Wutaiverse!
Yes, yes, I know, technically it's Tuesday, but as far as I'm concerned it ain't tomorrow until I wake up in the morning.
And they're predicting snow, on the morning that starts the week.
If it does snow the driving will be hell.
Title: 1988 - 07 - Capparwire Hunt
Author: Scrolls
Rating: PG-13?
Fandom/Pairing: FF7/None (eventual Aeris/Cloud/Sephiroth/Zack)
Disclaimer: SqaureEnix Owns, I'm just having some fun.
Notes: The one that took way too long.
Summary: What if Momma Strife had taken Cloud and Aeris and gone to Wutai, what would be the same, and what would be different?
Constructive criticism will be hugged while flames will be used to line the bunny hutch.
Enjoy Ladies and Gentlemen.
1988 - 07 - Capparwire Hunt
“Bradley, we have found another camp site.” Sephiroth sounded as if he was covering his nose over the radio.
“Empty or remains?”
“Buried remains, someone found them before we did and buried what was left.”
“Understood, give me your coordinates and keep on your sweep.”
“Affirmative.” Sephiroth rattled off his and Lar’s coordinates before signing off. Bradley had pulled out a notebook, and written down coordinates, who found, what found, and how close the site was to any trails or roads.
This particular mission was a rather simple one in nature, with only a few dangers to watch out for.
Bradley, Connoway, and Beckett were at base camp, their job was to sweep the area for capparwire nests and destroy them. Sephiroth and Lar were checking the north; Walden and Corbie had taken the east, with Emmell and Dru to the south. The west they had already cleared the day before. They were only one squad out of almost one hundred that had been pulled in for this mission.
It had been long known to the locals that every five years the capparwire’s swarmed, following the breeding season in which they gathered in large nests that produced millions of offspring that when hatched ate everything in sight.
The thing to remember about capparwire’s was that they were omnivores.
And that if they knew there was food behind it they could chew through wood.
Thus the reason that the Junon farmers never planted crops during the fifth year, had granaries that were stone and mortar, and either kept their animals in rather large barns or sent them away before the swarm could begin.
Both farmers and the city saved food during the four years there were no swarms so they could eat during the fifth.
“Walden here, found a trio- nest, all ashes now.”
“Confirm, any bodies?” Bradley flipped the pages of the notebook as he grabbed his pencil.
“Mostly small animals, a few of the adults, but most were tending to the eggs.”
“Understood, gimmie the coordinates and keep moving.” Walden ran through the numbers and signed off. The base commander who had first come up with this plan for handling the capparwires had asked them to write down the location of every nest and site they found. He was hoping to find some pattern in the nesting sites, maybe make the hunting a little easier.
Not that he and the other captains minded, they’d got an early start just for this, and anything that made a hunt safer was fine by them.
Sephiroth had called in at least twenty sites, he hadn’t heard a word from Lar since they left base camp-being their long range expert he’d be back far enough to cover the lad as he checked a site out.
Walden, as their senior mage, had been showing Sephiroth battle magic’s as of late, and that reminded him to check if that requisition had come in yet, time they worked on the summons.
Corbie, who was with Walden, was their naturalist-which surprised the heck out of everyone who heard about it. Yep, Corbie was a certified scientist who made folks form both sides of the aisle scratch their heads. He’d published Bradley didn’t know how many papers and had another dozen or so in the works, it had finally gotten to the point last year that he had been hauling around so many papers that the squad had pooled their gil and had gotten him one of those super laptops, ones designed for heavy and hard use, with materia junctioned for extra safety.
Nowadays it was a strange thing to not be falling asleep to the sound of him typing.
Emmell was their scout and tracker, man could track the wind if he put his mind to it, had done it once during a drunken bet. Like Lar he’d be hanging back, watching out for Dru as he checked their sights.
The last time those two had checked in Dru had had that distracted tone that meant he was contemplating something’s place in one of his future explosions.
Chucking at some of the things that one had gotten away with-if they couldn’t prove it, they could prosecute-Bradley flipped back to his previous spot and got back to marking the map.
Shinra hadn’t been in the area in any great force until the build up for Wutai, then it had been a frantic two years of building to handle the estimated traffic that would be going in and out of the area.
