Damn it!
I should have thought of it!
I really should have thought of it!
The wind howled past his ears. With a "pfft," Chiba, chewing a mouthful of specially made Ration Balls, plunged headfirst into another, denser forest. Once he crossed this forest, he would be within Konoha's borders. Then, in about five more minutes, he would be able to enter the village.
At this moment, scenes of his battle with Uchiha Nobuhiko—the man he had believed to be "Obito"—kept replaying in his mind.
That mask—I should have noticed it long ago!
The mask was the most obvious thing I had overlooked!
As scene after scene flashed through his mind, Chiba clenched his teeth even tighter. Although the memories returned by the Water Clone showed that it had already moved past regret and turned that regret into resolve, there had been a powerful enemy before it then. Now that he had escaped that enemy, the remorse surged up uncontrollably.
As that remorse rose, the images in Chiba's mind froze frame by frame. The thing he had failed to realize, the detail that had seemed to slip past him, was now glaringly obvious.
It was not something that could be disguised, like "never using Space-Time techniques." Nor was it something that could be explained away, like Sparrow Flash. It was the mask, plainly sitting right in front of him! If he had paid closer attention back then, noticed it more carefully, and thought more about certain details from the original work, things would not have ended up like this! Uchiha Nobuhiko wore an orange spiral-patterned mask, but the mask Obito wore in the original work had patterns more akin to an Anbu mask. Though it was also a one-eyed mask, both its color and style were different!
The orange spiral-patterned