A fungal crawl of white began moving up Tobi's body like branching out veins that all connected into singular tissue and moved on to cover the entire body of the masked ninja. Once the fungal mass ran out of the body to wrap up in its soft, fleshy armor, it began spreading up like a venus flytrap. The trap then slammed shut, leaving a few spaces for Tobi's Sharingan to gleam through.

"What an interesting technique… What is this creature you've coated yourself with?" Toneri wondered, so far, the appearance of the White Zetsu armor and its merger with Tobi's body was the only thing that the inhabitant of the Moon found to be of any interest.

"What did you expect me to do after counteracting my space-time ninjutsu?" Tobi replied. "I guess that makes two of us…" he turned to Minato.

"I don't need space-time ninjutsu to be the fastest ninja of my generation, just try and keep up." Minato turned back to Tobi before giving Kushina and Kotaro a warm look. The three nodded in unison and Minato took off in a flicker.

Two arms locked around Minato's hand with his kunai just inches away from stabbing into Toneri's unnatural, star-like eyes. A pair of puppets dressed in black and covering the entirety of their bodies, just like Toneri first appeared like halted him mid-way and threw a synchronized palm strike with both of their free hands. Instead of hitting the boy's ribcage, the puppets hit thin air when Tobi's space-time technique transported Minato from harm's way.

"You two were just going to stand there and watch your leader get killed? Shame… You lucked out the enemy didn't read me trying to transport Minato away that time and try countering…" Tobi teased his temporary allies.

"Fire Style: Phoenix Flower Jutsu!" Kotaro chanted out, unleashing a hail of fiery flares at the enemy, rushing at him like falling petals of a crushed flower. One of Toneri's puppets shielded the puppeteer by stepping in front of him with a wide, almost suicidal guard which was just the radical measure needed to block the oncoming Fire Release technique.

"What a troublesome guy, ya know." Kushina bit her lip. "I've never seen a puppeteer that doesn't even move his hands to control his puppets."

"That is curious, yes, however, just about everything about this enemy is unorthodox. That is why the circumstances forced me to team up with you lot in the first place…" Tobi observed.

"It's your cue, weirdo!" Kushina looked to Tobi who just shrugged.

The space directly above Toneri swirled, leaving a rift in thin air through which Minato plummeted with a kunai in his right hand, determined to continue the assault he initiated earlier. This time, Kushina smacked her palms together and sent her ethereal chakra chains bursting from the ground and rushing at the enemy as well.

"Such elementary tactics…" Toneri was ready to yawn as he avoided the rush of the golden-gleaming chains with mere leans and subtle steps while his puppets fended the assaults off for him. Minato slashed at Toneri, his slashing hand stopped in mid-air when a puppet caught it in mid-air again but this time Minato had a response of his own.

The future Fourth Hokage pushed his sandal into the puppet's face, pushing his body off of it and the puppet did not oppose that action, it lacked the physical strength to compete with the empowered genin and it must have seen absolutely no use in opposing Minato's run part of "hit-and-run". When Minato was high enough, he flung the kunai he just meant to put in between Toneri's eyes at the center between the puppets.

"Throwing knives? Really?" Toneri gave Minato a cheeky look when one of his puppets moved in to cover for him but the knife never even reached the point where it required to be blocked for Kushina's chain caught the kunai knife by its ring and coiled to where Minato could grab it and get out of the close distance, where the enemy could have counterattacked.

It was just a temporary retreat, however, Minato swung his new, golden chain kunai and attached it to the roof of the southern gate, swinging around and under the gate onto the other side and then covering the entire distance with Body Flicker. Just a blink later, Minato emerged from the other side and dispatched of the pair of Toneri's puppets with a single swipe of his fused weapon. His combination technique with Kushina even forced Toneri to vault over the chain swipe.

"You're not out of the woods yet, creep!" Kotaro declared and let his hands perform the same combination of hand seals. "Fire Style: Phoenix Flower Jutsu!"

In a splendid feat of teamwork, the golden chain with Minato's kunai attached to the tip set ablaze once it caught one of Kotaro's Phoenix Flower flares and with this new and improved combination, Minato came at Toneri using the highly versatile moveset of a kunai attached to a blazing golden chain construct made of the one-of-a-kind Kushina's chakra.

