Ch. 19 Returning

Awakening from his coma, Chiba awoke the medicinal smell of herbs permeated the room. Temporarily Activating his Haki, Chiba saw the hole in his calf had already become a scar thanks to the healing jutsu.

Standing up, Chiba felt a pang of hunger in his stomach as he wondered how long he'd been asleep. Focusing on his nails and hair with his observation Haki, Chiba guessed he'd been asleep for at least two days! Chiba had to turn off his observation Haki as it was slowing down his recovering from the ration pill side affect.

Chiba slowly got changed as his entire body felt incredibly sore but he couldnt rest. He knew that he would be weakened for multiple day, but he still had to do his daily sword slashed as he already missed two days at the minimum.

Grabbing his cane and wearing his tattered clothes, Chiba started walked out of the tent when he came to a sudden stop as he heard a familiar sounding name.

"I already told you Minato sensei, the eye is working just fine." Chiba heard a depressed sounding child's voice.

Despite it making his recovery time longer, Chiba had to turn his observation Haki back on as he looked at who spoke.

He saw a familiar boy with grey spikey hair except he now had a slash across his eye and now a dark red Sharingan replaced it. There was a medic ninja doing test on his eye as a blonde haired man in a flak jacket stood next to him.

Chiba's plan of preventing his clans genocide revolved around the benevolent Minato, and Chiba knew that now was the perfect opportunity to introduce himself for a future friendship.

Waiting until the medical ninja was done with her test, Chiba walked over using his cane to help him, actually needing it to lean on. Both Minato and Kakashi looked at the new arrival as he stood infront of them.

"Your going back to the village right? Do you mind if I joined you?" Chiba said to Kakashi.

Looking at the familiar blind face, Kakashi realized something.

"You were with the squad that destroyed the Kannabi bridge, how did you do guys do? Minato sensei said that it was already destroyed when he got there?" Kakashi said, not answering his question.

Hearing this, the blonde haired Minato looked at Chiba with interest, also wanting to learn how they did it.

"My chakra ran out mid fight and I couldn't sense anything past a few feet. So can I join you?" Chiba restated, moving past that question.

"Why would I be going back to the village, the Iwagakure village are going to counter attack after the loss of the bridge. Konoha needs all the help it can get." Kakashi said in annoyance, hating the idea of returning to the villaged. He wanted to get back out there an fight, anything to distract himself from the passing of Obito.

Chiba wordlessly lifted his cane up, and pointed it directly at the sharingan in Kakashi's eye.

"If I were you, I'd immediately head back to the village and get that eye sorted out. We Uchiha are very prideful about our eyes, and seeing an outsider walking around with one will infuriate them. An Uchiha might think you betrayed your comrade and gouged his eye out greedily.

"And why is it that you, an blind Uchiha, doesn't think that way" Kakashi wearily said, wondering if Chiba planned on traveling with him in order to take his sharing away and not be blind anymore.

With a slight chuckle, Chiba pulled on the fabric on his face and opened his eyes. Looking directly at Kakashi with his pale cloudy eye, seeming to see through the grey haired boys entire being.

"As a blind man, I can see far more than anything a sharingan can. I could sense your affection for that Uchiha in your squad and the grief that you currently feel. To steal a parting gift is vile, I'm sure my patriarch will allow you to keep it." Chiba put the fabric back over his eyes as their was a moment of silence in the group.

"He's right Kakashi, you'll need permission from the patriach of the Uchiha clan in order to keep that eye. If you don't get his permission, you will no doubt be sneak attacked by an Uchiha and have the eye taken." Minato said while nodding to Chiba, who nodded back.

"So, can I join you?"

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Sitting on top of a wagon, Kakashi was wearily looking at his surroundings as Chiba peacefully laying down next to him. They were in a 30 wagon caravan, each caravan was completely loaded with iron ore from a mine located in the land of stones territory.

The ore was too large and heavy to fit into a storage scroll and they needed strong security to transport this valuable caravan. It had already been two and a half day trip and they were on the final stretch of their journey. They were headed back to Konoha as quick as possible to turn the iron ore into steel weapons.

"Dude calm down, your constant surveillance made sense when we were in enemy territory, but not now. If Enemy ninja could sneak this far into Konoha territory, they wouldn't be attacking this resource caravan, they would instead go after Konoha itself." Chiba said in slight annoyance as Kakashi was constantly pacing around next to him.

"...I can't stop, these eyes are too powerful and can see through my eyelids. They are constantly overloading my mind with information, I need to distract myself before I go insane." Kakashi said, speaking longer than usual do to his overloaded mind.

"Dude, Why don't you just tilt your head band downward to block your eye." Chiba said, remembering Kakashi's classic look.

"....." Wordlessly pulling down his headband, Kakashi realized that it actually worked and stopped his sharingan from overloading his mind.

With his migraine gone, Kakashi lazily sat down on the roof, as far away from Chiba as he could possibly get. The boy was a loner that didn't like socializing, and after the death of his friend, became even more closed off until Might Guy.

There was an akward silence as Kakashi didn't even acknowledge Chiba's advice and they both knew it. Chiba, being mentally far older than Kakashi thanks to his past life and Fujitoras memory felt bad for the saddened kid, and tried making him open up a bit.

"Were you really curious about how we destroyed the bridge? Back then we were surrounded by people so I couldnt talk about it, but if you ask me now, I might be willing to tell you." Pulling out a gourd, Chiba sipped on the water as he enjoyed the nice breeze the wagon had. Water made from chakra seemed to have an almost sweet taste to it.

"....Tell me" Kakashi said as he casually looked over

"Not with that attitude, you have to say the magic word" Chiba said with a smirk.

"...Tell me....please." Kakashi choked out

"You know what, it just slipped my mind. This damn on set dementia of mine" Chiba said teasingly.

"Whatever I didn't particularly care" Kakashi said as he turnedhis back on Chiba and closed his eyes.

"Fine, if your gonna be such a crybaby about it I'll tell you."

"I wasn't being a crybaby!" Kakashi whined out as he turned around.

"Sure, you totally werent acting like a crybaby.... but the truth is, we didn't do anything!" There was a moment of silence as Kakashi looked at Chiba with annoyance.

"C'mon don't look at me like that, it's the truth. The Kannabi bridge was destroyed by a large meteor, I don't know if it was caused by another ninja or if it was a one in a billion chance natural occurrence."

'It doesn't matter if I tell him about the meteor, everyone will know about it. Since it was an actual rock from space and not a jutsu, it's gonna be obvious to anybody with a brain that a meteor hit from the debri.'

"One in a billion chance hmm?" Kakashi said as he squinted at Chiba, thinking that he way hiding the truth.

"We sure got lucky, we had just barely killed a squad of ninja and went back to take care of a other squad to help your mission, only to bare witness to the power of nature..... Anyway, we'll be arriving in Konoha within a few hours, did you want me to wake you to the Uchiha compound or do you want to go alone"

"It's fine, I'll stop by the Hokage first to make a report before heading over alone. No offense, but you'd only make things more difficult for me." Kakashi was right, being with the infamous blind Uchiha while baring a sharingan would be a terrible idea.

"That's fine..." Chiba only said that to be polite as he had other plans

'Its probably time I formally introduce my self to him.'