Mika is a bustling trade city, built around both sides of a magical Gate.  The tall archway is around a hundred feet across and perfectly circular, though the bottom third extends underground.  

In the blink of an eye, the gate in East Mika flashes and suddenly shows a new scene.  A few carriages which were about to cross through make their way to the new other side, milling about in confusion as the paved cobblestone road suddenly gives way to grass.  No one seems to have been hurt though one unlucky carriage was bisected, the back half falling forward and spilling corn everywhere.  

There's some alarm from the people currently watching the goats.

After a few moments, one approaches, cautiously. She's a teenage girl, hair dark purple, skin pale, eyes a lighter lavender. Her hair's pulled into a messy ponytail, and she's dressed in loose clothes with a broad cone hat to block the hot sun. She calls out something.

The gate is chaotic, but some city guards were quick to respond and start ordering everyone back into the city.

One, an older woman, seems to be in charge.  Her asymmetric uniform is trimmed with gold and the insignia on the right shoulder has been expanded upon several times.  She calls out in her own language.  

The girl seems confused and wary and does not understand that. She keeps trying the same language.

The guardswoman calls for one of her subordinates to go find a priest with a translation sorcery.  Just in case one works, she tries a few more languages in the meantime.

Nope!

One person's staying near the fence, and the girl's staying near the portal, but the other one who was in close distance when the portal opened is heading back to a cluster of farm houses, and there are people emerging from the houses.

A man in elaborate robes of layered green organdy is brought forward.  

"Hello.  I have translation magic, and will be able to understand your language.  Do you know what caused our Gate to change locations?"

"That wasn't on your end? We didn't do anything."

"Mika Gate has been connecting the two sides of our city for centuries.  I've never heard of it moving, nor anything that would cause it to."

"Well, we haven't, either. Even the shinobi don't have weird giant gates."

"What's a shinobi?  It isn't translating."

"Ninja? One of the types of magical people, I guess. They're the local ones. Mercenaries and all."

The man turns around to ask the guards if they've ever heard of that magic.  They all shake their heads.  

"It doesn't sound like one we have."  That isn't too surprising.  Mika is a major trade route through the southern half of South Cardinal, but doesn't get a ton of traffic from elsewhere in the world.  

The guard captain asks something, and the green-robed man translates.  "What country is this?"

"Land of Fire, east coast of the Elemental Nations."

Some more debating between the translator and the guards.  

"We haven't heard of your country.  

"Mika is its own city-state, within the borders of Wikara and Mikiara, on the continent of South Cardinal."

"Haven't heard of any of that, either, but I guess I wouldn't've."

There are no other immediate questions for the girl, but the translator is ordered to stick around. 

The guard captain shouts at one of her people to bring some maps, then turns her attention to checking over the blockade around the gate on their side.  There's a crowd gathering behind the hastily-erected barriers, noisy and confused.  

And there's a team of shinobi - four, two of them roughly teenagers, two older - approaching. They land in the field, watching the gate warily.

A guard spots them.  

After a moment, the guard captain removes her sword belt and hands it to one of the other guards.  No reason to go armed and possibly cause a misunderstanding.  She motions to the translator, and they walk towards the newcomers.  

"Who are you, and what is your purpose here?" the one in the lead, a man with dark red hair and skin only a bit darker than the girl's, calls.

"We are the people of Mika City.  Our city has a Gate which connects its two halves, which are on opposite sides of a mountain range.  Something made the Gate send us here instead - we don't know what caused it," the translator summarizes.  

"Where is Mika City?"

The countries of Wikara and Mikiara, on the continent South Cardinal," the translator repeats.  Maybe a shinobi will recognize the locations.  The guard turns around to see if anyone new is at the gate, but it looks like her request for a map hasn't come back yet.  

"Haven't heard of them."

He sighs.  "Yeah, neither did the farmer.  We're waiting on maps, but it's likely we aren't on the same planet if you've never heard of the Cardinals - they're the two biggest continents."

There's some more conferring with the guard captain, "Do you know of anything here that might have attracted the gate to be pulled here in particular?"

"Not to my knowledge. I don't know how your gate works, though. Have you found other planets before?"

