Part 1 – "Hands Too Small"
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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."