People from the Land of Earth really liked to build up.

Shikamaru had to admit, if he had hundreds of earth-style users just hanging around, he would probably build his nation on a big, fat mountain as well. Lots of natural protection from the elements, lots of natural land division, easy only for natives to navigate – good for promoting internal commerce, oh, and a pain in the butt to break into. Sure, even the most junior of ninjas could scale a wall, but it was all the things that could hide in walls that were the problem. Of course, their team had brought along an always useful Huga for just those kinds of challenges, but it was still a pain.

He would personally prefer to walk in the front door and enjoy their famed transportation systems. Sit back, relax, maybe learn a little bit about transit. Or just let Sakura punch through the excessively large structures, maybe even have Choji transform into a giant butterfly and just drop them off at their destination, but they were trying not to get caught breaking into a feudal lord's brother's estate. Which meant they were taking back paths. So, they were climbing, and hiding, and occasionally falling, and.

Neji shouted a familiar refrain, "just ahead!"

Shikamaru spotted the onslaught of kunai attached to suspicious sheets of paper and quickly knit a shadow linking four people. He laid flat on the ground, their bodies a perfect mirror of his own, releasing the jutsu only after a thousand flying knives had whizzed over their heads and exploded behind them.

And ducking. They had been doing a lot of ducking.

Even with the resident Huga, there were so many traps, it was impossible to avoid them all.

Neji stood and calmly spoke, "Choji, you're about to step on a tripwire."

Choji froze in place and looked down, right at a tripwire, which he then kindly stepped over.

Neji turned around and resumed the path. At some point, he had stopped verbally checking that everyone was alright and ready to keep going. His eyes were likely more reliable than three groaning travelers ever would be.

Shikamaru would never say it aloud, not speaking ill of the dead or something, but he personally preferred Neji's style in the land of Earth to Asuma's.

It was the familiarity. Asuma had done so many missions there in his time, he felt there was no true risk left. So, when they were on missions in the land of Earth, Asuma treated setting off all the traps like bonus training. Forget ducking, every flying kunai, sinking floor, and hidden ambush was a chance to drill the Ino-Shika-Cho formation. It was so draining that by the time they were all chunin, the three would go out of their way to negotiate with genin anytime a Land of Earth mission landed on their plate. Naruto was their favorite sucker. Ooooh, here's an exciting B-ranked mission if you want it, we'll do that lame guard duty you're trying to get out of. The little idiot would storm right into the fifth Hokage's office and demand a switch, in the name of training, or whatever.

It was in these very special moments, Shikamaru liked to think himself a good, bad influence on his other teammates. Of course, there were plenty they couldn't get out of. Their last mission with Asuma had been a particularly bothersome one to get through, though not entirely because of Asuma that time.

They were supposed to delivering a message to representatives of a land of Earth information division, a simple, straightforward task really. Walk a bunch, hand over a scroll, walk back. And their journey had been the same, overly tiresome, train while you travel nonsense their team had become accustomed to. But when they finally arrived, exhausted, for the hand over the scroll bit, suddenly their mission turned into run away from the land of earth stealth squad who weren't actually interested in a scroll and wanted to turn them all into hostages. Bothersome.

"On the right," Neji again.

The mountain ahead had started shedding, and not something pleasant like a soft winter coat. It was shedding giant shards of rock, angled, straight into the path they were about to take, ready to skewer anyone who attempted to pass. And, in the process, building a wall of stone shards between where they were and where they needed to be.

Again, hardly an inconvenience if there had been an earth-style user among them.

There wasn't.

But they did have Sakura.

And Shikamaru liked to think that his team, through their strategic shirking of responsibility, was to thank for how well she dealt with these types of situations.

Her fists lit up as she lined up a running start. She launched herself at full speed toward shard, at least fifty times her size. Catching it mid-air and using her momentum to counteract its own, cradling it on the way down so that when it reached the already fallen pieces, it landed more like a paper airplane than an unmovable new addition to the multi-ton wall. At which point she casually lifted the thing, flipped it around, and hurled it back toward the shedding mountain. It lodged into the side with a crash and stuck out like a pin holding the entire thing together, stilting any further shedding.