"No.  This is the only Gate I know of, and it's been in the same place for a thousand years.  There are supposed to be other planets with people on them in our solar system, but we have no way of getting to them."

"Do you know why your gate picked here?"

"We don't know much about here, besides that it has humans and goats, and a magic system called 'shinobi' which we've never heard of."

"What do you have instead of shinobi?"

"Magic system wise, we have Sorcerers like myself, who are each granted a boon or a curse directly from our gods.  Mine is translation, which is common.  Healing other people is also common.  Mages implant themselves with a crystal and get a random magic power. Orichalcum artifacts are what Mika City is known for, beyond the gate.  Artifacts are made from orichalcum alloyed with a different metal, and depending on the metal and shape they have different abilities.  We also have pegasus, magical flying horses who will choose a pure-hearted person as their rider.

"There are others we're aware of, but don't have.  Vampires who drink blood, witches who brew potions, wizards who can do various magics... Not shinobi, though. 

"What are shinobi, other than magic?"

"We use chakra. It's the energy in everyone and everything. Most people can do anything any other shinobi can, unless it's a bloodline. Bloodlines are genetic. Shinobi focus on more subtle arts like illusions, whereas samurai focus on enhancing weapons, and monks focus on mundane uses of chakra."

He translates for the guard captain.

"So, chakra is the magic system, and shinobi, samurai, and monks are philosophies or organizations?" they guess.

"Pretty much - closer to philosophies, there are different groups of each. Suna has different shinobi than Konoha - Konoha is the shinobi village you're near."

He nods, once again repeating for the guard captain.  

It is at this time a proper delegation from Mika's government finally arrives, along with the maps asked for earlier.  A young man and woman of about the same age, and looking remarkably similar.  The shape of their outfits are both in the asymmetrical style of Mika, but the man's clothing is a single shade of vibrant blue embroidered in lighter and darker shades of the same, while the woman's is muted gray covered in pastel shades of every other color.  Neither outfit looks fit to fight in.  

The man receives a brief summary from the translator, then offers "I am Ezure, of the Quercus House, and my sister Elizara.  We were selected to make official contact with the leaders of this land, and are prepared to either visit your nearest town or invite a delegation to our city."

The lead shinobi gestures, and one of the others behind him bows and heads off. "We'll bring the message to our leaders. I suspect it will be easier for the leader of Konoha to visit you than the other way around, but that the Daimyo - the overarching leader of this nation - will want you to come to his city, which is farther away."

"It might be best for us to speak with the local leader first, particularly if the Daimyo's city is more than a day's journey on horseback."

He nods. "It's about five days' journey that way, and it is customary for local officials to field initial diplomatic inquiries."

"We will await word on your local leader, and prepare for guests."

"Very well. Do you need anything of us in the meantime?"

"No, I can't think of anything."  

There are a number of issues in the city, with half of it suddenly cut off from the other half, but they aren't the sorts that could be helped from here.  

"How should we contact you when our leader is ready?"

"The - well, I'd say the portal isn't going anywhere, but I suppose that's not a guarantee any more.  The best way would be to tell our guards at the gate and have them send for me, unless your chakra magic can do something for it."  They might be able to make an orich-electrum pen set that can write on two papers at once, but not even he has anywhere near enough authority to get one and loan it out.  

"Most other methods we'd use would probably take set up. Alerting the guards works for us."

"Okay, good.  Will there be any non-obvious things we'd have to prepare?"

"Their security people will probably want to talk to your security people, especially if there's any extraordinary threats in your world."

"I can't think of any threats that would get through the gate."

"Is there anything they might face while in your city?"

"Not that I can think of.  We have an average level of pickpockets and muggers for a city, unfortunately, but they won't bother a guarded group.  There's a chance that there might be riots over the gate breaking, but our guards can handle that and we're already taking actions to keep this half of the city running."

"That won't be something of high concern, then."

"I'll make sure the guards are informed."

"Thank you. We'll leave our own guards here, if you need to speak to us."

"Sounds good."  He considers what else to say, and can't think of anything else.  He glances at Elizara beside him, but it doesn't look like she can think of anything either.  

Then it's probably time for everyone to take their leave; the shinobi bow shallowly, and withdraw a bit.

