"I'm a doctor. Not centrally trained as a gynecologist, but I testify before the council of nations a lot and advise the leader of Konoha, so I've been cross-specializing in - basically everything policy relevant, at least to the point where I can tell them which experts they need to bring in instead. And those experts then usually want me presenting alongside them or at least helping them with their arguments; there are very few medics fully comfortable with politics."

"Oh, neat. Council of nations?"

"International organization, kind of, though it hasn't been formalized as a permanent thing yet. Grew out of the combined military command for the war, and continues coordinating any international efforts, especially for stuff like famine and disease relief. It also coordinates people in areas without a surviving government or with multiple possible claims - which is a lot of areas, and there's increasing calls to just go ahead and unify into one state, so there's been some... Weird creep back and forth in terms of powers."

"Sounds complicated. How's it structured?" They are on the subway by this point, even with Isabella keeping their walking pace slow.

"Man our ground level political system is currently a stupidly overcomplicated mess that broke and is being held together with duct tape."

"So, backing up for history lesson - about... Eighty years ago, the Warring States era began to really properly close. The transition period began before that, and consolidation took another two decades to really fully settle in, but eighty years ago is when things tipped over into more or less stable governments becoming the norm."

"During the Warring States era, the samurai - the nobility - were the largest and most powerful group of magic users, and were basically the ones doing all the warring. They'd raise civilian armies - back then, armies mostly just had magic users as generals - and they'd hire mercenary shinobi groups to do their dirty work or back up an army. Everything sucked."

"Eighty years ago, the two biggest shinobi clans in what ended up becoming the Land of Fire decided to unite into one political body, and over the next few years other major clans joined them. Initially - kind of like a union for mercenaries. Collective bargaining meant less shitty jobs, meant better survival. They could pool their resources. Train each other's kids, cover each other's weak points. This was Konoha."

"Around that time, the micro-states were colliding and settling into bigger states, and other shinobi groups formed other unions - those ended up being called the Hidden Villages."

"The shinobi coallescing caused a lot of political tension, because now each territory had a core class of nobles and a large group of mercenaries all able to use magic and all very leery of each other at best. The shinobi style of magic use is less good for war, though, and we were still outnumbered and more culturally fragmented, so the system settled into a state within a state - the larger state was feudal, and the Hidden Villages got very awkwardly slotted into that. Answerable to the daimyo, but not to other nobles - which let the daimyo use us as cludgels against uppity noble houses."

"This wasn't really stable, though, because of the fertility issues I mentioned earlier - and the nobility were way worse about letting in civilians. Most nations ended up with laws legally barring shinobi villages from growing our populations too much, but - those could be gotten around, and it didn't really matter with the nobles sliding rapidly into demographic collapse. By twenty five years ago, wars were being fought with mostly shinobi, almost no civilians. By twenty years ago, the shinobi conclusively had military advantages within their own states - but the nations were all watching each other for a moment of weakness, so we couldn't break ranks."

"And then the cataclysm happened, and the nobles were all wiped out, and suddenly the Hidden Villages were the only political group with any ability to govern more than like. Ten thousand people."

"But most of the Hidden Villages also had hits to our system - of the five great villages, three lost their leader, and the other two had already gone through major political upheaval within the previous five years. And ability to respond to the cataclysm wasn't evenly spread, but we were all very, very sure that if we turned on each other to fight over what was left we'd all die - the same thing that kept us in alliance with the nobles, but now targetted at aliens who may or may not show back up and would almost certainly attack us again. Both of the villages whose leaders survived are fully in favor of unification - both leaders have proposed someone other than them rule, even, they're being very insistent that this isn't a power grab."

"Konoha... Isn't, really, and we're one of the two who did best in terms of keeping our structures and resources intact. Our current leader is fairly conservative about sudden political change - but he's indicated he doesn't actually want to lead very long, and his two probable picks for who he'd endorse to replace him are me and a friend of mine - and we're both in favor of unification."

