Restless Retirement

Childhood Dreams

“Where’d she go?”

“She should be here!”

“Search the place. We can’t let her get away.”

“I don’t know who you’re looking for or why, but I’ve been getting complaints. If you have a reservation here, go to your room. If not, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

Tsunade, transforms into her child appearance, flees the scene escaping those trying to collect their winnings. Their fault for trying to ambush her late morning after she had been given ample time to rest.

Some things never change.

“That should do it.” Tsunade transforms back into the form she regularly uses once she’s far enough away.

“Wow!” Noises of amazement can be heard behind her. She glances back over her shoulder to see a group of five kids whose attention is all on her.

“Is that you’re quirk? So cool!”

“Are you a hero?”

“I know you! Me and daddy saw you punch the villain the other day.”

“She’s the one?”

One of the kids with black hair and dark eyes has the audacity to yank her haori. His mouth gapping and his eyes wide with wonder. The sleeve of his arm tugging bunches at his shoulder as gravity pulls it down revealing a bruise. “Are you really a hero?”

“Depends who you ask, kid, but if you’re asking my opinion then no. I’m no hero.” Hanzo called her and her teammates the Legendary Sannin. A term that echoed through the nations and brought her more status. Status that compounded due to her relations with the First and Second Hokage, her grandfather and granduncle. Tsunade can lead. Tsunade can defend. She can break every bone in your body and heal you from the brink of death, but she wouldn’t call herself a hero.

Naruto fits the description much better. If only the idiots could have noticed that sooner.

Not to mention in this place a hero is a profession and she’s currently an aimless wanderer.

“But you stopped the bad guy,” the boy claiming to have seen her punch someone says.

“I punched someone. That’s it.” Tsunade sighs. Some of the kids look upset. It’s not her problem yet, “Look, I’m not a hero but I can at least heal you.” Tsunade catches the arm of the boy removing his fingers from her green haori, not missing the way he flinches upon making contact, and uses her other hand to direct chakra to heal him.

“Huh?” The black hair boy hesitantly pokes his skin where his bruise used to be. “It’s gone.”

“You can change your looks and fix people?”

“Don’t forget strength. The guy went flying.”

The children bombard her with more question and her patience wears thin. Tsunade vanishes before their eyes.

…..

One complication of this world is finding accommodations. It isn’t impossible, but it’s difficult to find an inn that that would take in people without identification, or wanted a credit card on file – whatever that is. Then there’s the problem that she is low on cash at the moment after her repeated losses the few days before, so trying to swindle someone without upfront payment has been problematic.

It seems she is going to have to yield a bit more than she would like in order to be housed and fed. Being Hokage offered no clearer example that there’s always money to be made, and information isn’t too hard to obtain with underground fighting, loose lip drunks, and illegal gambling rings. Not that she would ever out the gambling rings. Something is wrong with this Japan place that most forms of gambling is illegal. How else would she be entertained?