A white-haired man in a bandana and a typical Konohagakure forehead protector plate stared at the chaotic battle between a hunter who appeared to be nothing short of being a god. This white-haired puppeteer appeared to be so insane, in fact, that even another hunter teamed up with the genin to take them out. Mizuki could not quite make out what was being said between the two teams, his sense of self-preservation didn't let him move any closer to the battlefield.
A girl with violet hair and a uniform of matching color laid by his side. Mizuki wasn't quite sure what this girl's deal was. She claimed to be a genin from Konohagakure but she was a hunter, then again, Mizuki has noticed multiple genin hunters and being a genin ultimately was just a rank. If a genin did not take part in the Chuunin Exams, they'd likely still reserve the ability to be a hunter. She didn't look like much but she was the only alliance Mizuki could make at this moment. Everybody else was just like that white-haired bastard out there, some divine bastard already busy imagining what they'd do in their home universes with the power they've acquired here.
"We should go down there and help them," Mizuki mumbled to little Sumire.
"Huh? What's this all of a sudden?" the young lady wondered. "I thought you've settled on sitting things out until you're certain you can take someone out. Didn't you say you were planning on being the "bird of prey" in this exam?"
"Yeah but… This guy… I really don't like something about his face!" Mizuki stood up and clenched his fists. "He's just like everybody else, looking down on us, treating us like trash! It's because of people like him that I've teamed up with some meek schoolgirl, no offense…"
Sumire smirked. Something changed in her eyes, just for a blink she was no longer the shy, little mouse that Mizuki had known for hours since he's met the girl but… Something else. The girl of violet hair rolled aside and dropped off of the edge of the rooftop where Mizuki and Sumire were observing the battle from.
"Outta the way!" Meiko yelled out while driving her chakra-coated buckler into Mizuki's face and throwing him off the rooftop as well while four pairs of sandals landed atop of the rooftop once used by the pair. The quartet of Team Hokage observed the battle in front of them for a couple of moments just to realize what was what and then all four flickered away.
The battle between Toneri Ootsutsuki, Team Minato and Tobi was occurring right in front of the Southern Gate which was the location where Team Hokage had planned to leave through. Meiko felt sick of running already, ever since this exam started all that they've done was try to avoid trouble, by now most of the hunters, as well as most of the weaker genin, must have already been filtered out. Those weaklings that did remain were too scared to challenge anyone serious, as emphasized by that hunter ninja on the rooftop she blasted away with one blow while passing him by.
"Multi-Kunai Jutsu!" Minato weaved a couple of hand seals and flung an entire barrage of kunai at Toneri. The godlike hunter ninja offered Minato a wayward stare, one that questioned Minato's intentions to achieve anything noteworthy with such a feeble attack. It was true that even if all the kunai connected where they were meant to – they would have been unlikely to destroy the Puppet Curse Sphere but that was not Minato's intention with this attack.
Minato's body flickered as the speedster ninja blitzed right into the fray of his own weaponry, grabbing one kunai after another out of thin air and slashing with them at the Puppet Sphere. The direct strikes from Minato left cracks that emanated emerald light from within the sphere, even more intense than the chakra of the actual Puppet Curse Sphere but despite the damage the technique had suffered, it continued to glow and absorb Tobi's chakra.
Not only that, now Minato was close enough for Toneri to attack him without breaking the channeling of his Puppet Curse Sphere too.
"Kotaro!" Kushina looked at her teammate as she smacked her palms together and let out another pair of heavy, golden chakra chains.
"Right! Fire Release: Phoenix Flower Jutsu!" Kotaro went through his hand seals and blew out a bunch of flame tongues that ignited Kushina's chains in their rush at the Puppet Curse Sphere. Toneri halted in his immediate instinct to lash out at Minato and leaped up into the air, waving with his sphere-wielding hand and letting the Puppet Curse Sphere fall out from his hands. With a single, direct strike from the chains' edge, Kushina and Kotaro finished off the sphere, busting it into impressive fireworks of salad-green.
"Fire Style: Bomb Blast Dance!" Tobi went through his own set of hand seals and kneaded the chakra within his system into a fiery, rotating stream that spiraled at Toneri in a trajectory that made it tremendously difficult to avoid it in mid-air. It was difficult for the masked man to combat his opponent when his main fighting style was so heavily muffled by Toneri's own majestic abilities but Tobi's move-pool appeared more diverse than just one trick that defined him to most who had met him on the battlefield.
Toneri extended his hand outward, an emerald cloak of chakra coated his extended hand as it expanded in size. The gleaming eyes of the Moon resident widened in surprise when the spiral of flames bypassed his body as if phasing through him without affecting him at all.
