I've been replaying through FFVII lately, and I just got past the point where you have to collect the Huge Materia. It was there I thought I missed something in my previous playthroughs but no...Cloud and his motley crew of ship thieves hear about the Shinra plan to use Huge Materia to blow up the Meteor and then literally just say "we have to stop them, we have to get that huge materia!". It's not like they even have a plan to use the huge materia, they just jam it all in Bugenhagen's attic.
What's up with this? From what I've seen from Shinra in the second disk, they've been doing nothing but trying to stop Sephiroth and Meteor and doing GOOD for the world (apart from the attempted public executions)...I don't see why Cloud and the others don't help them, or at least just stay out of their way and let them have a bash. Let me try and break it down:
Shinra: They're fighting the Weapons, and manage to kill two of them, they're collecting special weapons to beat Sephiroth (as shown in the crashed gelnika), and they're moving the cannon to try and destroy Sephiroths barrier. Sound like worthy goals to me.
Cloud and co: They have no idea how they're going to destroy the barrier or Sephiroth. They pretty much just make it their mission to totally wreck anything the Shinra are doing.
So is there some hidden reason that they're trying to stop Shinra at this point in the game? Disk one I could see why, but now Sephiroth is clearly the huge threat. It's not like Shinra even want anything to do with Cloud and the others at this point, they're not even pursuing them. Now I know that the huge materia doesn't work anyway, even if you don't collect any of the pieces, but it's not like anyone knew that at the time.
They also even have the cheek to say "Shinra's plan failed" when the rocket doesn't blow up meteor. Yeah no thanks to you, you morons!