"So currently the council is in an awkward and controversial middle place between 'government consolidating out of smaller states' and 'group of diplomats with a fancy name.'"

"Interesting. Why are the villages 'hidden', are they like actually magically hidden somehow -"

"When they formed their locations were secret. That grew out of the Warring States era, you kept your home base a secret and ideally moved it a lot. Keeping the locations secret eventually became impossible, but the naming system stuck."

"I'm at all worried that - hm - so this planet has a history of colonialist behavior between populations which is mostly not very good, and you have the advantage of being quicker to get transportation sorted out, and you probably want to lean on that to set the tone, early on, make sure you screen people before you send them whichever way, and mages will catch up but not for a few years."

"Yeah that sort of behavior is one of the reasons we'll want to limit movement."

"I'd also like to get an idea of expected diplomatic behavior, here, and how signaling works, and also who we'd even talk to for diplomacy and for making it very clear we're a sovereign land. Also ideally figure out how 'somebody violently objects to us being a sovereign land' would shake out."

"We're unlikely to do colonialism, at least in my lifetime. Not something we're geared towards culturally, not something that'd benefit us, and also not something we have the right infrastructure to even attempt. But we'll screen our outgoings pretty thoroughly, and probably rotate anyone stationed here a lot - if nothing else, we don't want criminals deciding to dodge extradition here, or people trying to defect."

"I'm not a diplomat or even a particularly sociable person, but I can at least, uh, recommend you books once you've learned to read - shouldn't take long, you're bright and already speak English - do you have a lot of people interested in defecting, normally?"

"I could read some of the signs that weren't English at the airport, actually - they were in the other major language on our continent."

"And kinda depends on how you define 'a lot' and also on what's going on? Time's we're at war with people very interested in bribing defectors tend to have more of that, and places that're internally unstable can hemorrhage people fast. But it's not really - a problem, right now, we're not in conflict, and there was a general amnesty after the cataclysm for... Actually basically everything, people got amnesties for behavior a lot worse than 'ran off with state secrets' or 'ran off to be a bandit somewhere.' We still keep track of shinobi, because we're not stupid, and abandoning your post will still get you a court martial, but it's - laxer, and you can ask permission to join another Hidden Village's command, now, and it's easier to actually retire." 

"What's the other language?"

"Japanese."

"Huh. Do you - somehow write English in Japanese characters - or do you just not happen to know how to read English but both speak and write Japanese - or have a separate vernacular and literary language -"

"Combination of 'this is a minority language' - so anyone who speaks it is usually bilingual or part of a remote community; 'Japanese was the official language of the Empire' - and they did a lot of cultural imperialism, honestly, so stuff they disapproved of that's easier to ban might've vanished; and 'nearly everyone is illiterate' - if you have the free time to learn to read, you can learn Japanese, which I guess in some areas ends up as the third of those. And some of the first, too, in areas this is closer to a majority language - though we might also have a weird adapted script for it by now. Not all the types of symbols we use were on the signs, and we only use the one script system across all languages."

"Well, a lot of Wikipedia pages will have Japanese versions, though I'm not personally able to vouch for the quality of the contents."

"It might help, though. What's Wikipedia?"

"Do you have computers?"

"Some."

"So, we have ways for computers to access content that is on other faraway computers, and this whole network of information sharing is called the Internet, and Wikipedia is a repository of information on the Internet which is user-editable and, surprisingly enough given that, is really high quality."

"We have some internal networks like that, but nothing generally publicly accessible. That seems - impressive."

"I like the internet. It's got icky parts but they're part of it being generally freely usable, you know."

"Icky parts? ...Actually, given humans I'm guessing a lot of that's porn. Or bizarre takes about reality. Or really fundamentally horrifying moral opinions."

"What do you mean 'or'?"

She snorts. "I'll avoid the icky parts, then."