BORUTO'S MASTERS – UNRIVALLED INSTINCT

The Jakka Jungle, North Seblix

The hunter wakes up.

Looking up into the sky it seems to be about six in the morning. His body clock is working perfectly as usual, as it has since he began sleeping outside those many years ago. Other than the blinking of his eyes he doesn't move a muscle as he goes about his morning routine. He expands his senses and searches for any threats in his immediate vicinity, finding none as he does most mornings. Once he is clear that he is alone, he spends five minutes breathing, practicing the timing of his breaths as he has every day since he came into the jungle.

Five minutes having elapsed the hunter gets to his feet and dresses in the furs of his prey from yesteryear. The ground is damp, but he has become accustomed to that during his time living like this and the heat makes it quick to dry his personal effects. He looks around with less caution this time, curious about his immediate surroundings, about where he has found himself this time. The territory of the birds, beasts with terrifying potential who can use the power of flight to their advantage, but nothing that he has not faced before.

Next on his agenda, cleaning himself. He uses his well-honed ears to listen for the sound and focuses on the sensation in his feet, searching for the vibration. In a few seconds he discovers that the river is north-east of his current position. He picks up his effects and makes his way to that river, then, he ventures up-stream until he finds his favourite spot to wash, one of the widest spots in the river which also has a small and convenient waterfall to wash himself in.

As the hunter approaches the waterfall the weak animals who have no concept of divine energy back away. Throughout most of Homeworld animals like this would look at a human and see a tasty meal, but not here, here there is only one human and he is the king of the jungle. He approaches and the animals take a step backwards, lowering their heads as if out of respect.

The hunter lifts his furs over his shoulders and stands beneath the falling water, looking out over what he considers his domain.

This man's name is Shao Chin.

It has been years since Shao Chin last saw a human, during that time he has been living alone in the jungle. This jungle is one of the most terrifying in all Homeworld, one of the last to contain members of the beast clan, one of the last where some animals have broken through and comprehended an element themselves. That is why he came here, as soon as he broke through, he knew that his path was not that of the warrior but that of the hunter. He did not seek to crush the most powerful but to pursue the most elusive, those with the most brilliant minds for evasion.

As he stands beneath the waterfall washing his long white hair, Shao Chin senses a change in the wind. That's never good.

The last time he felt a change like this in the air, a mighty member of the beast clan had come to the jungle to kill him. That beast was a hunter, just like him, when he arrived a brilliant battle between predator and prey began with each of them trying to work out which they were. That was the greatest thrill of Shao Chin's life.

This change is different though, far greater in magnitude. It comes from beyond the borders of the jungle, from Homeworld itself, a call to the great hunter. He is being called to the hunt; a hunt more difficult than any he is ever going to find in this jungle.

The ultimate prey has just emerged.

He emerges from the waterfall, quickly brushing the water from his skin and puts his furs back on. With a burst of speed, he makes his way towards the edge of his domain and by the end of the day he has left the jungle and has made his way to the nearest human contact.

Later that Day, Jakka, North Seblix

This is the city that the jungle is named after, the city where Shao Chin last saw a human being. He remains as unimpressed as he was that day. The warriors of this world pursue and battle one another, boasting their abilities as if they have accomplished something worthwhile. Humans lack the instinct of the beast clan though, even of the basic animals. There is not a single person in this city who would be worth hunting to him, they are all too easy to follow.

As he walks past a newsstand he smiles, overwhelmed by a wave of nostalgia. He remembers this now, writing, human writing, it has been a long time. He recalls that stands like this were used to distribute information about the world at large. These people seem to have it so easy to him, they do not have to look for the clues in their surroundings, they are catalogued by experts over an extended time and presented in a concise format. It is so completely unlike the wild.

He learns a few things from the newsstand, no longer is this the nation of Cheqitori as it was when he disappeared, now this is the nation of Seblix. As he looks a bit further, he sees the first clue on his journey, the first truly significant person.

Seblix has a new ruler, Queen Hirsch Nadia.

Shao Chin tingles as he looks at Nadia's image, even from this print he can see something in her eyes. She has a calculating side, far greater than any prey that has tried to elude him in the past. Queen Nadia is someone who is always one step ahead without fail. As he looks for his new prey, Queen Nadia quickly jumps right to the top of the list.

