The Way Through Stone Village (Naruto)

74: Check In 3

["New River"--The Oh Hellos]

Day 56-57:

The next two days passed in more whirlwinds of activity.

More healings. Momo finally met Miyashi's sister. She was crippled from an accident in a factory and couldn't walk.

Momo was almost getting used to seeing the gift work, but she still never felt like it was her doing it... She felt like a spectator to it...but it still worked. The young woman stood up, and she was perfectly fine.

Camie said it was mind blowing how much Iike a story it was.

After that day, there seemed to be no more people in line--this was revealing just how small the population of Rain had become, because even though it had felt like a lot, Sakura was sure it was less than 150 people.

They guessed the population of this Village had to be less than 5,000 people.

Wally said that was the same as small towns where he grew up. Not a lot of people.

Shine said that where she lived, a small city would have 10x that amount of people. 

"But then where I live, a small city has more than the population of some entire countries," she said.

[Did you know that a given average city in California has a higher population than Greenland?--And a much higher crime rate for that population also.]

"Just how many people live in your country?" Sai asked Shine curiously.

"Millions," Shine said.

They stared at her.

The shinobi thought their world was large enough...but none of the Villages had millions of people. They had either thousands or tens of thousands if they were big ones.

They didn't even think there were a million people in all the 5 major villages combined.

[Considering the numbers in the war were 80,000, and that had to be more than half the population of the Villages, since most of them are fighters, that's probably a fair guess.]

"Billions worldwide," Shine added, making it worse.

"I can't imagine that many people on one planet..." Temari added.

"It's more in ours," Momo said. "Quirks really made the population explode. People were able to adapt more to their environment and to survive more natural disasters, so the death toll went way down. Villains can cause deaths, but I've heard that villains kill less people now than terrorists did back before quirks... I guess it balances out."

"It's that with all those powers, people aren't as helpless as they used to be to those who have weapons and numbers," Shine said. "Though you're not supposed to use your quirks, I imagine that no one who's about to face death would stick to that rule. Not if they had any sense.

"As Camie would say, mind blown," Ino made a motion like her mind was exploding. "I don't know why I'm so surprised , I guess the differences between our worlds never stop adding up."

***

On the 57th day, Matsuri had not gone home yet. She'd begged to stay a little longer and they'd giving in as long as no one would worry about her being gone.

She and Hanabi had hit it off in that time, being the only two girls in their age range. Though Matsuri was a little older, but she didn't care. Hanabi had been catching her up on all the stuff.

Perhaps it was a teenaged girl thing, but Matsuri also took to Dabi pretty quickly, though she preferred Gaara, naturally.

It was pretty clear she still had a crush on Gaara. But she wasn't obnoxious about it, so no one thought it spoiled having her around.