My attempt at making sense of the apparently omniscient Hyper Intuition of KHR, complete with psychology and mind dynamics twisted beyond recognition but still somewhat plausible. I was sleep deprived when I wrote this. Enough said.

The Inner Workings of the Hyper Intuition

A collaboration between Irie Shouichi and Gokudera Hayato

The Hyper Intuition (for now HI) of the Vongola isn't just an all-knowing voice in your head, as most people seem to think, nor can it actually somewhat tell the future. That particular gift is a peculiarity of the Giglio Nero Bosses, not the Vongola. Of course, it is understandable that, in a world where the HI hasn't been seen for 400 years since the retirement of Primo up until the rise of the Young Lion of the Vongola, Sawada Iemitsu, it is no surprise that all these rumours would spread and be taken as the truth. After all, there is no real way to observe and understand the inner workings of the HI from the outside, and even for the user himself it is quite a hard task, as the HI itself functions unconsciously for the most part, but we'll get to that later. As it is, most of these rumours are dead wrong. The HI isn't the gift of partial or momentary omniscience, it is simply a large intellectual enhancement beyond human capabilities that, by all rights, should not exist.

In battle, it is easier for the HI to surface due to the Dying Will Flames that strengthen the whole body, including the brain. Only in Hyper Dying Will (HDW) Mode can the HI be used fully consciously, since the constant intake of information is an enormous strain on the mind. As it is, even in HDW Mode, it is still quite taxing and will wear out the mind as much as the flames wear out the body.

On the bright side, a user of HI does not need to learn a martial art to be able to fight properly. The HI simply takes takes knowledge from various memories of the user with seemingly no connection and indicates the body when, where and how to attack, block or dodge (how exactly this works will be explained later). In a way, it is a refined, far more efficient version of every human's innate survival instinct. A beginner user, though conscious of this entire thought process, does not actually pay attention to or concentrate on it, as this simply furthers the strain. A more experienced user, however, takes to consciously make the choice between all the results of the HI's situational analysis for his next path of action instead of letting his HI take the seemingly most efficient one for the simple sake of survival ad elimination of the threat, instead being able to take steps to further a certain goal or tactic in battle.

Outside of the battlefield, when the user is in his "normal" state, the HI is mostly "dormant", meaning that, while it's still working, the user is not consciously aware of this fact, as it works completely subconsciously. With Dying Will Flames absent, or at least inactive, it only surfaces when the user seems to be in danger, as it is in moments of high emotional or psychological stress, and even then only fleetingly, making the user aware of the end result, but not the actual thought process. With Time and experience the user can learn to properly harness the HI outside of battle and activate or deactivate it at will and in a split second.

But how does the HI actually work in the user's normal state?

Using all five senses, a person unconsciously takes in a constant, gigantic stream of information and, while it's all stored, almost all of it is inaccessible since it is not what the user was paying attention to at that given moment. What the HI does is simply make connections. It oversees all the information stored in one's subconscious and makes connections according to the user's current needs. Once the connections are made, it then deduces and calculates a number of different resulting possibilities. As quite a few of these thought processes are about utterly trivial matters that are not very high up in the user's priority list, these results tend to stay in the subconscious and are stored for future reference. However, when a large percentage of the calculated possibilities go down the same vein and are labelled or classified as "Important", the user is made aware. Although the user is still not conscious of every single calculated possibility, he is aware of the general direction of the thought process and the meaning of the results.

Thus they get a "bad feeling" or "strange feeling" about something.

Of course, with this process, it is entirely possible to have a false alarm, be it because of a wrong deduction in the thought process due to lack of the necessary information, or because, as just like one cannot think of ten different things at the same time, the HI can't go through the large amounts of stored information all at once, a deduction made from a connection between two pieces of information might seem important and be reported to the user's consciousness, only to be proven false by a different connection made later on in the thought process. Depending on the problem and the amounts of information involved, the length of a thought process can be a tenth of a second or a whole week, although the latter doesn't happen often. In this stretch of time many deductions can be made, some trivial and some urgent, and all have the distinct risk of being wrong until the thought process is finalized. But, even if a false alarm is entirely possible it is extremely rare, the occasional cases being few and far in-between.

As mentioned before, while it is impossible to actually see the future with the HI, it is entirely possible to deduce the most probable future situation, be it immediate or over a longer length of time. The same principle applies to detecting lies. Using the own knowledge (consciously aware or otherwise) and taking in the subjects bodily reactions while talking or acting, it is easy for a user who has harnessed his HI to detect said lies.

While some would think that having the HI constantly activated would quite useful and shorten the reaction time of the user, it would, as mentioned before hand, be an enormous strain on the mind that could not be weathered without the physical fortification and energetic support of the Dying Will Flames, particularly the concentrated type of HDW Mode. Therefore, while convenient, it is nigh impossible, and even if it weren't, it would ridiculously draining. The constant intake and processing of information is done subconsciously because consciously having all those different thought processes and producing such a large number of very probable hypotheses almost at the same time, meaning at a mind boggling speed, is very confusing and taxing on the normal human mind and is therefore not recommended. For this reason, it is imperative for the user to master his HI and be able to activate it at will and on instinct whenever really needed and to regulate the amount of information filtered into his consciousness.

As for the origins of the HI, they still remain a mystery, Vongola Primo Giotto Taru (Sawada Ieyasu) being the first recorded case and one of only three. According to historical records, none of his relatives except his direct descendants ever showed any sign of possessing the HI, which leads to the assumption that this unnatural phenomenon started with him and is somehow hereditary. How he got it, if by an experiment, a freak accident or a genetic mutation of his brain is yet to be discovered.

Note by G.H.: There also remains a possibility that Primo somehow came into contact with a UMA, though which, how and why remains to be seen.

Note by I.S.: No. Just no. Please ignore the above.