Elizara and Ezure can get everything for the upcoming visit set up in between the rest of their duties. 

For all that diplomacy is important, the city's leaders are very busy on handling the local problems.  Thousands of their people are currently stuck on the other side of the mountain - 300 miles if they were somehow able to fly over the peaks directly, much longer heading to the next pass.  Thousands more had homes on the other side, and are now milling around their workshops, trying to find somewhere to sleep.  Adding in all of the merchants and travellers showing up, expecting to pass through, and the inns are likely to fill up beyond capacity even without the misplaced natives.  

It is exhausting, but they get temporary solutions sorted quickly enough.  Thankfully Tle's southern hemisphere is still in early summer and the spare military tents suffice for those without friends or family to move in with.  

They'll have until the evening before a message arrives to schedule a meeting with the local village leader, who'll come to them. Her name is Tsunade of the Senju clan, and she requests permission to bring two guards.

That sounds reasonable.  They have been keeping a diplomatic suite free, even with the rearranging going on.  Word is sent back that they can receive Tsunade and her guards any time tomorrow.

That's acceptable. Mid-morning, two hours before noon? (Including the guards translating how they measure time).

Elizara and Ezure will be waiting.  Their formal gowns are in shades of off-white and pale tan, to reflect the serious state of their city in their local symbolism.

Tsunade is perhaps early into her middle ages, wearing a cream shirt under a green robe and over grey pants. Her blonde hair is pulled into two sections to fall down her back, and she has a small black diamond painted on her forehead. She has a large white hat on, with red piping and the symbol for 'Fire' in red on its front. Her eyes are sharp. Her stance is confident. Her two guards are fairly nondescript - both in the same dull grey-green uniforms as the rest of the shinobi, their hair black and brown.

She nods to Elizara and Ezure when she arrives. "Greetings. I am Senju Tsunade, the Fifth Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaves, the shinobi organization of the Land of Fire. It is my pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"Welcome to the city of Mika," Alizara says.  Half of Mika, anyway. 

"We are Elizara and Ezure of the Quercus House of Mika, selected to be the lead diplomats to your world."

"It's a lovely city."

"We're quite proud of it.  It's stood for nearly as long as the gate, and it's said that the foundations where many of the buildings stand were found pre-built along with the gate, which is why the streets are so well laid out and wide for a city of it's era.  That, or the founders who first discovered the gate had been good at planning ahead."

They can lead her and the two guards to a meeting hall that looks down on the rest of the city, which slopes downhill from the gate and into a valley of farms before rising back up as pine-forested hills.  There is a solid skeleton of stone making up the city beneath the other materials.  Much of the architecture seems to favor octagons and 135° angles.

"Our city was built fairly recently, mostly by one man. Helped keep things well coordinated."

It's certainly very interesting, here.

"Your people didn't build the gate?"

"No.  None of the magics we know can make gates.  The construction is typically ascribed to the three local gods who are most worshipped in this area."

"Your world has gods?"

"Yes.  So far they haven't chosen to speak about the gate's change in location, though we have people on watch at all of the temples in case one shows up."

"Huh. Our world doesn't have gods, though it might've centuries or more ago, if you listen to myths."

"Even if they decide to ignore the gate, our three do usually show up at their yearly feast-days.  The next is in about a month." Gods are important and influential, but rarely useful.  

"Though, we should probably focus on what is in our power to do.  That'll be trading, eventually, once things settle down here."

"We'll need a bit of prep to open a new trade network - hopefully that will coincide nicely with order on your end. My people might also be able to trade help with transportation, depending on how far the other end of the gate had been."

"It'd only be 300 miles if we could walk over the mountains.  The next safe pass for wagons is all the way in southern Mesasoth, and would take over a thousand miles."

"We sent out some people bonded with pegasus, to check up on the other side of the city.  They'll be doing the same.  It'll take a few weeks for any to show up."

She seems to be doing some mental math. "A speed specialist could manage mountainous land at a hundred miles an hour in an emergency, especially in short bursts. Closer to twenty for routine, fifty for urgent. It'd take some finagling to manage moving more than one non-shinobi per messenger, but the messages themselves are easy."