And then someone pointed out that there were enough natural resources in the area that most of the most commonly used and in need items could be made there. Thus the factories went up.
The locals of course tries to warn them, the foremen, the site managers, even Shinra himself, they were all simply patted on the head as worry warts and sent of their way.
Even when the entire town began prepping for the swarm, when the farmers began to send their heads to relatives up and down the coast, when people began to bring their pots and flower inside and erect homemade miniature green houses around groves of trees they ignored it.
In the first swarm year both factory workers and troopers fell by the dozens, by the time it ended and they could actually get across how dire they’re situation was the whole lot had crammed themselves into boats off the coast and were waiting the whole thing out.
The base and factory had originally had a combined population of roughly five thousand.
Capparwire’s were omnivores; that was the important thing to remember.
If it weren’t for the trade that used Junon’s ports the area would have been abandoned, as it was physically Junon was the closest part of the eastern continent to the Corel continent.
So as a result people lived there, and spent one year out of every five indoors, covered head to toe, and on short rations.
“Emmell here, got a nest, bit one two, and old, most of the parents are dead.”
“Understood, check your coordinates and keep sweeping.” Emmell didn’t just tell him the numbers on his radio, but gave a quick description of and major landmarks or anything of interest he thought might be useful.
Jotting down the last of it Bradley read it back and the scout signed off.
“Everyone all right out there?” Bekkett, the only one of the young thirds that they had kept had lunch in his hands and a worried look on his face.
“Nothing but nests and feeding sites.” He told the other as he set down Bradley’s meal. His own lunch and Connoway’s already on the other side of the table.
Base Camp was two sleeping tents, and a larger tent between the two for cooking, lounging and whoever was doing radio work-it also was where the birds slept for the night. There was some nasty nocturnal critter that came out at night and it was better for the birds to not get bitten by it.
They rotated who stayed and who went out each time they moved camp, and that was going to be often enough to see how everyone worked with everyone else now.
Picking up his fork with one hand and a pen with the other Bradley continued his job of marking on the map where they had found each site, and what type it was.
You wouldn’t think that little capparwire’s could make such large nests, but they did, banding together to spin the threads it was made out of, weaving in any natural materials and anchoring it with rocks.
After that was the mating, during which they weren’t exactly sure what went on. Some-Corbie-speculated that each member of the group mated with each other member of the group, or that they might make with each other based on some rule stick, like who could make the most webbing, or was the fattest, or something.
But it was known that they would leave the nests in shifts to go eat. This was the reason so much wildlife either fled this time of year or got eaten. And why so many places on the trails and roads had splashes of red.
The last and current swarm however, was seeing a change in that. The base commander, in a startling fit of genius, had hauled in the locals to get an idea of when the actual swarming usually started, versus when the capparwires began building nests and when the eggs would begin to hatch.
As a result, two months before the swarm was expected to hit the city, the base commander sent all the troopers into the field, with one order, burn the nests. They created a mile wide swath of-mostly-nest free woods around Junon.
He then, after learning more about the monsters, ordered a warehouse full of MRE’s and chocobo feed, and just about the time the swarm usually hit the town, had his men out dumping the stuff along the edges of the nest free zone.
While Shinra had come to understand the basic’s about the capparwire’s, the locals knew a great deal more.
Like the fact that capparwire’s didn’t sleep during the entire swarm, that any capparwire that fell asleep was eaten by it’s fellows, and that if a capparwire were to be given enough to eat it would fall asleep.
To say that Junon was pro-Shinra after that was an understatement.
Even Old Man Shinra agreed that the cost of the food and feed was miniscule compared to the damages a full swarming caused every time.
So, now here they were, with the next fifth year started, and the sixth had been grabbed to help with nest destruction.
Not that Bradley minded, with all that had happened in the last couple months his squad needed something nice and simple to tackle, get then moving and not thinking so much.
Chester, their lone SOLDIER, had gotten not only himself, but their support magi, Madren, and the junior medic, Vallen dead. He had been warned about using a particular material on a specific monster-which he had promptly used on said monster. The beast had taken the extra energy and attack strength granted by the material and had gone after the three of them.
And all from refusing to listen to a “Normal”.
During the fallout it had been reviled that the man had been dismissed form his previous squad for the same reason, hard for the Captain of a squad to keep order when one of your guys refuses to even acknowledge you.