Shao Chin decides to learn all he can about what has changed in the world since he went away. Is Queen Nadia the one he is looking for, or is she just a steppingstone on the path to his true target?

Lan-Fen's Residence

Shikamaru throws up the communication stone and catches it, repeating the action several times as he thinks of what to do. Are they currently the only enemies of Furst who know about this? Does the emperor know that they know? If the emperor thinks that this is a state secret and is desperate to keep it that way, then he could use the communication stones to fight back against him. Having a little power never does any harm, but coming to rely on that power, that can do all the damage in the world, especially when battling against the mind of a Nara.

"My lady!" a servant yells as he runs into the room.

"What is it?"

"Someone is coming incredibly fast, a class 7 warrior."

"Which class 7 warrior?" Lan-Fen asks impatiently.

"I don't know, I've never seen this one before in any of the records you've shown me. She has white hair, but she doesn't look much older than twenty. What's more, there is an owl on her back."

Ino, Shikamaru and Choji instantly leap to their feet. The white hair, the youthful appearance, the owl and the tremendous power. This is a perfect description of the one who killed Lara, her daughter, Hannah. Together with Lan-Fen they leave the room in a hurry and grab a pair of binoculars to confirm their suspicion. Their suspicions are confirmed indeed.

Hannah is coming.

Shikamaru has heard the theories about Hannah but has never really been confident they were true. It is said that she has an unrivalled instinct, that instinct itself is her divine ability and that it makes her almost unstoppable. She was created in a laboratory by King Weiss Max and Emperor Furst Jonas and was recognised as the most important experiment in the history of Homeworld. It is said that on within her battle class there is nobody who can defeat her.

Looking to Lan-Fen, Shikamaru has no doubt that she is a seasoned warrior and is very skilled in combat. However, if she were at the peak of class 7 like Carmen was, Shikamaru is sure that her name would have come up in conversation by now. Instinct or not, he doesn't believe that Hannah would lose to Lan-Fen.

Choji quickly explains as much as he can about Hannah to Lan-Fen. He explains how she came from the laboratories, how she is the biological daughter of General Clyde and General Lara, about how she wields two elements at once and about how she killed her mother. Lan-Fen is proud of her talents in a fight, but the aristocrat quickly realises that the young woman coming after them may be more than even she can handle.

Lan-Fen walks to the front of her property, barking at her servants to grab her son as she does so. She purposefully marches onwards, her eyes locking with Hannah's from afar and she presses a large red button next to the grand entranceway to her house.

Suddenly, the ground rumbles as a huge superstructure begins to assemble itself around the house. Choji steps back away from Lan-Fen as he watches the structure form around them, amazed at what he sees. This structure isn't just any form of protection, it's a maze, a labyrinth, an intricate series of corridors and passages that must surely be impossible to navigate. The material this labyrinth is made from is familiar too, an incredibly strong material, the same substance used to form a dome over the imperial palace. Surely even Hannah will be unable to destroy this.

"How is this supposed to help?" Shikamaru asks, gesturing to the labyrinth, "Surely we are trapped in now. It's only a matter of time before she finds us."

"There is more than one exit," Lan-Fen explains, "This maze is too complex for anyone to get through without knowing what its layout, unless they have a map. My inspect divine ability lets me see the entire layout of the maze though."

"Then you can navigate us to the exit?" Ino asks.

"Yes, follow me and I will get you out of here long before she is able to escape the maze."

Shikamaru sighs, "I don't think you understand what we're dealing with here. Hannah's divine ability is the ultimate instinct. If she's coming after us through this maze, she will be presented with a series of fifty-fifty choices. What if she makes the right choice every single time, how long will it be before she reaches us?"

Lan-Fen shakes her head, "In theory, if you made every correct decision, a class 7 warrior could probably reach us in about three minutes."

"Then we have to assume she's less than three minutes away. To escape the maze that quickly we would have to rely on you and your divine energy to pull us along. That would be fine for most of us, but your son cannot endure such high speeds, he is not a fighter."

"Then what do we do?"

"Can you collapse certain parts of the maze?" Shikamaru asks, "If you were able to collapse the right part at the right time and block her access, we may be able to stop Hannah reaching us for long enough to escape and hide."