"Impressive.  It wouldn't solve our main issues, but people would be put at ease if they could get news of their missing family members more quickly."

She nods. "It's something to discuss as an early trade, perhaps. Part of a show of good faith."

"And what sorts of things do you consider valuable?  Gold is a standard to back currency throughout Tle, though our conversion rates may differ from yours.  In addition to travel, Mika is known for its blacksmithing, particularly detailed works such as orich-artifacts and jewelry.  We've also been importing some of the newer 'electricity' technology from Kor, though aren't at a manufacturing level to produce them ourselves."

"We don't have orich-artifacts - rarity alone's likely to make that valuable - and we find some metals more useful to our magic than others, in ways I suspect would alter relative worth quite well. We have electricity, but it's possible Kor has managed something that never occurred to us."

"They do have a number of useful things.  Before the gate changed, one of my main goals was setting up and importing them.  Most of the supply line was coming through Eastern Mika, though theoretically the jungle river through the Green Wilds isn't that much slower.  

"It would be interesting to see how orichalcum interacts with your magic system - it does tend to interact positively with most of ours, and if you have reactions with non-magical metals the results might be even higher."

"There's only a few fields that really use metals extensively - but, yes, we can channel our chakra through metal, which sometimes has useful effects."

"It sounds fascinating, how versatile your system is.  How does one get the ability to use it?"

"We train since childhood to use it. Theoretically anyone without certain disabilities can go through the training, but I'm unsure if that applies to people from other worlds, too."

"The only people born with magic here are demigods.  Most magic users get their power directly from a god, and the rest are using magical items."

"Interesting. Our magical items require someone trained to use correctly."

"I don't have much personal experience, but ours are all fairly intuitive."

"Intuitiveness varies, but ours require using your chakra to interact with them, and most people can't intuitively use chakra at all."

They nod.  "So, what else is your side of the portal like?"

"Pretty varied. Our world only recently settled down out of a long Warring States period - we've had stable governments for about sixty years, but the empire that collapsed prior to the Warring States was far older than that. It means there's a lot of diversity even over short distances, though."

"Mika being an independent city-state is fairly recent - a little over a hundred years.  We got independence when the previous country we were part of split after a civil war.  There's always someone fighting somewhere in the world, but nothing nearby and nothing major.

"Is your country known for any particular exports?"

"Wood and wood products, medicines and healthcare work, some traditional forms of pottery and other artwork, specific skill-sets among mercenary clans, and some instruments requiring precision engineering are the major ones we especially do."

"We have quite a lot of forest of our own, though the others sound like things you'd be able to find markets for on our side."

"Would you have an eye towards exporting orich-artifacts and jewelry work, then?"

"Likely.  We can arrange for some orichalcum to be sold, to see how the magic systems interact, and let it be known there's a market to anyone looking to sell.  Plus anything else that tends to come through.  Spices, dyes, potions, media and scholars.  We have our own medicines which might work better or differently for some things.  And travel, hopefully."

"I expect non-zero tourism and travel, yes, and we can act as a way point for exports from elsewhere in our world very easily." And profitably, of course. "Specialists might also be a reasonable trade - our scientific knowledge is likely very different, to start."

"Likely.  When it comes to art, craftspeople will sometimes guard their trade secrets very carefully, so we can't guarantee weaving patterns or such.  Scholars and scientists on the other hand nearly always prefer to share everything they can."

"Some of our scientists are very prone to guarding secrets, but most of that's things that pass over my desk, anyways."

Well, now he's curious.  Unfortunately, he can't exactly ask what the secrets are.  Weapons?

"What other sorts of things should we be discussing immediately?"

"We'll want medics to sit down and figure out if there's any communicable diseases we're at risk of spreading to each other."

"That sounds like a good idea.  We can send for our own healers whenever you'd like.  Now, possibly, or whenever your own are brought in.  We do have quite a bit of experience with handling things brought in by travellers, given our location, and can tell them to arrange for vaccinations."

"I actually brought medics with me - one of the things I was selecting for in my guards is ability to self-apply antiseptic techniques."

"I'll send for a few of our own, then.  Most healing sorceries aren't especially good for the detection or prevention of illnesses, so I'll ask for a mundane healer with a specialty."