As for how he wound up in the Sixth, that had been Heideggar’s doing.
Interesting what could be dug up when the secretaries and records personnel were buttered up to.
With those tidbits of news, and all the speculation that went with them running through the forces, Heideggar had finally done the smart thing. He had passed a new rule stating that any SOLDIER who refused to work with those who were not enhanced would be posted to the most boring, out of the way facilities that he could find.
And that they would be given the most disgusting, boring, grunt-work jobs there.
It had even been phrased that way too.
But that hadn’t been the only change, Bradley and several other Captains had gotten together and had done some serious housecleaning of both their own squads, but others as well.
Efficiency reports, battle readiness reports, and complaints from their own men, had been compiled into a massive report about who was, and who wasn’t going to get their squads killed-which had been happening with too much regularity for any of their tastes.
And Heideggar-busy reassigning stubborn SOLDIER’s to make it look like he was doing something about the insubordination that had been allowed to fester-hadn’t cared, not so long as it made him look good.
They had also gotten in some promotions while they were at it. And as there hadn’t been enough good ones to go around for al the squads needing them, they had combined as many as they could.
He couldn’t in good conscious hold Farley back at that point. And with how well Fardel-their Jack of All Trades, Asrim-their summoner and long range fighter, and Jerrol-the second of the new 3rds worked with him, he couldn’t keep them either.
Farley had earned the promotion years ago and had only been held back by politics, now he’d gotten it and the Seventh, two of the 22nd, and the remains of the 75th. Each of which had been decimated by their former idiot Captains.
His former lieutenant hadn’t been the only one, there had been up to forty individuals that had gotten the Captain’s promotion they deserved, with a squad in bad need of a good CO.
And thanks to Heideggar’s current state of mind they had been able to not only do that, get each squad assigned to a good, low-level shake down mission, but they had actually managed to get each of the individuals they had kicked out of command positions reassigned.
Needless to say there were now a large number of newly assigned paper pushers who were not happy with them. They had slipped a warning to those newly promoted so they would be aware of the issue, but beyond that there wasn’t anything they could do about it.
Good news, it was highly unlikely that any of them would get their abilities up to the point they could pass the combat readiness tests. Bad news, considering the positions some of them were in they could very easily cause trouble for them down the road.
Yet considering some of the things said by a fellow of theirs who had gone the same route after a bad bit of shrapnel had gone where it shouldn’t, that lot might soon be in hand.
And Farley hadn’t gotten the only promotion.
Sephiroth was now his Lieutenant, with Walden bumped up to Sergeant. Connoway was still sergeant, and happy there.
Rhonn, the last of the new 3rds, he’d gotten reassigned, in one of their first missions out they had discovered just how badly he got mako dazzled, they had been forced to take that into account for each mission afterwards and it had gotten in the way.
Those who got hypnotized by simply looking at mako had no business on the front. While any mako spring that was found was marked on the maps and those maps were updated whenever possible, it was a simple fact that just as old springs dried up new ones formed in some of the oddest places.
He’d heard stories of entire squads just standing there, entranced by the mako, and that it required a knock out or something trying to eat them to yank it out of them.
Someone who got that badly mako dazzled was a danger to the squad. So Rhonn had been reassigned to a base that didn’t handle mako. Heideggar had learned that lesson three days after assigning the boy to them after almost a dozen squads had to bail on missions because they had members so badly dazzled it wasn’t safe to continue.
Dazzle testing was now thankfully mandatory part of training and orientation.
Plate empty, he took it back to the fire, being on radio duty meant you didn’t have to cook or clean up, but it was a lot of sitting down. So he gladly used the excuse to get some walking in.
They didn’t have to check in for Bradley to know that the others would be taking their own lunches now, a few more hours and he could call them in.
He had honestly paused for a moment when this mission had been offered to them, but only for a moment. They needed to move, to stop thinking of what happened and what it cost them, and all the changes that had happened after.
It was a simple job, a good shake down mission.
Death was a part of their lives, as Troopers you learned this. But things were starting to settle. They would never forget, but life had to move on.
As they always did, as they always would.
Yeah, seven pages, 2,708 words, this might be the longest piece in the story, but it had a lot of ground to cover and I wanted to show some of what was going on behind the scenes.
