Gambler's Fallacy
by satheri & MoonlightPale
I
Senju Tsunade died, stripped down to the bone. She died the same as everyone else she had ever loved: for Konoha, with no mightier goal than the protection of her home and its people. She had bled, and fought, and pieced her flesh together, until all her chakra ran dry, and then she had tipped back slowly, wide eyes glazing over.
With her last breath, she'd put all her faith in Naruto.
Then—suddenly—the battlefield faded, and she was left standing before a slot machine.
Tsunade blinked, eyebrows raised. The slots in front of her had a painted number seven, an orange and a bell. Her face pinched into a reflexive scowl. Down on her luck, as usual.
Wait—hold up—stop the presses, she thought, drawing herself up into a defensive stance; What in the world? Eyes narrowing, she threw a suspicious glance about the room.
The first person she saw was Shizune, standing sideways with Tonton cradled in her arms, looking… oddly young, and vaguely worried as she always did when Tsunade gambled.
She scowled, surveying the rest of her surroundings. A dingy casino, full of drunken men and scantily clad women. She wondered how much money she had lost already… did it matter?
She wasn't sure whether this was some sort of bizarre hallucination conjured up by her chakra-exhausted, dying brain, or an elaborate genjutsu cast by the enemy. Her nose wrinkled. Was this the Infinite Tsukuyomi?
She felt the cold weight of the necklace against her chest, her scowl deepening. No, this was not it. The Tsukuyomi was supposed to be composed entirely of blissful, superficially perfect happiness, and Tsunade didn't feel particularly happy at the moment. Frankly, she felt annoyed and disoriented and increasingly ready to punch something.
(She knew what her Infinite Tsukuyomi would be. Dan. Nawaki. They were nowhere to be seen).
Besides, she'd have flawless luck, if this were the Tsukuyomi. She had not hit the jackpot yet, though she kept mechanically shoving coins into the machine, out of pure habit, as she thought it over.
If she was going to hallucinate, why hadn't she dreamed of Konoha? Of her childhood? Of her team when it was still whole? Of her fiancée? Of her brother? Of her reign as Hokage?
No, she could tell, by her outdated clothes, Shizune's concerned frown and the sheer dinginess of the place, she was reliving the absolute lowest point of her life. Her wandering years. Trying to outrun her ghosts.
She hated it. She'd lifted herself out of that place for a reason.
Tsunade ran out of coins, and realized she still hadn't figured out anything. Definitely ready to punch something, now.
"Shizune," she told her annoyingly youthful, possibly imaginary assistant, "I need sake. Strong sake. Fast."
Shizune looked at her with growing alarm and promptly absconded to fetch her the requested drink.
Tsunade cursed under her breath, mood darkening more and more by the moment. If this isn't the Infinite Tsukuyomi, she asked herself, then what the hell is this? She bit at her nail, pensive. It might be a random genjutsu, cast by Madara.
But even that answer seemed to unsettle her. The genjutsu felt… rather realistic and too perfect.
But who am I kidding? If anyone has a perfect genjutsu, it's goddamn Madara Uchiha. It might as well be less than a second in the real world, while days and days pass over here.
She sighed. Grasping the bottle of sake that Shizune had placed before her (and ignoring the shot glass next to it), she guzzled down all the alcohol in one swig.
"More," she ordered, thrusting the empty bottle toward Shizune's general direction.
She let out an open-mouthed, incredulous noise; before accepting the bottle and walking away to find another, still baffled.
Tsunade turned back to the cheap slot-machine, blonde eyebrows furrowed in bemusement. If anything, she needed to find the date, time and place she was currently in and at. Hopefully it was around the same time that Jiraiya would come, a blond, loud-mouthed Uzumaki trailing behind him.
Naruto, she thought, glancing up at the ceiling. The thought of the child, in the age of his tweens, full of promises and jokes, still a snot-nosed genin.
Though, she realized, he never did graduate from genin did he?
More than Naruto and Jiraiya, she wanted to meet her faithful disciple—Sakura. Warm thoughts filled her head—of their training, sharing rum and coke (her rum, Sakura's coke) as they watched the sunset from the Hokage office, offering her a pair of gloves to protect her knuckles from bruising…
She got up when Shizune returned with a bottle of sake, mind set.
I need to get out of this shithole. Fast.
Author's Notes: Hey, so this is my collab with the wonderful MoonlightPale, featuring a very determined (and somewhat cranky) timetraveler Tsunade who is not going to mess around when it comes to protecting her village. At all.