Tsunade's Scalpel
A workaholic surgeon is reborn into Tsunade Senju, the Slug Princess. The only problem: basic medicine and technology are simply non-existent in this war torn world. But this just means that Tsunade has a lot of work to do, and if she changes the plot along the way? Then she will cut it to pieces carefully, with a scalpel. SI/OC-Tsunade
Chapter 1.
-.-.-
"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. At least, that's what they say. He created the birds of the air and the beasts of the fields and he looked at his creation and he saw that it was good. And then God created man. And it's been downhill ever since."
-.-.-
"So, who is she?" Her attending physician asked as they walked down the hallway of Konoha's hospital. Now this would be a normal scene, for a surgical intern, had Tsunade had not been almost six years old, struggling to keep up with the long legs of her Sensei almost three decades older than her. Tsunade had wrangled her hair back in a single pigtail, that bobbed cutely when she walked. Her blonde bangs that her grandmother cut flopping in her face as she took hasty strides along the hallway.
"She is Satoshi Aika, 29, came into the emergency room yesterday complaining of a cardiac cath demonstrated dissection of the proximal two-thirds of the left anterior descending." Tsunade reported dutifully, "She was admitted for observation last night, she wouldn't tell us the whole story but it's suspected she was hit with some sort of lightning jutsu."
"That is very good preparation, Tsunade-chan" Mitoshi-sensei patted her head walking into the room, "But you're missing one thing."
Tsunade furrowed her brows confused, flipping through her files, "What did I miss sensei?"
Her Sensei pulled back the curtain, revealing an empty hospital bed, "Your patient is not here." She said, tone as dry as the desert.
Tsunade starred are the crumpled sheets with annoyance, she had never had this in the Before. Never had she dealt with so many patients trying to escape their beds like animals trapped in a cage.
"Damn ninja," She muttered under her breath, Mitoshi-sensei just patted her shoulder in exasperated commiseration. "Go find that woman and drag her in for surgery now, her injuries mean she can go into cardiac arrest at anytime."
Ninja! Tsunade thought venomously as she tightened her fists as she turned around and marched out of the room. Oh, how simple her life used to be.
Now how was she supposed to convince a lean mean killing assassin to come in for a check up when Tsunade was the height of her knee?
-.-.-
Tsunade 'woke' up at two. And by two, it meant she suddenly remembered her past life as a 46 year old trauma surgeon who had ironically died of a heart attack. Tsunade woke up to find herself reincarnated into a childhood story she half-remembered. She found herself in the body of a young Tsunade Senju who was copying kanji down on a scroll, her grandmother patiently explaining what each word meant. Little Tsunade couldn't understand everything she was saying, but she could understand the important bits.
Suddenly tears were rolling down Tsunade's face, flashes of -blood and -guts and -screaming and- laughter- and happiness- and pain.
Then the world swirled back and Tsunade passed out in the middle of her Kanji lesson, her panicked and worried Grandmother hovered over her.
-.-.-
"Gooooood morning, Tsu-Tsu-chan!" Said a voice in her ears.
"Tou-san," Tsunade complained, and pulled the pillow on her face trying to smother the life out of herself, "It's too early" She gritted her teeth. She had a long night shift the night before where she had to dig a stupid ninja out of a ton of cement from a training accidents. In the Before world, he could have lost both legs and his left arm, dealt with third degree burns as the alkaline in the cement burned through his skin. Of course, this was also tricky because once they had cracked open the incase cement, the built up toxins had stopped his heart, not to mention the rhadomyolosis. It was lucky that medical ninjutsu was a thing, Tsunade thought, what she would have given to had given to have had chakre in the Before. But there were disadvantages here too.
In this world, germs were a recently discovered thing. Mircoscopes had only been invented and reproduced in the last decade and this period was considered a medical 'booming' period. Medicine here was just coming out of the bushes, her grandfather, for instance, had lived in a period with basic sanitary conditions. As a child he hadn't even known the basics to boil water and prevent dysentery. All the Senju clan had known back then was that mountain water, fresh in spring, fresh in rain and fresh from snow were typically safe. Of course, there were other ways around that, for instance, Suiton jutsu, or even funneling your chakra into water would overwhelm most bacteria in the water, making it safe to drink.
Chakra fascinated Tsunade, this world operated with absolutely no physics. This dimension, this world had no foreseen laws that she had once studied in her past life. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, well, try saying that when summoning a waterfall or growing a forest from your two fists! So, how did Suiton jutsu work? It pulled condensation out of the sky. The more chakra you soaked into the air, the more you were able to weigh it down and condense it into precipitation. Or at least, that's what her great uncle had explained in that serious voice of his. But then what would happen to the local environmental systems? How could you wrap your chakra and fill the air with it?