"How's that for ya, mask-guy!?" Kushina gave Tobi a scolding glare for mocking the team previously and considering Minato the only worthy combatant out of the three while Kushina was just a harmless powerhouse to him without any semblance of fighting skill.

"The hustle of ants is indeed impressive, even when they struggle against a fire-breathing dragon…" Tobi shrugged, while he did visually consider the combo impressive, he was not one to go back on his word, even if that word was a mockery of a bunch of kids destined for greatness.

A streak of bright-orange extended over Toneri's chest as the inhabitant of the Moon flew back from the wayward swing of Minato's chain that caught him in the core of his body. Despite the flashy appearance of the streak and a burst of flames that the heat pent up in the weapon Minato wielded gave birth to burning off a mean-line in Toneri's outfit, nothing but pale-white skin stayed underneath the singed, white silk.

"He's flying?" Minato noticed as the flames on the golden chain went out and the chakra chain itself began fading away, one patch of rings at a time.

"Indeed the gravity of this rock you call home is higher than that of the Moon, but I wouldn't be the last descendant of Hamura Ootsutsuki if I did not persevere…" Toneri lamented with a playful expression. "Your little tricks are getting irritating, luckily enough, I have noted you to be toothless without the support of your team…"

Toneri turned his eyes off of Minato and glared at Kushina and Kotaro who were looking at the scene from down below with Tobi by their side. Minato lunged at the enemy, thinking he had caught Toneri when he had his guard down but the white-haired lunar inhabitant caught Minato's punch without much struggle or effort, not even seeing the need to look at the enemy he was defending against.

"You were going to say "don't you dare touch my friends", right?" Toneri smirked, still looking at Kushina, Kotaro, and Tobi while Minato lost the advantage of inertia and slumped in Toneri's grasp, having no ground beneath his feet to keep hold of him. "Well… It's their fault for being so useful to you while being so weak at the same time…"

A light breeze picked up and scattered fallen and rotting leaves from the nearby alleyways, a single trace of the rushing puppets that charged at Toneri's opponents from where they lurked. These puppets were different. Whereas the previous ones appeared like more lifeless versions of Toneri himself, even going as far as to wear his murky, wide-covering clothes, these appeared like Lolita-style girls with doll-like expression and a creepy, snappy jaw filled to the brim with saw-like teeth.

A white blur that stood out of the frightened crowd and lit the evening sky up in white streaks tore the Lolita puppets to shreds with his bare hands. The enhanced speed and strength, as well as the unnatural body-morphing capabilities, must have been the gifts of the Zetsu-suit that Tobi donned to best combat this unusual situation.

"As you've said before, these brats are useful so I won't let your dolls eat their faces off just yet…" Tobi directed his crimson bead of light at Toneri with a threatening glare, as if declaring that the fate which his puppets had met was one that he meant for Toneri himself too.

"For someone so fast, you're so awfully sluggish…" Toneri smirked with an innocent shrug. Something snapped in Tobi's noggin and he looked around, realizing that he focused too much on the dolls rushing right at him and missed the slower, more sluggish hordes that emerged from all over the place and floated in mid-air like balloons. Slowly compressing in a deadly formation while their jaws chattered in a macabre, wooden palaver.

"They're all bombs…" Tobi warned the duo he stood out in front of with a lightly silenced tone, one that they stood the best chance of hearing.

"Bombs?" Kotaro widened his eyes.

"There's no other use for dolls to move this slow if they're not rigged," Tobi replied.

"Can't you remove them, ya know?" Kushina wondered. "With your weird eyes, ya know?"

"I can only use my Mangekyou Sharingan when the enemy can't see it coming and counteract it. My guess is that Toneri will for certain be able to read my attempt to send them to the other dimension." Tobi grumbled. He couldn't believe that he'd still need to tell these kids that much, were they even keeping attention to this fight or were they just repeating the same combinations, hoping Minato uses their support for the mutual success of the team as he always did.

Though that was not the reason why Tobi didn't want to try and use his Kamui on these explosive dolls. It was not because Toneri wouldn't allow him and he'd just be wasting chakra, it was because Toneri just might allow it. In that case, he'd send a swarm of detonating dolls to a dimension he used for safety, whereas before he could have counted on Toneri not being able to read and counteract his Kamui in time, now he'd have to fear that Toneri wouldn't try to, only for Tobi or whomever he was pulling out of trouble to blow up the moment they entered the shared dimension the dolls were also trapped in.