"Well, well… Could you predict I would use my Mangekyou Sharingan this way? Evidently not…" Tobi spoke in an excited tone, even though his orange mask made seeing his smirk underneath it impossible.
"You've used the Sharingan on me, making me phase through the jutsu?" Toneri wondered.
"That's right, now that I know that chakra absorption is on the table, I cannot allow myself to attack you head-on like before…" Tobi declared before his Mangekyou Sharingan lit up crimson once more but Toneri's direct stare right at him made Tobi fall to one knee in physical strain.
"I might not have predicted you letting me phase through the jutsu initially, but I can easily read your intent from that point on – you wanted to then teleport the technique right back at me from behind, didn't you?" Toneri cracked a grin while floating in mid-air.
"These Moon ninja and their inhuman abilities are infuriating…" Tobi admitted to himself and Team Minato. With a blue and golden blur, Minato returned back to his team with a kunai held in a position to intercept an enemy attack at any point. "Is there no way of shutting them up?"
"If you are under the illusion that I am running low on chakra, you should reconsider. Even the way I was back in my home universe would not be strained by a battle this short and measly." Toneri smiled at the enemy while extending his hand outward and letting it flare up with the same green chakra coating.
"Localized Reincarnation Explosion!" Toneri muttered while releasing a tiny green sphere from the palm of his hand that then spiraled off right at Kotaro. Team Minato prepared to take evasive action to try and avoid this new attack but a red-haired young woman landed in front of Kotaro with a sword coated with chakra so broadly that the blade began reminding more of a shield as she placed it in front of her in an attempt to block the technique.
Meiko grit her teeth from the first moments that her new and improved chakra coating method met the resistance of Toneri's technique. She began moving to the side inch by inch, the green sphere appeared to be sapping every tiniest bit of chakra in its way and it was pinching Meiko's chakra coating off of her weapon to the point that when Meiko pushed it aside while stepping to the other side herself, the spiraling off sphere took Meiko's chakra cloak with it as it fired off into the simulated moon above the fake Konoha skies and reduced it to raining space glitter with a single, blinding blast.
"You're quite energetic, don't tire yourself out too quick…" Toneri squinted his eyes a tiny bit to mock Meiko's spunk that led her to challenge Toneri's jutsu head-on with an entirely chakra-based jutsu.
"Out of the way!" Naruto's voice roared from up above as the orange ninja stomped right at Toneri's head, only for the white-haired floating celestial to grab Naruto's by his heel and spin the young man around like a living weapon in a defensive method of smacking aside all of the raining Naruto clones that came at him from the skies with a Rasengan in hand. After Toneri was safe from this savage combination attack, the lifeless clone in his clutch dispelled with a puff of smoke and the celestial being dusted his hands with a subtle clap.
"More and more trash gather here…" Toneri lamented. "You genin move in threes, where's your last teammate? What are they plotting, I wonder…"
"Mind Body Disturbance: Harakiri!" Kiyomi's voice cut through Toneri's mutterings only for the floating Ootsutsuki to turn around at her just in time to lean away from the mental bolt that was meant to channel Kiyomi's consciousness into Toneri's body.
"So direct… Disappear now." Toneri smirked while releasing another Localized Reincarnation Explosion right at Kiyomi that would reduce yet another space body to rubble sapping all of Kiyomi's chakra away to feed its destructive potential. However, the sphere appeared to pass through thin air and only barely disrupt Kiyomi's image, fading away into nothingness as it failed to absorb any chakra on its way whatsoever.
"W-What?" Toneri didn't want to admit that he got worked up but his grimace did all the talking for him. The celestial being grabbed his head and screamed out in pain, his majestic fingernails bent and dug into his own scalp and the veins in his eyes popped, drowning his eyes red while his tongue pushed through the chattering teeth as his entire body went to spastic switch between full tension and relaxation all at once with only the searing pain of hot steel peeling the flesh of his face off at any passing second while thousands of diamond drills worked their way through his skull into the core of his brain united both of these sensations and bound them together.
Toneri plummeted from the sky and flopped to the floor. A celestial being brought down to the ground. Shaking and looking at the multiple miniscule puddles of blood dripping from his forehead and other injuries he had accumulated over the duration of taking on both a high-ranking hunter and multiple genin teams all at once, Toneri peeled his face off of the ground and turned his infuriated expression to the assembled alliance of teams in front of him.
"Oh… That blood, that dirt on your face, the rage… That's an expression suitable for a filthy Earth ninja, welcome to our ranks, Moon man." Tobi mocked the Ootsutsuki, remarking on his death-inducing stare and the temporary loss of the Tenseigan that gleamed normally in the eyes of the celestial ninja being.