He goes and does this.  There are a few servants waiting outside of the room who can be co-opted for that.  He also asks them to bring tea, having failed to do so earlier.  

Tea is appreciated! As is diplomacy more in the area of what she was actually trained for, though she doesn't express this later sentiment out loud.

The tea shows up first.  The pot and strainer system are different, though the tea itself is similar enough.  Sugar and cream are provided in matching small pitchers.  Everything other than the tray itself is made entirely of clear glass etched with elaborate faceted flower patterns.  Even the stirrers are glass, rather than metal spoons.  Along with the tea are dried slices of fruit - apparently, the local accompanying food associated with tea. 

"Dishes used to serve important guests are traditionally made from clear glass, on Tle," Elizara mentions, making small talk while Ezure focuses on preparing the tea.  "It symbolizes clear communication."  It also stops people from getting the cream and sugar pitchers confused, and a few other things, though she's not going to go into exhaustive detail on the reasons.

"A good symbolism. We generally have traditionally made ceramics - if you like the people you're dealing with and they don't outrank you, you use the same cups you would among your own family. If they outrank you, you generally use delicate porcelain - it's hard to make, and therefore expensive."

"We use a lot of glass in general - it's popular among the upper class and anyone who can afford to emulate them.  What material do you use for people you don't like, who don't outrank you?"

The tea is poured with a flourish.  There are plenty of cups for everyone, including the guards, translator, and the Mika medics whenever they arrive.  He gestures at the teapot to the guards questioningly; some cultures don't like their guards drinking tea on the clock, and he's not sure which category these fall into.  

She shakes her head a bit. 

"Mostly cheaper ceramics, or things with flaws or cracks in them. Ideally subtly so."

After a while, the doors open and admit two men into the room.  One is wearing the local asymmetric clothing in orange and white.  The design is practical, not fancy like the nobles or the sorcerer-priest.  A series of three symbols flows off of one shoulder, surrounded by lines indicating high rank.  The other, very tall and broad, wears a brown traveller's robe, symmetrical other than the thick strap across his chest holding his bag.  In addition to the height, he looks clearly foreign.  

"I'm Dr. Milio," says the orange-dressed man.  "In charge of studying and managing infectious diseases from travellers for Mika."

"I'm Ara'Vine, Champion of Diamondeye," the tall one says.  "A mage with a healing mage-power.  I've spent the last few decades creating medicinal plants and vaccines in Mesasoth, to the north, and have only recently arrived in Mika.  I asked to come along because I suspect I can be of some help in this situation." 

"Good to meet you. I'm Senju Tsunade, Konoha's leader and also foremost medical expert. My primary focus is in trauma and surgery, but I've been branching out over the years." She introduces the medics she brought with her - more focused on disease, vaccination, and first-line treatment during outbreaks.

Tea is poured (for Dr. Milio; Ara'Vine declines politely but takes a slice of dried fruit), the two newcomers are informed of what has already been discussed, then they can begin to compare the current state of each world's medical knowledge.

On Tle, germ theory has been known for over a thousand years.  Vaccination in general is widespread, though newer, and only available for some of the slower-to-adapt diseases.  Most other medicines are derived from plants or fungi - usually god-or-magic-made ones, as the naturally evolved plants are too inconsistent - with many hospitals still growing their own locally.  Centralized farms creating compact, shelf-stable pills is coming along in the far north but hasn't caught on everywhere yet.  They have lots of antibiotics, treatment for things such as high blood pressure, and a better-than-nothing-but-not-flawless birth control, but are lacking good treatments for mental issues or decent painkillers.  

Healing potions and magical healing exist, but are too rare for the average person to obtain reliably.  This has likely caused some research funding issues, as the very wealthy don't have a personal stake in technology-based medical treatments which can be scaled.  Many hospitals are funded by churches, with different gods preferring different systems and specialties.  This wing of the Quercus main estate has been cordoned off for holding people who are potentially contagious, with servants who know quarantine procedures.  

