remember the tentative timeline:
- Nawaki's mission to the southern border
- Dan's proposal to Hiruzen
- Orochimaru's first human experiment
- Jiraiya's solo travel north
- ROOT's first mobilization
- Kirigakure's descent into the Bloody Mist (yeah, Madara pulling string.. then Obito..)
- The Uzumaki's last sealed vault
- Kaguya
And the one she feared most:
- The moment the shinobi world stopped being a culture of warriors… and became a farm for gods.
Tsunade sat very still.
Then she turned the calendar over, flipped to the back, and slowly drew a spiral with a stroke of ink. At the center, she marked 43 AF.
Then she began drawing outward. Rings. Years.
She sat with it a long time.
Then she stood. Found a fresh sheet. Drew the Senju crest at the top. Hehe.. now I'll f**k her., right where she feels.
That totally didn't sound right.