"The other dimension?" Kotaro mumbled to himself. Tobi didn't like the fact that the brat was catching up to Tobi's ability, he might not have been a battle-hardened hardcore shinobi with flawless combat situation reading mind just yet but even someone like him might have stumbled into information nobody was allowed to know if this continued long enough.

"What's your goal!?" Minato yelled to Toneri.

"My goal? I thought we were past that stage…" Toneri closed his eyes right after washing Minato's body with cold sweat when he glared down at the youth that Toneri held in his hand up above the nearest buildings by the fist of the young man.

"No, I mean, you're threatening my team with those dolls, what do you want of me? How do I get you to make those dolls get lost?" Minato asked for Toneri to name the conditions of this hostage situation he found himself in.

"Good point…" Toneri placed his index to his chin. The dolls then all began dive-bombing the pressing together trio of ninja inside their formation, one handful at a time until not a single doll remained and the area was sunken in a cumulus of smoke and raining pebbles of debris. Once all of the deafening rumblings ceased, Toneri glared at something heavy and sizzling that he held in his hand, where Minato once hung trapped in his grasp. Only a pouch filled with sizzling spheres with paper tags attached to them now hung like the blond boy once used to.

Another blast lit up the southern gate district, sending shockwaves down from the upper levels where it rung the strongest. The shockwaves left mere dust-sized shards out of the glass around the area and once again disrupted the layers of dirt and rubble that had just settled down. In a faint flicker, Minato landed his two feet firmly on the ground and turned his attention at the spot where his friends stood before the floating explosive dolls decided to detonate.

A pronounced golden shimmer broke through the wall of dust. This was Kushina's doing no doubt. A cocoon of golden chains wrapped around in a circle had shielded Tobi, Kotaro, and Kushina from the blast that might have just killed them otherwise. With a metallic clang, the chains collapsed from their cocoon formation and then faded off into thin air. While Kotaro pat the tired and slouched back of the redhead, Tobi couldn't pull his eye away off of her.

It did not take a master psychologist to deduce that the masked man was cursing himself for underestimating this young lady with unmatched chakra in power and its entirely unique nature.

"Nice instincts…" Tobi commended Minato's attack just to pull his shocked eye away from the frightening kunoichi of Team Minato and make a more dignified face underneath his mask.

"I figured his eyes would be focused on keeping you from using your space-time ninjutsu…" Minato smirked, something he rarely did out of pride in his own abilities or to display glee in his success in battle. It was an expression that the young man reserved exclusively to comfort people he held dear or people that simply needed his comfort.

"I'm surprised to see you lot working together so well, it's almost like you've trained with each other your entire lives…" Toneri's irksome voice demanded the full attention of every player on the board once more as he emerged from the cloud of smoke unharmed. His body sparkled with jolts of emerald green before the lunar puppeteer extended his hand and focused the jolts into a singular, shining ball. "Puppet Curse Sphere!" he chanted.

The sphere took off, slamming into Tobi's chest and continuing to rotate, sending sparks by the handful as it attempted to make its way all the way through Tobi's body while Toneri's Tenseigan did its best to restrain Tobi's attempts to transport himself away. A pillar of bursting forth green erupted from where the sphere hit Tobi and detonated at last, having no more strength to keep burrowing through his Zetsu armor.

"I've heard your opening statements and heard nothing of note to postpone the end of your measly kind." Toneri declared while he raised his hand up again and formed another Puppet Curse Sphere. "Keeping my eyes on that pawn-of-a-pawn would be quite a pain so let's make an intermission until I destroy him."

Another Puppet Curse Sphere hurled at high speed right at Tobi while he intended to recover from the first blast and observed the stringy ruins of the Zetsu armor. Feeling the cold breeze on his chest, Tobi realized that he had actually suffered damage and that he might just not withstand contact with another sphere. A whirl of bending space appeared in front of Tobi.

