A/N: Things are being changed up, and sonyat and BirdBoss have decided to tag team the story Becoming Lady Luck (originally posted to sonyat's page). We've decided to adjust a bit of the first chapter like changing the perspective from first to third. Hope you support us just as you have the original!

Rated T: In place for future events. The rating will rise to M in future chapters due to language, violence/graphic violence, and sexuality. This is one of the Sannin, you should have a fair idea why.

Genre: Drama, Friendship, Family, Adventure, Angst, with Romance later in the fic.

AU: No Kaguya. Drastic AU will develop.

Becoming Lady Luck

Cosmic Chance

My name is—that name doesn't matter anymore. No one wants to hear about that name. You want to hear about my new name, right? This is the story, the beginning of how I came to be named Senju Tsunade.

運

Dying is awful, I fear death, I don't want to die; those are the kinds of things most people say, or so she's been led to believe. Lying in a hospital bed, unable to move, see, or barely breathe, she was disinclined to agree with them. Unlike most people, she welcomed death. She was ready for it. Being stuck with more tubes and needles than any sci-fi movie she'd ever watched and drowning in her own fluids, she could only hope death would find her soon.

It would be some time longer before it would.

Her parents heavily disagreed with turning off my life-support—she was their precious hard-conceived only child—something that horrified her at the time. She never wanted to end up in a state like this, artificially living through machines. She would never forgive them for keeping her alive in such a manner against her express wishes!

She used to try her hardest to rip the awful things out of her, but her fingers would merely twitch. Her parents took that as a good sign, that she could come out of it, that she would miraculously sit up to live another day. They took the trembling of her eyebrows and the few frustrated tears that fell from her eyes as a sign that she was a fighter, that she wanted to keep going.

How wrong they were.

It was the last thing she wanted. She supposed she's never been a fighter. Maybe that's why she was in that hospital bed in the first place. To her, that's why the storybook heroes existed. Wizards, knights, angels, soldiers, samurai, ninja—and those were her favourite, the ninja.

In her youth—before the sickness had eaten away at her and left her bedridden, gasping for breath—she'd discovered the manga, Naruto. The world of Naruto fascinated her, from the awe-inspiring power of the Bijū to the various ninjas' ability to control and shape the elements at their whim. What she enjoyed most about it was the titular character himself, who overcame everything despite the odds, who had the strength to keep going no matter what happened to him. She wished she could be like that. She wanted that.

She wanted power. She wished she could have something, anything, like that.

Her love of Naruto was something she hid (before having to quit school due to the crippling illness, she'd been the shy, quiet 'nerd'; hiding her interests that came naturally to her) so it was a surprise the day her mother started reading to her the Naruto chapters she'd missed. Apparently her secret was not so well-kept. That, or she went through her computer, something that infuriated her helpless self.

Regardless, she couldn't be angry at her for long—while she was comfortable with the idea of her death, her mother was far from it. She couldn't begrudge her for something as petty as going through her computer. So she listened to her, rapt, as her mother tried her best to read through the Fourth Shinobi World War. She even made a point to give the characters different voices. She had to admit it was a fine effort. She listened to her each week as the chapters came out, the only thing in her dimming existence that gave her some joy and excitement. The five Kage fighting Edo Madara was her mother's best and last performance.

As all things end, so too did she. It came one night, not unexpectedly. Somewhere in her soul she felt it creep under her door and along the floor, slithering up her bed and over her body. Death, here, at last. Thank you, she wanted to say as her consciousness faded, despite the mechanical interference trying to force her to cling to life. It should have been the end, it should have been nothing.

But it wasn't.

She'll give Death that there was a sense of nothingness, but she didn't appear to be quite gone. She was…floating(?) in nothingness. The floating sensation eventually became a tightening one. It tentatively scared her. Why? Because something kept telling her it was alright, it was fine to be just where she was. It was the only thing that saved her from transitioning into full-blown hysterics—not that she was sure she could, given her lack of form (or so she thought). Was she a ghost? She didn't know what was going on, how could she have? She wasn't sure how long she existed like that for. Suddenly, something changed—

It was like someone flicking a light on and off. One second she was there in that dark, constricting place, the next she was blinking into a blurry unrecognizable world—she later learned that had been her brain's self-defence mechanism; who actually wants to remember being born? She couldn't hear the steady and continuous beep beep beep of the machines or smell the tang of hand sanitizer. Where was she? She blinked blearily again, trying to clear her vision. It didn't work.

Arms shifted around her—wait, what, what? How could someone possibly be holding her like this? She's an Amazon of a woman!

"She's not even crying," someone, a man, remarked in a foreign language, rather upbeat with a hint of confusion. Was that Japanese? What the hell?