"You've made two mistakes." Kiyomi extended her hand with two fingers pointing up. "The first one was assuming I would attack directly after already being under my technique and attacking a fake mental image of myself, leaving you wide open for my Art of War. The second one was assuming that there were only three of us."
A dull clap blanked out Toneri's fury for a second while the downed celestial one turned behind him to witness a very punky-looking delinquent having just punched his own palm with a very unnatural looking pair of arms. Judging from the less than elegant twitching in his lower body, Toneri attempted to trip Kawaki over but whatever damage Kiyomi's mental tampering did with his brain still had some lingering effects on Toneri, leaving him effectively wide open to Kawaki's deviant antics.
"Go ahead, you groveling worm, what's the worst you can do? I can sense your chakra level and it's barely larger than that of a mere civilian! You'll blow your arms off trying to punch me!" Toneri taunted the disgruntled delinquent who just spat aside.
"You're right. I'm not like one of you ninja. That being said, my body is a living weapon, I can pretty much do whatever I want with it and that includes making my fists as dense as I want them to be!" Kawaki clenched his fists and got to work. By the time that he was done, Toneri laid in a pool of blood with an entirely swollen face and blacked-out eyes. At least half of his teeth were missing entirely. The punk then picked Toneri's lifeless body up and swung him over his head, releasing it into the air.
"You're outta here!" Kawaki yelled out while focusing hard on the airborne and lifeless enemy while the body-paint and various markings stretched out over his body. Despite Kawaki's bold declaration, Toneri neither flew out of the range of the battlefield nor did he disappear from existence. The lifeless celestial being just slumped down on the ground with sufficient strength for his body to bounce off of the ground almost an entire meter before remaining lying down like a lifeless sack of busted bones that he was.
"That's all?" Tobi wondered.
"I… I tried throwing 'im into a Kama Rift but… I guess I ain't as good with my Kama yet as I've thought. Shit…" Kawaki dragged his arm through his greasy, black hair in frustration while his tats disappeared like they've never covered his body, to begin with.
"Thanks, Naruto-san," Minato smiled and nodded at Naruto. "You've helped us out a lot."
"What about you?" Kotaro turned to Tobi. "Now that Toneri is dealt with, you're still planning on taking us on?"
Naruto turned for Tobi, judging from his disgruntled stare, Kiyomi could only assume that he was quite familiar with this masked man already.
"You're that guy who stopped us from reaching Itachi, kept me away from saving Sasuke, you know!" Naruto declared, pointing an accusatory finger at Tobi.
"Come now, Nine-Tails' Jinchuuriki. Surely you don't have the time to deal with me right now. All sorts of hunters must have been drawn back here by the battle on a godly scale that has taken place here. I don't think a single hunter team has missed the moon being destroyed. While most of those that have gathered around this place at the moment are too weak to do anything about it at the moment and are waiting for reinforcements, some of them far, far away might still turn back, thinking that a battle such as this one would leave a bunch of genin very weakened and ripe for finishing off…" Tobi reasoned with Naruto about why the two of them shouldn't fight.
"I'm gonna flatten you for that!" Naruto yelled out and threw a headbutt that carried all of the emotional weight of being separated from his best friend in the time of need, which resulted in those two staying apart instead of reconnecting packed into it. Despite the awesome wallop that it embodied, Naruto stumbled right through Tobi while the masked man swirled away into a rift created with his Mangekyou Sharingan.
"Finally… I look forward to never being looked at by those disgusting set of eyes again. Also… I am looking forward to draining every tiniest bit of Nine-Tails' chakra out of you, Naruto Uzumaki, whether it be in this universe or any other." Tobi declared from atop of a building he had teleported onto before warping away once more, this time to a much farther away location.
"Forget chasing him, ya know." Kushina placed her hand onto Naruto's shoulder. "The Southern Gate is finally free, let's just bolt away from this village and do what we need to do."
The glare from the woman that would once become his mother soothed the pain that Naruto failed to express with his headbutt, at the very least, she let him swallow it all up and file it away for later. When he could use a little bit of pain to keep him going in a fight where he'd have otherwise long since given up. There were few things like the frustration of continuously being separated from Sasuke when it seemed as if the two would reconnect again and as if this time Naruto would be able to reach him that inspired Naruto to get back up and keep working toward his goals.
"She's right. Let's move." Kiyomi instructed her team and together the Team Hokage and Team Minato took off, flickering away through the gate and scattering into the Fire Country forest massif laying outside the village gate. The temporary scattering of the teams allowed the hunters that lurked around the battlefield by the Southern Gate, looking for their chance to strike, to lose the track of the most useful for them goal as they would have failed to keep up with a bunch of amped-up kids who were way faster than them but also scattered across one of the largest concentrations of forests in the known world.