"Useless…" Toneri stated a fact, he had previously assumed that by now everybody would know that he would be making sure to prevent Tobi from using his Kamui technique to escape damage, meanwhile, his Puppet Curse Sphere could have easily shut down any attempts from any of the kids to interfere. Another sky-scorching pillar burnt away the gloomy clouds over the Leaf's skies. Every blast serving as a beacon for more and more hunters to gather but some hunters might not have wanted anything to do with whatever was powerful enough to cause these blasts.

"Useless yourself…" Tobi grumbled, taking a deceitful peek from behind Kotaro's lifeless body as the smoke cleared and the dust settled.

"Y-You!" Toneri smirked while covering his face with a twitching hand. "You knew I would prevent your escape so you shielded yourself with those weaklings instead."

"Tobi!" Minato yelled out in despair.

"Don't worry, future Fourth, your friend should be alive, he's more juiced up on this universe's chakra than me, honestly." Tobi cleared his scratchy throat while letting Kotaro's unconscious body fall to his side and slump down on the ground.

"You bastard!" Kushina's eyes whited out while her red hair began blazing behind her back, her terrifying, massive chakra leaked out with enough intensity to rustle her hair and make her gain an appearance akin to that of a bloody banshee while she raised her fist up in front of her and prepared to bash Tobi's brain in. "You forced Kotaro to almost kill himself over your sorry-ass just to save your own hide, ya know!?"

"Don't be rude now, Kushina," Tobi took a wary step back, now a little bit worried about Kushina's unstable mental state, having just witnessed a display of the power that the girl's chakra possessed and having just had his Zetsu armor decimated and having his space-time abilities severely limited by Toneri's Tenseigan. "I didn't just uselessly prolong my own participation in this battle, I did it to make a statement and stay in the battle for good. Plus, let's not spin yarns about how useful Kotaro was in this battle, compared to me. I made the logical choice, that's what ninja do."

Kushina took another step, with each pound of her foot against the ground, the shaky dirt and pavement split in fractures that emanated with Kushina's leaking, hot-red chakra. Judging from her approach and the absolute death radiating from her eyes, she was serious about beating Tobi halfway to hell and back with her bare hands.

"Hmm… This is amusing, I think I will let her beat you up for a while for me…" Toneri clapped his hands and focused his Tenseigan to block Tobi's attempts at escaping the damage again.

"Don't you understand that I have effectively disabled his technique, you hysteric girl!?" Tobi lashed out at Kushina who took a methodical, one step at a time approach to the impending doom she was about to deliver. "Now he cannot effectively block my escape because he doesn't know how I will use my Kamui, to escape damage or to transport one of you and he can only block one specific way of use of the jutsu."

"Huh? You think you've avoided my jutsu?" Toneri smirked. "It's bold of you to assume that my Puppet Curse Sphere can only be used as a measly projectile. Seeing Kushina-chan rage at you gave me an interesting idea, perhaps I can educate you on what I am capable of?"

Toneri raised his hand up and formed another Puppet Curse Sphere in his hand. Blowing it at Kushina like an air-kiss, the white-haired ninja let it take off right at the outraged kunoichi. The rotating sphere took a curious, curved flight path to its goal but its impact was inevitable, Tobi would not have been surprised to see Toneri having protected his sphere from being transported using his Kamui either.

"Kushina!" Minato yelled out and dived in front of his teammate, tacking her out of the way with Body Flicker. The Puppet Curse Sphere hit him right in the back and forced the future Fourth Hokage to bend backward in an awkward angle as the sphere phased into his body.

"Hmm… You're not who I was aiming for but… Fine, you'll do…" Toneri shrugged, making Tobi quickly shift his attention from Kushina who has snapped out of her hysteric haze and focused on what happened to Minato instead of Tobi and Minato who slowly picked his body off the floor and turned to Kushina and Tobi.

"You seem to love this boy, no? You picked him instead of me, why? Because he complimented your hair? No, I've changed my mind, this is almost perfect. I can now see that priceless expression when you realize you've made a mistake by refusing me be the last emotion that leaves your stiffening body when your beloved boy kills you, it's almost poetic, in a way…" Toneri shrugged.

"Kills you…?" Tobi mumbled before turning to Minato's blank stare and realizing what it was that Toneri's sphere was capable of doing in addition to being a powerful offensive technique. Just when Tobi was done worrying about Kushina being the one to worry about in addition to this lunar lunatic, there was another blast from the past threatening his life now.