"Of course not, Kawa!" the woman holding her said. She instantly fell in love with her voice. Tentatively, she tried to reach out to touch her and ask her who she was. Imagine her surprise when it was nothing but odd babble. Vaguely, she heard a few voices coo at her strange noises. Why couldn't she speak properly? "She's my daughter after all~!" the woman declared, soft lips kissing her head.

Why was she so small? What was going on here? She lay there limply as the people in the room chattered in Japanese around her, trying to puzzle out what had happened. What a weird atmosphere she'd entered. They were all so painfully cheerful… Was the afterlife really like this? Her skin felt oddly itchy, like something was simmering beneath it. She squirmed a little in the woman's arms.

"Ehh, don't be like that Takara! She's my daughter, too! Look at her eyes! She has my eyes!" She was lifted from the woman's comforting hold—was Takara the woman's name?—by the man speaking. She felt his warm breath on her face as he carefully hoisted her to eye-level, cradling her head in his giant, calloused hand. She couldn't make out his face with her fuzzy sight, but she could tell he had darker skin and unnaturally bright red hair for how much the blobs of colour stood out. She wasn't sure what his name was yet.

"Not at all, silly husband! Look at how light they are! Her eyes are definitely more like mine! And her hair is blonde like mine!" Takara argued. She could already tell she was the kind of woman who spoke with her hands.

What were they saying? She couldn't understand a word of it.

"You're wrong!" the man holding her argued back with her, "I can see hints of red in it! She's going to have beautiful Uzumaki hair!"

W-what? Did he just say 'Uzumaki'? Like Uzumaki, as in Naruto? It was hard to hear with whatever was wrong with her, but she'd understood that well enough. Why couldn't she see or hear properly? You'd think death would afford her a pass on physical afflictions at this point. Were the people taking care of her fans of Naruto as well?

"Now, now," a second woman she couldn't see said. The authority in her dignified voice was evident. She deftly plucked her body out of the redheaded man's grasp and rocked her gently. She liked her immediately. Maybe she could calm these two crazy people down. "It doesn't matter which one of you she takes after more, Kawarama, Takara. She'll make you proud all the same. As for her lack of crying, be grateful." She had the man's red hair. She sounded kind. The smile in her words could distinctly be heard.

The man whose name she now thought to be Kawarama, laughed, "Sorry, sorry! We're just getting carried away is all, Okaa-sama!"

"Ah yes, please forgive—"

She slowly began to fall asleep even as the commotion around her continued. Was she somehow not dead? Were her memories of dying and the tight space all a dream? Was she on some funky drugs that were causing some kind of mind-body disconnect along with hallucinations? She didn't think that should have been possible, what with how clear her mind was.

She'd nearly fallen asleep when a sudden bang woke her out of her hazy half-slumber, and the excitement of the three giant nurses caring for her increased. It seemed another person had arrived.

"Look, look, Otou-sama! It's your first granddaughter!" Kawarama exclaimed proudly.

She can only describe the noise that followed as some sort of high-pitched "squee-ing" that sounded like it had come from a man. She was promptly snatched from the arms of the lovely woman holding her and cuddled by a new person who showered her with sloppy kisses. She squawked, confused. Why was this guy all up in her space?

"Hashirama!" the calm lady scolded at the sound of a baby's whining.

…Hashi-what?

"Mito, look at our cute Tsunade! Isn't she so small! You named her Tsunade, right?"

Tsunade…? This can't be what she thought it was. No way. She's not a baby! That only happens in fanfiction!

"Tsunade for girl!" Takara confirmed.

She thought the higher powers were listening when she made her wish. Why me? Please god, let this be one huge cosmic joke! There's no such thing as reincarnation! There's no such thing as Naruto—

"She'll grow up to be a strong kunoichi," Kawarama—is this her father?!—said with incredible pride.

The man holding her nuzzled my tiny face and said, "Hello, little Tsunade-hime! I'm your grandfather!"

Uzumaki? Hashirama? Mito? Kunoichi?! Tsunade?!

She stared into the blurry expanse of his face squished against her for a second before bursting into horrified tears and screaming at the top of her lungs.

Judging from his reaction—which seemed similar to hers—she thought she offended him.

"I told you to be grateful," she heard Mito say wryly somewhere in the background as her new parents fretted and Hashirama attempted to get her to stop crying to no avail.

運

It would turn out to be that it wasn't a joke. The universe really had been listening. I really was Tsunade, last Heiress of the Senju, Konoha's Slug Princess, the world's most renowned medic-nin and strongest kunoichi, one of the Legendary Sannin and Fifth Hokage. Well, I wasn't a majority of those yet, only the first, really.

Frankly, I wasn't sure I wanted to be.