Choji quickly grasps Shikamaru's plan, having worked with him for many years now. He may not be his teammates equivalent, but he knows that this plan is risky and desperate compared to Shikamaru's usual plots. Even if Lan-Fen were to collapse the correct parts of the maze at the correct times there is no guarantee that she would be able to outrun Hannah. What's more, if Hannah's ultimate instinct is the real deal, outwitting her will be almost impossible.

"I can't collapse the maze, I don't have the strength," Lan-Fen admits, "But there are a few doors that I can close. If I close those doors and smash the lock, I guarantee that she won't be able to come through."

The Nara clansmen holds his head in his hands. This is a new kind of strategy that is unfamiliar even to him. For years he has worked with Naruto and identified people's weaknesses and their blind spots, making use of their bad habits and their weak minds to defeat them. Even with Obito and Madara there were weaknesses, their state of mind was clear and while difficult, he could exploit their thinking. Hannah is not like that though, her decisions when it comes to battle are perfect. He's no longer calculating what she is likely to do, he is working out how quickly then can physically act against her.

"You won't be able to do the calculations to stop her fast enough," Shikamaru declares, "You're going to have to let me do it for you."

"How?" Lan-Fen asks.

"Ino knows a technique, one that she has not used for many years. It's a forbidden variant on the mind-body switch technique, a skill specific to her clan. She could send my mind temporarily into your body, merging it with your own, like we were one person."

"How would that help?" Lan-Fen asks.

"I don't have time to be modest, I'm smarter than you," Shikamaru says, "If we are going to calculate which doors to close it has to be me. If it comes to a battle it has to be you. We will have no privacy from one another, our minds will be one. I will know everything you know, and you will know which door to close."

"Very well, do it," Lan-Fen says.

"Shikamaru, I…" Ino stutters.

"We don't have time to argue Ino, do it."

Ino nods her head, closes her eyes and weaves the signs for the technique. Her focus becomes so intense that she collapses to the ground, forgetting to even breathe steadily as her mind rests on the technique and the technique alone. It takes ten seconds before she is able to pull it off, but it happens. Shikamaru's mind and Lan-Fen's mind suddenly merge into one, their thoughts become transparent to one another and Lan-Fen's body is their shared home.

"Choji," Shikamaru and Lan-Fen's voices come from her body, "Take my body and carry Ino too. You run with the others; we will focus on stopping Hannah."

Choji nods, picking up his two teammates and looking to Lan-Fen's servants who have her young child with them. They will be able to go quite quickly like this, but not so quickly as to endanger the child.

Shikamaru and Lan-Fen quickly scribble down the directions that the party needs to take to escape from the labyrinth, recalling a quick-writing technique that Shikamaru learnt many years ago while transcribing the intel from Lan-Fen's inspection divine ability. In less than three seconds the most powerful of Lan-Fen's servants has a piece of paper in his hand with instructions on how to escape. He takes the paper and, along with Choji and the others, begins to run towards the exit.

This leaves just Shikamaru and Lan-Fen, occupying the same body. For now, these two people are one person. They are Shikamaru-Lan-Fen.

Shikamaru-Lan-Fen begins to pool their experience and their knowledge, imagining a perfect map to describe this labyrinth and the several stories it covers. If Hannah was using her ultimate instinct to follow the quickest route to them then the last door that would be blocking her would be five hundred meters down this corridor and on the right.

Shikamaru-Lan-Fen makes a break to this door and they determine that Hannah is not close to it yet, good, that is as they calculated. She won't be more than two doors away though, so they have to get to the next closest door. Three hundred meters and two lefts. They make a break for it, running along the walls so as to optimise the arc as they sprint towards the door with all the energy they can muster.

They reach the door in time, no sign of Hannah, so they slam the door shut.

They begin to wonder if all the talk of Hannah's instinct was just hearsay, whether it was propaganda by the empire. This isn't the time to be making such assumptions though, the next quickest route Hannah could take is seven hundred meters behind them, a hatch that drops down from the ceiling. They run and they make it in time.

However, as they close the hatch, they hear a sound, a periodic quick drumming from above the ceiling. It must be Hannah running down that corridor. If so, the route she is taking is far from optimal, they have about fifty seconds before she reaches the critical door, but they can make it in thirty. So, they run, dropping through two hatches and slamming shut the first door on the right, they block Hannah's access route.