They've had a lot of disruptions to science, especially medical science, over the past few hundred years. The last few decades have seen the most rapid advances in understanding in practically every field of medicine since the Imperial age centuries ago. The cornerstone of their medical science is usually magical healing, with mundane techniques being developed from those - chakra-based healing offers an incredibly in-depth capability for diagnosis and monitoring, and you can't safely use chakra to heal people without some intense medical training. They have the most knowledge of anatomy and of treating trauma, but chakra can be used as a potent disinfectant. Chakra can also be used to develop fairly custom poisons - including ones that will leave human cells and beneficial microbes alone while killing unwanted strains, and those can usually then be more widely distributed. This is a bit less effective on viruses; they're working on speeding up vaccine development and on finding ways to improve immune systems. They have drugs that can boost most of the body's systems including immunity but risk causing serious fever, and a pill that helps replenish blood loss, and near perfect pain killers - chakra-based pain killing techniques have fewer side effects and are less prone to people developing immunities or addictions than chemical pain killers. They can treat cancer, though operations on brain cancers are still risky. Tsunade's been working on ways to regrow affected neurons, both for brain cancer and as a treatment for traumatic brain injuries. They have an effectively flawless chakra based reversible sterilization - which is fairly recent, and was a fairly big priority culturally - and less thorough one-off options for birth control, both based on barriers and on medicines.

Medics trained in chakra usually are assigned to the front lines of major infection outbreaks, since any medic-nin worth the name can prevent themselves from becoming infected or even being a carrier, making them invaluable for getting highly infectious diseases under control. A good medic-nin can entirely cure someone of severe forms of most of the known potential pandemics within an hour. They still get disease outbreaks - medics of that caliber are rare and expensive to train, and not every nation has reliable medical programs or trusts other nations enough to import medics in an emergency.

Shinobi are the main leaders in medicine, largely because of chakra. The daimyo - their leaders - usually give shinobi a general fund for medical development, and there's a standing amount of budget set aside for a fairly large mobile medical corps in Fire Nation. Their daimyo, though, is unusually astute and unusually capable of recognizing that a healthy populace is a productive populace, and several nations don't have those luxuries. (She leaves off mentioning that she also fought with the daimyo for that medical corps to be established; no sense bragging, or casting her own leader in a bad light.)

"It sounds like chakra can be used to do many of the same things my mage-power can do."  He sounds envious of a world where he's not the sole bottleneck for those.  "I'd be curious to discover the differences between them.  Mine is very easy to use for direct healing of the user and detecting the state of the body, harder to use for anything more advanced including the creation of scalable medicines."

"Chakra's most easily used for crude manipulation of the world - healing in general's such a difficult application that the difference between closing a cut and reversing major trauma is smaller than the difference between either and setting things on fire."

"I'm curious to hear the difference between your magic's diagnostic vision and mine."

He hands over a loose uncut diamond about the size of a fingernail.  "This has thirty seconds of charge in it.  That's enough to look, though not to heal more than a small cut."

"If you wanted to test vision directly, you'd want to hand that to someone with a relevant bloodline - my diagnostic techniques would run more on feel."

The translator speaks up, speaking for himself for the first time in a while.  "Sight-based words are the ones most commonly used for magical senses of all kind.  'Sense' probably would have been more accurate.  I apologize if that had been rendered unclearly?" he glances at Ara'Vine questioningly.  His words are understandable by anyone, so the locals would have heard his side of the exchange, if not Tsunade's original answer.  

"It's more akin to proprioception than eyes," he clarifies, which then gets translated.  

"Sounds more like our thing then, yes - we usually describe magical senses as 'feelings' here, even when they're based in sight. I'd be interested in trying. How do I activate this...?"

"It should feel like something that can be activated at will."

As soon as she touches the diamond, there's a knowledge that comes with it about the magic inside.  That it allows the user to heal and alter one's own body, and gives a sense that can let the user know what can be changed.  That there isn't much there, and that the chargestone is something that can be turned on or off at will.  The magic feels like it wants to be used to heal in particular.  

She activates it.

The new sense takes up almost all of her awareness as a flood of new information becomes noticable, keeping only barely within her mind's ability to contain.  

