Sakura, Naruto, and Shikamaru head after Sasuke as several sound nins pursue. Pakkun warns that 9 nins are after them, and tells them to speed up. He then stops and tells the nins to move backwards on their own footsteps to make it look like they’ve just stopped. Hopefully that will buy them some time. It doesn’t, and the nins start gaining on them.
Shikamaru starts talking about ambushing them to level the playing field a bit. He explains that there are two conditions - 1) the runner must move noiselessly, and must discover the enemy first, and 2) they must secure a location to catch the pursuers off guard and inflict critical damage to them and then quickly conceal themselves in that location. Otherwise, these jounin+ level nins trained by Orochimaru will surely annihilate them. With Pakkun’s nose, their familiarity with the territory, they might just be able to pull off something. However, it is possible that the pursuing nins might actually know the terrain and have been preparing for awhile. Shikamaru concludes that given their team is made up of an idiot (Naruto), a female nin with no special techniques (Sakura), a dog, and a big coward (himself), they must device an operation that looks like an ambush - one person will stay behind and set up things to look like an ambush and stop them.
Shikamaru then volunteers to play the decoy… he is the one who has the highest chance of pulling this off and surviving. Besides, that’s what his technique, Shadow Bind, is for. Sakura immediately worries that he’ll run away, but Naruto has complete faith that Shikamaru would never betray them.
Meanwhile, Shikamaru is able to throw off his pursuers with fake paw prints, and soon catches 8 nin in Shadow Imitation. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't have much chakra left, and the ninth is still on the loose somewhere. After having his 8 bound nins attack, he learns the position of the ninth, but doesn't quite have enough chakra to reach. He recounts how he just wants to be paid normally as a ninja. To marry an average looking girl and have 2 kids, so he can retire from his ninja job when his daughter gets married and his son gets a job. Then he could play shogi and go all day and die of old age before his wife.
Just as Shikamaru reaches his chakra limit, Asama shows up and takes out all nine.