'Damn it, if this goes on, I'll run out of chakra...' - Jiraiya jumped out of the water to breathe, but since it was full of poison above the water, he needed to use the Rasengan just to blow the gas away so that he can breathe.

This of course was an inefficient way to use chakra, but since he wasn't immune to Hanzo's poison, he had no choice.

But with his ample experience, Jiraiya already had a plan on how he could turn the situation around.

For his plan to work, he needed to get to Gamabunta who was underwater, fighting with Hanzo's summon.

When he tried to dive underwater again after taking a deep breath, he was assaulted as expected by Hanzo with his Kusarigama.

Using Needle Jizo, Jiraiya turned his hair into hard spikes which defended him against the swung Kurasigama.

This also discouraged Hanzo from getting near to Jiraiya, but one of the advantages of the Kurasigama was that you could throw it for mid-range attacks, however, because he always needs to pull it back after throwing, the attack frequency wasn't high.

Because of that, through dodging and letting his spiky hair tank hits, Jiraiya managed to get to Gamabunta.

To not waste any air, instead of words, Jiraiya signaled Gamabunta to jump with him out of the water.

Hanzo's summon Ibuse couldn't stop them, since it was in the first place weaker than Gamabunta in direct fights since it specialized in poison attacks.

The only reason it wasn't defeated by Gamabunta until now was that Hanzo, with his torpedo-like underwater speed, was charging from one end of the water to attack Jiraiya and then to the other end back to attack Gamabunta.

Now that Gamabunta jumped out with Jiraiya on his head, Gamabunta breathed as strongly as possible to make push the poison cloud away from them, so that a small room appeared where Jiraiya could breathe.

"What's your plan?" - Gamabunta

"Huff...huff...Hanzo will try to engage us only underwater since he has a complete advantage over there...but we can bury him there..." - Jiraiya breathed ins as much as he could.

"I understand." - with those words, Gamabunta spat as much oil out as much as he could, and soon most of the water surface was covered in an oil layer.

And then Jiraiya followed it with his Dragon Fire Technique and a sea of flames completely covered the water.

This was however a double-edged sword, since now not only had they to be careful to not breathe the poison in, but the smoke was as well.

But Gambunta already after the first jump was clinging to the bottom of the bridge and started to move out of the poison smoke.

"This should force him to come out of the water..." - Gamabunta

Jiraiya also knew this, and since he had the time, he decided to check the other battlefields out.

"..."

"Jiraiya, why is that brat naked?"

While all the fighting was going on, Kabuto ran past all the fights to reach a certain spot.

This spot was where Eiji hid a summoning seal when he came to the bridge a day prior and placed his "back-up plan".

It was for nothing else than to summon the coffin with Madara in it.

But in truth, it was just to use it as a bluff.

He also told Sasuke about it, in case he wouldn't be able to summon the bluff so that Sasuke could do it in the worst case.

Eiji wouldn't dare to revive Madara without Sasuke controlling him, but Sasuke didn't know what kind of monster Madara was, so he didn't fear what he could unleash onto this world.

In his eyes, it was manpower they could add to their side just like Orochimaru did with his zombies.

So he thought that Eiji was overdramatic when he told him to NOT revive him under any circumstances until his Kotoamatsukami was ready again.

So in short, in his eyes Sasuke didn't betray Eiji - it was more of a tactical disagreement and Sasuke just thought this would make more sense doing it like that.

But what influenced his decision, even more, was the fact that Sasuke didn't know much about the Edo Tensei and that even though rare, there are ways for the revived to complete break out of the control of the caster.

And how should he know that?

Until now, no one managed to do it.

But Eiji knew that something like the Edo Tensei wouldn't be able to stop Madara...

CrusadeAgainstFurries

The arc is nearing its climax and I hope I don't betray your expectations...