Trillions of cells moving as one, or around each other.  Each blood cell is noticable as it travels, and she can feel each muscle as her heart beats and she breathes.  Saliva glands, hair follicles, the entire digestive system, every other system all at once.  Attempting to focus on a single part doesn't slow the torrent, which opens up like a fractal to reveal more detailed knowledge of the smaller section as the unfocused parts clear up room for them.  Cell nuclei, mitochondria, cell walls and their features, DNA itself.  All of the information is jumbled chaotically, millions of facts but no organization to them, focused more on the literal actions and locations as they're happening than how they're meant to help the whole.

Tiny injuries or accumulated damage draw attention like moving objects on a still field does for sight.  Particles of smoke from nearby fireplaces, and other such small things.  The magic is aware of them, and she can feel it want to heal them almost like a dog pulling on a leash - more of an action to hold it than let it heal.  The intuition comes that the magic will act of its own will with anything it sees as healing, but any other changes need to be done manually and with no assistance.  There is also a strange block around her brain - the will of the magic itself can heal injuries there, but it can't be changed manually.

The sense can only detect physical things.  Chakra is entirely invisible to it, as if it isn't there at all.  If there's anything that her chakra is doing to the underlying physical matter and energy, it creates noticable looking gaps where things seem to leap from one place to another or appear from nothing, like looking into the gears of a clock where some of the gears are invisible.

Interesting. Does that change if she channels chakra through it?

There's no change.

"Interesting. The knowledge from this is more in depth, I believe, at any specific point than our scans are without immense training, but it's less of a - controlled overview, I would say. I could use chakra to tag and follow a specific hormone fairly easily, and isolate the changes it causes. It gives more information at once, too, but seems unaware of chakra itself, and seems to have an independent idea of what injury is."

"I've noticed it fails to show local magics that affect the body as well.  Potions that cause an increase in strength for a short time, for example.  I haven't looked into them much, because potions are expensive and looking at the energy appearing from nothing makes me a bit dizzy, but I wouldn't be surprised if it handled chakra similarly.  

"There's definitely an intelligence to a number of magics.  From what Diamondeye has mentioned, it's not the gods themselves nor is it a self-aware person.  Chakra doesn't have anything like it?"

"Chakra has - standard things it does, but it's in much the same way water behaves consistently in certain circumstances."

"That does seem to explain why it would need more practice to use."

"Yes. Chakra in general is hard to use without training from a young age, and medical chakra in particular is exceptionally difficult."

"Because of the amount of detail and risk of getting it wrong, or does chakra handle living flesh differently than other materials?"

"In a way, both. The first is the most commonly cited one, but most applications of medical chakra involve interfacing with the patient's own chakra system - which chakra does handle differently from normal matter, and which is a problem both in medical applications and in placing someone under an illusion. Chakra isn't bothered by living flesh, though, and has fewer problems if the patient's chakra system is suppressed."

"Can you see if the people of Tle have chakra systems?  And, if not, would that make us unusually susceptible to illusions?"

"I can't see chakra myself, but I'd be able to sense it in detail if I scanned someone. Right now I can't sense ambient chakra, though."

"And I'm unsure - it might make you entirely immune to illusions, since those work by interface with foreign chakra."

"Right, sight versus sense - That's going to take some getting used to.  Though, we might be getting a bit off-track," Elizara says, then switches the topic back to medical.

Mika is considerably faster and safer than the next nearest passes.  However, even though it would still be faster to hold literally everyone passing through for thirty days of quarantine than go around, they don't have the space or food resources for that.  Here are the metrics they usually use to determine who winds up being held or turned away.  

She shares similar metrics - ideally, you have a medic scan people, but they often don't have enough trained... Still, the gate represents a single point so they'll likely be able to station an apprentice medic there...

That sounds like a good idea!  Have they done anything similar in mountain passes or the like, in their world?  Some of their orich-smiths have managed to make lenses which could detect illness, but they had to be designed for a single specific illness and took up an infeasible amount of orichalcum.  Chakra seems better suited for it.

Mountain passes don't often match with country borders all that well, and most of their mountains aren't that high, anyways - trying to stop movements of entire populations is often prohibitively hard if your nation is large.

Mika's mountains aren't as high as the ones a few thousand miles north, but they are still a challenge to cross.  