Also, for info on Capparwire's.
Have a Good Week All! I'll see you next Monday!
And they're predicting snow, on the morning that starts the week.
If it does snow the driving will be hell.
Title: 1988 - 07 - Capparwire Hunt
Author: Scrolls
Rating: PG-13?
Fandom/Pairing: FF7/None (eventual Aeris/Cloud/Sephiroth/Zack)
Disclaimer: SqaureEnix Owns, I'm just having some fun.
Notes: The one that took way too long.
Summary: What if Momma Strife had taken Cloud and Aeris and gone to Wutai, what would be the same, and what would be different?
Constructive criticism will be hugged while flames will be used to line the bunny hutch.
Enjoy Ladies and Gentlemen.
1988 - 07 - Capparwire Hunt
“Bradley, we have found another camp site.” Sephiroth sounded as if he was covering his nose over the radio.
“Empty or remains?”
“Buried remains, someone found them before we did and buried what was left.”
“Understood, give me your coordinates and keep on your sweep.”
“Affirmative.” Sephiroth rattled off his and Lar’s coordinates before signing off. Bradley had pulled out a notebook, and written down coordinates, who found, what found, and how close the site was to any trails or roads.
This particular mission was a rather simple one in nature, with only a few dangers to watch out for.
Bradley, Connoway, and Beckett were at base camp, their job was to sweep the area for capparwire nests and destroy them. Sephiroth and Lar were checking the north; Walden and Corbie had taken the east, with Emmell and Dru to the south. The west they had already cleared the day before. They were only one squad out of almost one hundred that had been pulled in for this mission.
It had been long known to the locals that every five years the capparwire’s swarmed, following the breeding season in which they gathered in large nests that produced millions of offspring that when hatched ate everything in sight.
The thing to remember about capparwire’s was that they were omnivores.
And that if they knew there was food behind it they could chew through wood.
Thus the reason that the Junon farmers never planted crops during the fifth year, had granaries that were stone and mortar, and either kept their animals in rather large barns or sent them away before the swarm could begin.
Both farmers and the city saved food during the four years there were no swarms so they could eat during the fifth.
“Walden here, found a trio- nest, all ashes now.”
“Confirm, any bodies?” Bradley flipped the pages of the notebook as he grabbed his pencil.
“Mostly small animals, a few of the adults, but most were tending to the eggs.”
“Understood, gimmie the coordinates and keep moving.” Walden ran through the numbers and signed off. The base commander who had first come up with this plan for handling the capparwires had asked them to write down the location of every nest and site they found. He was hoping to find some pattern in the nesting sites, maybe make the hunting a little easier.
Not that he and the other captains minded, they’d got an early start just for this, and anything that made a hunt safer was fine by them.
Sephiroth had called in at least twenty sites, he hadn’t heard a word from Lar since they left base camp-being their long range expert he’d be back far enough to cover the lad as he checked a site out.
Walden, as their senior mage, had been showing Sephiroth battle magic’s as of late, and that reminded him to check if that requisition had come in yet, time they worked on the summons.
Corbie, who was with Walden, was their naturalist-which surprised the heck out of everyone who heard about it. Yep, Corbie was a certified scientist who made folks form both sides of the aisle scratch their heads. He’d published Bradley didn’t know how many papers and had another dozen or so in the works, it had finally gotten to the point last year that he had been hauling around so many papers that the squad had pooled their gil and had gotten him one of those super laptops, ones designed for heavy and hard use, with materia junctioned for extra safety.
Nowadays it was a strange thing to not be falling asleep to the sound of him typing.
Emmell was their scout and tracker, man could track the wind if he put his mind to it, had done it once during a drunken bet. Like Lar he’d be hanging back, watching out for Dru as he checked their sights.
The last time those two had checked in Dru had had that distracted tone that meant he was contemplating something’s place in one of his future explosions.
Chucking at some of the things that one had gotten away with-if they couldn’t prove it, they could prosecute-Bradley flipped back to his previous spot and got back to marking the map.
Shinra hadn’t been in the area in any great force until the build up for Wutai, then it had been a frantic two years of building to handle the estimated traffic that would be going in and out of the area.
And then someone pointed out that there were enough natural resources in the area that most of the most commonly used and in need items could be made there. Thus the factories went up.