Choji turned into a human boulder and knocked down the wall of stone left behind.

Neji did a once-over of the group and kept moving.

Their pace had slowed, considerably, but that had been expected after crossing the border. Shikamaru figured it would take another two days to make it to their destination, barring anything too extreme. He was still working through how exactly one was supposed to prepare for facing a big history nerd. Evasion had been his recommendation the day it crossed his desk. Keep an eye on the guy while he visited the village elites, but also keep a distance. He had also arranged missions for all the younger kunoichi, just in case the rumors were true. Obviously, for this mission, avoiding the guy would still be ideal. Get in, get the girl, get out, don't get noticed. But things never actually got to be that simple.

He thought again of their mission to the land of Earth, how even then, things couldn't be simple. They had done a decent job of running away, but they had just been so tired. Out of chakra, they had ended up trying to hide behind a bunch of rocks. They had decided to hide from earth-style users, behind a bunch of rocks, because of course they had. Choji was caught first. To his right, Shikamaru had seen Ino preparing to hit the guy who captured him with a mind transfer, but they were outnumbered. It would have been stalling at best. He reached to stop her hand signs, then jumped out from where he was hiding as surrender.

He had proclaimed that the other two had already escaped but that they might as well take him since he was tired of hiding, and they had been dumb enough to believe him. Then he was chained up and tossed in an absurdly tall tower, because people from the Land of Earth just kept building up. And while he was hanging out in his tower with Choji, the stealth squad from the Land of Earth worked on a message to their hokage, declaring terms for the release of their little ninjas. Tattling on him for getting caught, really.

Just ahead, Neji stopped. This was not accompanied by any announcement of danger or failed footing, so Shikamaru, Choji, and Sakura met him for a huddle.

Neji spoke, "up ahead, I've detected three unique chakra signatures. We will cross paths with them if we continue our course."

"Are they after us?" Choji asked.

"Unlikely," Neji responded, "from what I have seen of their travel thus far, their movement does not resemble a path of pursuit."

"Probably a normal scouting team," Shikamaru added, "we knew we would encounter one eventually. Even if we try to go out of our way now, we'll probably just hit a different group covering a different area. Neji, can you clearly identify the location of all three members right now?"

Neji nodded, "using the Byakugan I can see their locations and their individual chakra exertions."

Shikamaru decided they should probably not do this Asuma style, "Neji, we can map out what you see to gauge their general pattern for scouting. Then we can figure out how to avoid them once we cross paths."

"So, figure out where they're not going and find a rock to hide behind?" Choji asked.

"Not behind," Sakura's fist lit up, "inside."

Neji nodded, "let's do it."

Shikamaru decided that it was marginally better than what they had done as kids, and thanks to Neji, this team wasn't worn out yet.

They worked quickly; it didn't take long for Shikamaru to determine the pattern. It was a basic clover formation; they had a similar one, in the leaf, for genin. He determined from this information that they also, likely, weren't dealing with very advanced scouts. And he wasn't particularly in the mood to kill a bunch of kids just doing their job.

Choji and Sakura had made them a quick cavern to hide in, at Shikamaru's single request that they try not to make too big of a mess. Locals knew what the scape was supposed to look like. By re-assembling the now hollowed-out boulder that had previously been one side of the mountain, they were entirely covered, silent shadows from the inside of a mountain. It was impossible to see in or out of their little make-shift cave. Impossible, that is, for anyone who forgot to bring their resident Huga along.

Neji kept watch on the scouts as they drew closer, providing occasional updates. Choji was saying something about not being afraid of the dark when Neji moved to silence him.

"They're here," he whispered.

Shikamaru could hear pounding steps back and forth. He couldn't tell if they were getting closer, but they weren't leaving the area. Someone was spending extra time looking around. In the dark, Shikamaru saw Neji tense. Someone was approaching.

The pounding steps were now getting closer. Shikamaru was certain, by their volume, that whoever it was had stopped right outside their makeshift cave. Likely contemplating what to do next.

"Hey!" a voice shouted. From the pitch, Shikamaru assumed it was prepubescent, a kid.