But Hannah was never going that way.

As the hatch shuts behind Shikamaru-Lan-Fen this becomes abundantly clear to them. They have been falling into Hannah's trap since the beginning.

"What was that sound?" they ask.

Hannah doesn't answer with words, she simply throws a handful of rocks into the air and catches them. For the combined consciousness that is enough information to work out what happened. Hannah skimmed rocks along the floor as they closed that last hatch, using that to deceive them into thinking she was going the other way.

Somehow Hannah knew they were going to shut that hatch before they had even calculated it as the best option. The stories were true, this is not the calculations of a genius or the bluff of a swindler, this is an unrivalled instinct.

Shikamaru-Lan-Fen launches at Hannah, throwing a series of strikes which have the power of a Homeworld Aristocrat and the dexterity of Hidden Leaf Shinobi, but Hannah effortlessly dodges each of these strikes, moving like she has been fighting against shinobi all her life.

There is one single opening in these strikes, the unprotected right forearm as Shikamaru-Lan-Fen throws a right-elbow towards the back of Hannah's head. Naturally, Hannah's instinct detects this, she ducks below the elbow and reaches out for the forearm. As Hannah grips hold of Shikamaru-Lan-Fen's elbow, she slams it back into the wall with enough power to break something. Hannah doesn't care what was broken, just that something resisting her hand a millisecond previously is no longer stopping her.

Shikamaru-Lan-Fen screams as their arm is smashed into the wall but that is just the first of many attacks. Hannah does not relent; she strikes and strikes until her opponent falls to the ground. After that she keeps going, uncaring as the counterattacks stop coming at her, uncaring as her opponent drops their guard, uncaring as the life before her is extinguished. After watching her mother die in similar circumstances, she cannot muster the willpower to cry as she assaults this stranger.

Nearby, Shikamaru wakes up in his body, gasping for air as he does so. Moments ago, he was in agonising pain and now his body feels incredibly light.

Choji notices his teammates are awake and puts them both down, imploring them to run with him if they are to have any chance of escaping from this labyrinth.

But Shikamaru does not run. Instead, he grabs Lan-Fen's child from the grip of a servant and hides him around the corner. As he does this it becomes clear to the servants what the situation is. If Shikamaru is awake then that means Lan-Fen is dead, and if he is hiding her child than that means that he is desperately trying to protect that one life. This is the end of the line for them, they are going to die.

Shikamaru returns to them and shouts out that they must all keep running in order to distract Hannah. He doesn't know if this will work on someone with Hannah's instincts, none of them know, but at this point they are willing to try anything so that just one of them will survive. So, they run, they run, and they keep on running, knowing that their killer is just moments away.

Shikamaru reaches his hand into his pocket and grips the communication stone given to him by Lan-Fen.

"Temari," he calls out using the stone, hoping desperately that his wife will hear him.

"You're too far away right now, Ino can't reach you but I hope this communication stone can.

"The enemy has these stones, they squeeze them slightly and they can send thoughts into the minds of others, just like I'm doing now.

"Temari, I'm sorry about this but I'm about to die. There is nothing I can do, otherwise I would come back to you like always.

"We're being chased through a maze by Clyde's daughter believe it or not. She has already killed the red teardrop and we're next. There is no way we can escape.

"It's a drag but I have a favour to ask you. I need you to come to Lan-Fen's estate and follow my directions through the maze. Lan-Fen's got a young child here and somebody needs to look after him.

"I also want to ask you not to tell them. Don't tell Clyde or Mirai that it was Hannah who killed us. It's their job to look after her and I don't want them to hate her."

Shikamaru looks back over his shoulder as he runs and sees Hannah come around the corner, bearing down on them.

"I would have liked to have seen this through, but I know that you will win."

Shikamaru stops and turns to face his assailant.

"I wish I had more time, but she is here now. So, I guess I better say it now. I love you Temari, you and Shikadai. Goodbye."

Hannah wastes no time, and with a single blast of energy 'light' and 'dark', Lan-Fen's servants, Akimichi Choji, Yamanaka Ino and Nara Shikamaru are all killed.