The locals of course tries to warn them, the foremen, the site managers, even Shinra himself, they were all simply patted on the head as worry warts and sent of their way.
Even when the entire town began prepping for the swarm, when the farmers began to send their heads to relatives up and down the coast, when people began to bring their pots and flower inside and erect homemade miniature green houses around groves of trees they ignored it.
In the first swarm year both factory workers and troopers fell by the dozens, by the time it ended and they could actually get across how dire they’re situation was the whole lot had crammed themselves into boats off the coast and were waiting the whole thing out.
The base and factory had originally had a combined population of roughly five thousand.
Capparwire’s were omnivores; that was the important thing to remember.
If it weren’t for the trade that used Junon’s ports the area would have been abandoned, as it was physically Junon was the closest part of the eastern continent to the Corel continent.
So as a result people lived there, and spent one year out of every five indoors, covered head to toe, and on short rations.
“Emmell here, got a nest, bit one two, and old, most of the parents are dead.”
“Understood, check your coordinates and keep sweeping.” Emmell didn’t just tell him the numbers on his radio, but gave a quick description of and major landmarks or anything of interest he thought might be useful.
Jotting down the last of it Bradley read it back and the scout signed off.
“Everyone all right out there?” Bekkett, the only one of the young thirds that they had kept had lunch in his hands and a worried look on his face.
“Nothing but nests and feeding sites.” He told the other as he set down Bradley’s meal. His own lunch and Connoway’s already on the other side of the table.
Base Camp was two sleeping tents, and a larger tent between the two for cooking, lounging and whoever was doing radio work-it also was where the birds slept for the night. There was some nasty nocturnal critter that came out at night and it was better for the birds to not get bitten by it.
They rotated who stayed and who went out each time they moved camp, and that was going to be often enough to see how everyone worked with everyone else now.
Picking up his fork with one hand and a pen with the other Bradley continued his job of marking on the map where they had found each site, and what type it was.
You wouldn’t think that little capparwire’s could make such large nests, but they did, banding together to spin the threads it was made out of, weaving in any natural materials and anchoring it with rocks.
After that was the mating, during which they weren’t exactly sure what went on. Some-Corbie-speculated that each member of the group mated with each other member of the group, or that they might make with each other based on some rule stick, like who could make the most webbing, or was the fattest, or something.
But it was known that they would leave the nests in shifts to go eat. This was the reason so much wildlife either fled this time of year or got eaten. And why so many places on the trails and roads had splashes of red.
The last and current swarm however, was seeing a change in that. The base commander, in a startling fit of genius, had hauled in the locals to get an idea of when the actual swarming usually started, versus when the capparwires began building nests and when the eggs would begin to hatch.
As a result, two months before the swarm was expected to hit the city, the base commander sent all the troopers into the field, with one order, burn the nests. They created a mile wide swath of-mostly-nest free woods around Junon.
He then, after learning more about the monsters, ordered a warehouse full of MRE’s and chocobo feed, and just about the time the swarm usually hit the town, had his men out dumping the stuff along the edges of the nest free zone.
While Shinra had come to understand the basic’s about the capparwire’s, the locals knew a great deal more.
Like the fact that capparwire’s didn’t sleep during the entire swarm, that any capparwire that fell asleep was eaten by it’s fellows, and that if a capparwire were to be given enough to eat it would fall asleep.
To say that Junon was pro-Shinra after that was an understatement.
Even Old Man Shinra agreed that the cost of the food and feed was miniscule compared to the damages a full swarming caused every time.
So, now here they were, with the next fifth year started, and the sixth had been grabbed to help with nest destruction.
Not that Bradley minded, with all that had happened in the last couple months his squad needed something nice and simple to tackle, get then moving and not thinking so much.
Chester, their lone SOLDIER, had gotten not only himself, but their support magi, Madren, and the junior medic, Vallen dead. He had been warned about using a particular material on a specific monster-which he had promptly used on said monster. The beast had taken the extra energy and attack strength granted by the material and had gone after the three of them.
And all from refusing to listen to a “Normal”.
During the fallout it had been reviled that the man had been dismissed form his previous squad for the same reason, hard for the Captain of a squad to keep order when one of your guys refuses to even acknowledge you.
As for how he wound up in the Sixth, that had been Heideggar’s doing.