The pounding steps moved slightly away.

"What?" Answered a booming voice. Shikamaru guessed it was probably the stomping person.

"Someone set off the falling rocks trap ahead."

"Everyone sets off that trap. Last week a bunny set it off."

"Yeah, but does a bunny turn a mountain into a pin cushion?"

"What does that even mean?"

"I'll show you. We should follow the path, see if there's a trail."

"Fine. Let's get Sumiko."

And with that, the loud stomping kid was off. They listened until the sound of steps could no longer be heard and Neji signaled that it was safe to go. They continued their path, trying to move fast enough to not get caught by a bunch of little kids, who by now, should know that more than a bunny was on their southern border. Shikamaru hoped that they would see Sakura's work and assume earth-style user, one of their own.

While they were no longer as invisible as he had hoped they would be, Shikamaru considered their hiding in rocks efforts a few steps above the hiding behind rocks strategy his team had clumsily executed as teenagers. He was grateful, again, that they were traveling Neji style. It was so much easier.

Mind wandering to another thing he didn't like admitting, because validating any decision made on the matter was just irritating, but the further they went, the more he kept coming to the conclusion that sending Ino made a lot of sense. She could observe the Historian up close, check that he wasn't carrying any leaf citizens out of the village, even put together a dossier on who he did have in that collection, all without personally having to trek through the mountains or sneak out when it was time to leave. All she had to do was cross her hands and release her jutsu. She'd be right back, safe and sound in the leaf. Irritatingly easy.

It sure hadn't been that easy when they were kids. Shikamaru thought of the tower. While he didn't have to do much, and in theory he should have enjoyed the little break, Shikamaru didn't like being held as hostage. It was uncomfortable and Choji was feeling very hungry. Plus, he couldn't even take a nap during all that waiting, he had to keep his mind open. So instead, they sat chained to opposite ends of a very tall tower, with a very large guard in the middle. An earth-style user. After a couple of hours, Choji started a word game to pass the time. He and Shikamaru swapped food words, working their way through the alphabet. It was a dumb game, but it finally got Choji to stop complaining, and apparently the guard had been just as bored with the company as he had joined in as well.

"Champon," Choji tried.

They were halfway through the fifth round when the smell of flowers finally popped into Shikamaru's head.

"Hey there Shikamaru."

Took you long enough.

"Well, you're up really, really high."

Like you still need to aim to get in my head now.

"No, but knowing where your head is helps."

"Dango" the guard took his turn.

"Edamame," Shikamaru had responded, needing to appear like nothing changed.

Unfortunately, the voice in his head heard that, "are you three playing a word game?"

"Furikake" Choji returned.

"You are! The food listing one. Do they have to be special kinds of foods, or just anything as long as it fits the letter pattern?"

It doesn't matter Ino.

"Gomaae," the guard.

"Ooooh, it's your turn. Um, Hijiki, Horumonyaki, Himono."

Shikamaru refused her suggestions, "hot pot."

"You are so lame."

And you sure know a lot of foods for someone who never eats.

"Choji always wants to play this game when we're waiting around for you to get out of clan meetings."

You wait for me?

"I'm an amazing friend! Speaking of which, do you have a plan or not."

He did. And it was a little better than hiding behind a bunch of rocks.

"Watch below," Neji shouted.

A chasm filled with spikes opened between where Neji was leading and the other three. They shifted to walking on the sides of the cliff, watching for any further breaks in the earth. Neji waited, watching them as they crossed.

"Impossible!" He said suddenly.

Not a word Shikamaru liked hearing from Neji. Then he recognized a young voice.

"You four!" the three earth shinobi from earlier appeared at the top of the cliff they were scaling.

Shikamaru suddenly realized they weren't children. He had assumed they were kids based on their chosen formation and the voices. But that had been incorrect. He stared at them, clad in red, blue, and green robes. They were full-grown kunoichi.

A woman in a large blue hat pointed at their group, "do you think you can just walk into the Land of Earth and do whatever you want? Prepare to die!"

This was going to be a little more challenging than he had initially thought.

A/N:

Me: I'm bored, this needs more action

Also me: No clue how to write action

This…