Tsunade had questioned and prodded these infuriating inconsistencies with the furor of an dedicated academic scholar, much to the secret delight of her great uncle who passed her book after book on chakra theory.
But even super cool ninja powers couldn't beat the shear amount of technology and resources Tsunade had access too in her past life. From working just one year in the Konoha hospital she had lost almost twice the amount of patients she lost in a Before year simply due to inadequate knowledge.
She was going to change that.
"It's never too early!" he said happily.
"Hanaku!" Her mother called from downstairs, "Stop bothering Tsu-chan on her birthday!"
"It's my birthday?" Tsunade blinked confused, her fuzzy blonde hair flipping on her forehead, "Hmm, I'm seven years old now…"
"Tsu-chan, you forgot?" Her father laughed at her, "You've been spending too much time at the hospital!" But then she saw a flicker in his eyes that belied his worry.
"Will you help me with my Taijutsu before I go to the hospital today, Tou-san?" Tsunade asks, sitting up on her purple duvet covers, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
Her father ruffled her hair, "I told Mitoshi-sensei it was you birthday today and she's given you a day off, so no training today. No work."
"Tou-san!" She complained, grumpily staring up at him, "I've got patients-"
"-Which can be handled by Mitoshi-san for a day," Her father interrupted, then his eyes softened. "Take a day off Tsunade-chan," he tone brokered no argument but his brown eyes were warm, and he sat down on her bed.
"It's your birthday," He put his hand down on his shoulders, his pleaded "Slow down, take a day off. You're always working so hard Tsunade, enjoy the time you have now. You're going to be a genin soon you know, and then you won't have time since you'll be on missions all the time"
Tsunade looks down into her lap, it is not normal, she knows, for such a young child to work so hard. But Tsunade had always been like this, going at a hundred miles per hour, never slowing down for nothing. Working late hours, suffering dark circles underneath her eyes and drinking copious amount of coffee was how she lived her previous life and now she lived with two of those in this one. Tsunade knew her new parents were endlessly worried for her, Tsunade had no friends her age. Partly because she found most children to be a little slow, which intellectually, knew it wasn't her fault, but that didn't mean she wanted to spend the majority of her time with them when she could be in the hospital. The only kid she wanted to hang out with was her little brother, Nawaki, who was a newborn baby. But Tsunade knew that her parents were very worried she'd push herself and her 'prodigious' brain into an early grave. Which is why they'd force her to take breaks, and wrestle with her sleeping hours and cancel extra surgeries at the hospital.
But Tsunade had one big character flaw, which her family extorted to the max. She was competitive. At everything. She wanted to be the best at what she did and she was the best at slogging away and working long hours. Whether that meant splitting her time between the Academy (which she zipped through), the hospital, Senju training or her little brother. Tsunade hadn't ever been afraid of a little hard work and that was what got her through medical school in the first place. Tsunade doesn't slow down for anybody, and as far as she was concerned, her second life just gave her an edge to start sooner. Despite being in a war torn world.
But she had been blessed with a second chance to do the one thing that she loved, surgery.
-.-.-
So this is an SI/OC fic of Tsunade Senju! Because she already has a medical background, in the beginning, it will show her handing more and more onto her old life because there is one thing she can do in this one that she did in her last-medicine. It's her passion and it will eventually translate more and more into chakra and shinobi skills but it won't really be at first. It's more civilian before shinobi trauma though you get a hint of it in the beginning. Oh, I'm starting her out at seven in this timeline because I want to keep the plot moving, but as the chapters go on I will have childhood 'flashbacks' of Tsunade at different ages which will develop her character beyond a black&white competitive surgeon. Right now, the implications of was in this world hasn't really hit her because Naruto is a half remembered CHILDHOOD story. Where they show a happy-go-lucky blonde who makes world peace happen. So in Tsunade's mind, conceptually knows that it'll be terrifying and lots of death but her reincarnation memories make her a little too arrogant, as in, everything will go my way, I know what's going to happen and I can stop it. This is also going to develop her character.
Also, seven years old is where I'm having her graduate from the Academy to become a genin. So, that'll be soon, in the next chapter or two.
Hope you liked it, please leave questions or comments below about your thoughts and ideas, I'm always interested in hearing them!
Question: what character would you like to be reincarnated as in the Naruto world and why? What character wouldn't you like to be reincarnated as?