Interesting what could be dug up when the secretaries and records personnel were buttered up to.
With those tidbits of news, and all the speculation that went with them running through the forces, Heideggar had finally done the smart thing. He had passed a new rule stating that any SOLDIER who refused to work with those who were not enhanced would be posted to the most boring, out of the way facilities that he could find.
And that they would be given the most disgusting, boring, grunt-work jobs there.
It had even been phrased that way too.
But that hadn’t been the only change, Bradley and several other Captains had gotten together and had done some serious housecleaning of both their own squads, but others as well.
Efficiency reports, battle readiness reports, and complaints from their own men, had been compiled into a massive report about who was, and who wasn’t going to get their squads killed-which had been happening with too much regularity for any of their tastes.
And Heideggar-busy reassigning stubborn SOLDIER’s to make it look like he was doing something about the insubordination that had been allowed to fester-hadn’t cared, not so long as it made him look good.
They had also gotten in some promotions while they were at it. And as there hadn’t been enough good ones to go around for al the squads needing them, they had combined as many as they could.
He couldn’t in good conscious hold Farley back at that point. And with how well Fardel-their Jack of All Trades, Asrim-their summoner and long range fighter, and Jerrol-the second of the new 3rds worked with him, he couldn’t keep them either.
Farley had earned the promotion years ago and had only been held back by politics, now he’d gotten it and the Seventh, two of the 22nd, and the remains of the 75th. Each of which had been decimated by their former idiot Captains.
His former lieutenant hadn’t been the only one, there had been up to forty individuals that had gotten the Captain’s promotion they deserved, with a squad in bad need of a good CO.
And thanks to Heideggar’s current state of mind they had been able to not only do that, get each squad assigned to a good, low-level shake down mission, but they had actually managed to get each of the individuals they had kicked out of command positions reassigned.
Needless to say there were now a large number of newly assigned paper pushers who were not happy with them. They had slipped a warning to those newly promoted so they would be aware of the issue, but beyond that there wasn’t anything they could do about it.
Good news, it was highly unlikely that any of them would get their abilities up to the point they could pass the combat readiness tests. Bad news, considering the positions some of them were in they could very easily cause trouble for them down the road.
Yet considering some of the things said by a fellow of theirs who had gone the same route after a bad bit of shrapnel had gone where it shouldn’t, that lot might soon be in hand.
And Farley hadn’t gotten the only promotion.
Sephiroth was now his Lieutenant, with Walden bumped up to Sergeant. Connoway was still sergeant, and happy there.
Rhonn, the last of the new 3rds, he’d gotten reassigned, in one of their first missions out they had discovered just how badly he got mako dazzled, they had been forced to take that into account for each mission afterwards and it had gotten in the way.
Those who got hypnotized by simply looking at mako had no business on the front. While any mako spring that was found was marked on the maps and those maps were updated whenever possible, it was a simple fact that just as old springs dried up new ones formed in some of the oddest places.
He’d heard stories of entire squads just standing there, entranced by the mako, and that it required a knock out or something trying to eat them to yank it out of them.
Someone who got that badly mako dazzled was a danger to the squad. So Rhonn had been reassigned to a base that didn’t handle mako. Heideggar had learned that lesson three days after assigning the boy to them after almost a dozen squads had to bail on missions because they had members so badly dazzled it wasn’t safe to continue.
Dazzle testing was now thankfully mandatory part of training and orientation.
Plate empty, he took it back to the fire, being on radio duty meant you didn’t have to cook or clean up, but it was a lot of sitting down. So he gladly used the excuse to get some walking in.
They didn’t have to check in for Bradley to know that the others would be taking their own lunches now, a few more hours and he could call them in.
He had honestly paused for a moment when this mission had been offered to them, but only for a moment. They needed to move, to stop thinking of what happened and what it cost them, and all the changes that had happened after.
It was a simple job, a good shake down mission.
Death was a part of their lives, as Troopers you learned this. But things were starting to settle. They would never forget, but life had to move on.
As they always did, as they always would.
Yeah, seven pages, 2,708 words, this might be the longest piece in the story, but it had a lot of ground to cover and I wanted to show some of what was going on behind the scenes.
Also, for info on Capparwire's.
Have a Good Week All! I'll see you next Monday!