Forests that they knew very well, as opposed to plenty of foreign hunters who might have just occasionally visited some of its offerings.
A pair of blue sandals tapped at the ground, taking the attention of a pale, tall, dark-haired man with apathetic, dark eyes. Very much similar to an Uchiha, something that captured the attention of Naruto's dark eyes and forced his red irises to focus on him for the first few moments before dismissing him.
"Oh, it's you, Muku…" Dark Naruto sighed in disappointment.
"Do I know you?" Muku asked with a cold and indifferent tone.
Dark Naruto closed up the distance between himself and Muku within a mere blink that even put a wider angle of fearful nature within the normally apathetic stare of the Kusagakure ninja. Muku's eyes squinted just a little bit, in acknowledgment of the pain when Dark Naruto's fist punched clean through him. The aggravation of Muku's condition when Dark Naruto's fist expanded in size to dozen times its previous size and reduced the Kusagakure ninja to a dead and bloody mess made the man's life end in a horrified yell.
"I wish I didn't know you." Dark Naruto smirked while shaking his blood-soaked arm. The eyes of the avatar of Naruto's hatred raced across the battlefield, observing the hunters at the edges who were too frightened to approach him now, even those that had fled for their lives after seeing one of them being crazy enough to murder one of their own. "Caused me a whole bunch of trouble, a while back, didn't you?"
The red irises beaming with hatred focused on the lifeless body of a white-haired individual in royal-looking clothes that were now all soiled with dirt and blood, torn and burnt up and off of the pale skin of the particular individual that did not know meaningful violence before this day. Dark Naruto covered, grabbing his stomach as his entire body twisted and bent with painful cracks of his bones emanating all throughout. The embodiment of hatred yelled out in pain when an ethereal shape resembling a human shape left his body halfway and floated from behind him, like an embodiment of spirit standing behind its master. Truthfully, it was the ethereal one that was the true mastermind of the entire situation.
"Hmph… That's an Ootsutsuki." Isshiki mumbled to himself.
"So what now? You're just gonna jump ships, you know? Leave me to die like that other sack of skin you've worn?" Dark Naruto grunted in pain, every time that this spirit left his body or manifested its seemingly limitless power, his body struggled to contain all of it and threatened to burst. It was like every single cell in his body was being burnt up by unbridled energy bit by bit every second that Isshiki manifested his existence.
"I don't think I will…" Isshiki denied that allegation. "This one might have the Ootsutsuki bloodline but he has already peaked. While his power is notable, the absolute lack of potential just won't do. My true vessel must be talent incarnate, even if its power would be otherwise lacking. That other swordsman rogue was just a temporary body, you, however, you show both a little bit of promise and sufficient hatred to get things done."
"I'm… Almost flattered... You know…" Dark Naruto smirked. "I wouldn't mind if you would go back in and let… Me get things done, you know…"
"Oh? Second-guessing your decision to host me for the power needed to destroy him?" Isshiki wondered. "Our link isn't ideal, you do not possess a Kama nor are you an Ootsutsuki, meaning that you're essentially dying and will die from it but you said you were okay with that."
"I am… This much pain… Dying… That's fine… If I can only destroy him!" Dark Naruto clenched his fists.
"He has my ideal, true vessel by his side, meaning that our interests are aligned now. As gratitude, I might even help you a little bit, if you could force that Naruto to remove his own dark side and then replace it yourself, you will survive. From inside him, you can then once more plan a hostile takeover and eventually become whole of Naruto." Isshiki suggested.
"You came out just to say that?" Dark Naruto looked up into the gloomy night's sky with worn-out pair of eyes. Despite being the most powerful he's ever been, he has never felt this tired and this hungry for death. Despite that, it was that same hunger that gave him the hatred necessary to keep moving and eventually destroy his other half.
"Don't act like that's not what you truly want – to have meaning, to be more than just darkness of someone. To truly be alive, to truly be Naruto." Isshiki smirked. "I came out to get a better look at that runt from the litter, now get back to work and find my vessel before our imperfect link spells doom to both of us."
Isshiki burnt back into Dark Naruto's body, forcing the avatar of hatred to roar out in pain of the entity's re-entry and then flex about to get the feel of his body back after it was taken hostage by pain.
"Shut up, you're not the boss of me, you know…" Dark Naruto spoke to himself, audible only to himself so that the sadness in his tone couldn't spread to any of those weasels stalking for an easy takedown of a genin up there.