Was there anything else important enough to bring up right away?  The visitors have been offered rooms here, and, given that they are medical shinobi and don't need to be under quarantine to be safe to either side, they can also visit anywhere in the city if they wish.  Considering that there are no other translators who know both languages, the priest can continue to accompany them for the moment, though translation magic is rare enough on Tle that they should look into other possibilities for the long run.  Perhaps they can rustle up some linguists.  Does chakra offer any benefits to translation?  

She doesn't think there's anything else urgent. And, no, it doesn't, but she can get an agent who'll be quick at learning the language.

Then Elizara will conclude the meeting for now and they can see to their respective duties.  

Elizara intends to go looking for linguists on her own side, then send more detailed logs of expected trade and papers on technology from Kor.  

Ara'Vine communicates interest in travel to their world eventually, once travel is open and determined safe.  He can offer some chargestones for medical scanning or study, though given the slow rate of creation and value warns that they won't be a scalable solution.  He gives the address to the hospital, and notes that the servants here will also be able to find it if they prefer.  

They'll welcome travelers - once everything's processed, of course.

She sends for two linguistic specialists - a skilled Yamanaka, if anyone wants to try a direct knowledge transfer, and a mousey genin, fourteen years old, who had rapidly specialized into ancient historical research and code breaking after graduation. She also has trade, technological, and medical briefings prepared.

Given the scarcity of charge stones, she suspects they'll want to design any experiments carefully.

There are a few translators who are interested in trying knowledge transfers, or learning the language the long way if that doesn't work.  Several more are merely interested in learning more about what direct knowledge transfers are.

Briefings are exchanged.  Technology seems a bit behind in most cases, though some individual technologies are surprisingly advanced, Tle having had different magics and different pressures for developing things.  

Direct knowledge transfers are a specific application of mind reading. Even specialists usually get some episodic memories associated with the knowledge, especially for languages. They can go both ways; projective knowledge transfers are harder to learn but far more organized, with less bleed through of memories.

Konoha is also behind Tle in a few areas - they seem to have barely put any development into conventional weapons systems, for one, with a few odd knock on effects from that in other fields.

That scares off one of them.  Two still want to serve as the language-giver side of the transfer, among others who would be fine receiving information only.  One has three languages and the other has four, overlapping in the local language and Korstrade, for a total of five languages from around South Cardinal.  

The shinobi seem to have fewer languages in general - the Yamanaka actually speaks an unusual amount (the mainland tongue for the Elemental Nations, a language from the Land of Lightning peninsula, a language from the islands out past the Land of Water, a language from the western Land of Wind, for a total of four), and is willing to transfer all of them to various receivers.

The receivers appreciate that!  

Tle has hundreds if not thousands of languages.  They don't know exactly how many, because the entire planet doesn't have reliable communication.  Many obscure tribes in hard-to-reach places have their own language, and it's hard to tell how many of those there are.  Korstrade will work nearly anywhere in the Cardinals though is most common in the regions surrounding Therma'Ro Ocean.  River-sothan is a common language in the western half of South Cardinal.  The others they are offered are more obscure, though not useless.  

They know they had a big empire a few centuries ago; they suspect it may have spread its language and wiped out a lot of local languages during its rule.

They've had empires try that before, though none got to more than a decent chunk of a continent or managed to hold them long enough to wipe out the native languages entirely.  Many did influence the languages heavily before they fell.  The linguists can go on at length about ancient Setebran root words popping up in unrelated languages worldwide.  Korstrade loanwords are also spreading, though Kor doesn't claim legal power over other countries.

They know a little bit about historic developments! A lot of old records were destroyed when the empire fell, unfortunately, but they've rediscovered some things.

What history Mika has is available at the library.  Events after the invention of the printing press are well documented, and it gets spottier the further back from then.  

The printing press was pretty recent, for them - it was an imported technology, actually, and they skipped the intermediate ones because those didn't work with their script very well.

It was about 500 years ago for Tle, spreading out of Garnethold.  The ones who got the language transfer can see how their language would be trickier than the local one.  There are a few languages like that on Tle, but no one nearby knows much about their history with printing.  

Nods.

The technology tree differences between the two worlds are interesting, but difficult to compare without specialists in that present.