Disclaimer: I own everything……. What?…….... So you think that's a lie?……… Well, maybe it is…….… You want the truth? YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!……….. Oh, really?……. So you can handle the truth…… Well, if that's the case, Square owns it all….

A/N: Much asexual love to my reviewers. That's right, reviewerS, plural. If I were the type of person to give "props" I'd be giving them to Reno Spiegel, who has kindly offered to host Times of Separation on his site. I'd also like to thank Windwalker for pointing out that I'm only accepting signed reviews. Ooops.

Chapter 8: Time for a Re-cap

Cloud paced nervously in front of the group before him. He had never liked it when the other members of AVALANCHE would confront him during their journey last year and ask him to "re-cap" for them. He was always afraid he would leave something important out. Even more so, he usually felt just as confused as the rest of them. But this time, he knew that most of them knew next to nothing about what was happening. They had been quickly assembled just two and a half days ago and most of them happened to miss the important breakthroughs.

"OK, is everyone here?"

"Damnit, you spikey headed foo! Ya can see all nine o' us sittin right in front o' ya!"

Cloud paced a bit more as he took in the nine people sitting in front of him. Barret and Tifa sat nearest to him, in front of the group. A few tables had been pushed away and chairs lined up, making this feel a bit too formal. Luckily, the stuffy air had been lightened a bit upon the arrival of Cid and Yuffie, who took it upon themselves to move their chairs where ever the saw fit.

Cid sat a few feet behind Barret and Tifa. Red was contentedly curled up near the old pilot's feet. Yuffie's chair rested a few feet away from Cid's. Reno had pulled up a chair close to Yuffie. The two had been annoying each other like little children for the past few minutes: Yuffie occasionally pulling on Reno's ponytail with Reno firing back with a well placed flick. Elena watched the two from here chair to the left of Reno, shaking her head at their immaturity.

Then came the standing figures. Rude stood with his arms folded across his chest in silence behind the other two Turks. The man exuded an aura of professionalism at all times. In the far corner of the bar resided an equally silent and professional Vincent Valentine.

A smile almost slipped across Cloud's face as he compared the two. Maybe there always had to be a silent serious Turk at all times, and in Vincent's day, he held the position that Rude did currently. Cloud would've told Vincent to move closer – he seemed a bit too far away to catch everything – until he remembered Vincent's sensory "enhancements."

And the tenth member of the group was the still pacing Cloud Strife. "OK. A lot has happened and been found in the past two days, and I'm sure a lot of you are lagging behind. I'll do my best to fill you all in, with hopes that Vincent and Reno won't hesitate to jump in and clarify something I get wrong."

Another quick look around at the faces in the room told Cloud that he had better get going, boredom was sinking in. "So, let's start from the beginning. Reeve was kidnapped three days ago. We don't have a definite motive, by we know that whoever took him at least needed him to gain access into the abandoned Shinra Building."

"Wait." Tifa's voice cut in. "What do you mean 'whoever'? We still don't know?" Tifa had a hunch that what Vincent had to tell Cloud a few minutes ago during their private meeting would be who the kidnapper was. Apparently she was mistaken.

"No, we don't." Cloud didn't bother to waste time explaining why they didn't, this would be a long story and he wanted to get it over with. "So, the kidnapper uses Reeve to get in to the Shinra Building. From there, the kidnapper proceeds to disable the security system the Turks had in place, restore power to the building, and takes a few things with him. The Jenova Project files were stolen along with some lab equipment. Everyone's got that, right?'

Cid took it upon himself to answer for the whole group. "Yea yea, we already fuckin' know that, kid! We were all there for that bullshit!"

"Ok, ok. Now's where the new information comes in. First, the Turks went back to the Shinra Building to investigate what had been stolen…"

Reno abruptly stopped poking Yuffie in the side as Cloud said the name of his organization. He wasn't going to let this blonde-hared loser speak for him. "Yeah, we did."

After sufficiently cutting Cloud off, Reno stood up and, with hands in his pockets, casually walked up to the front to stand near Cloud. "We went there to take a look at the last inventory Hojo signed before everything went to hell last year. We compared that to what was still in the lab. Hojo was always a paranoid bastard, afraid people would steal his shit, so we knew he wouldn't have missed a thing. There were some minor pieces of shit missing, empty test tubes, beakers, that sort of crap, but there were two biggins gone, too. An animation chamber up and vanished along with a shit load of Jenova cells."

"Hold on now! What da fuck's a animation chamba?"

Reno didn't miss a beat. "An animation chamber is what Hojo would use to speed up his creative processes. When he made monsters out of humans, he'd just pile a bunch of Mako into a closed space with a human. But, the process would take years and years, so if he wanted quick results, he'd through it all in an animation chamber. He can also bring someone who was practically dead, but not quite part of the life stream yet, back to full health in one of these. It does some kind of physical therapy or some shit. That's also how they higher up in SOLDIER, like Cloud, got that crazy look in their eyes. You shower them in Mako, then, without letting them wash off, you throw em in an animation chamber. In just a few minutes, the Mako is forced in through the pores and then into the blood. Beats the hell out of the injections they used to use: the affects kick in a lot quicker and the results are a lot more stable."

Reno couldn't help but smile at how smart he was sounding. It paid off to ease drop on Hojo. He was on a roll, but decided to quit while he was ahead and turn the talking duties back over to Cloud.

With a quick clearing of his throat, Cloud jumped right back in. "So, our kidnapper has Reeve, Jenova cells, and an animation chamber. These are potentially deadly combinations. Fortunately, the Jenova cells won't survive in a human body without a certain percentage of Mako in the bloodstream of the specimen. That's why a lot of the Sephiroth clones were part of SOLDIER – they already had enough Mako in them to support the experiments."

Cloud shuddered at the memories of what Hojo had said to him so long ago about being nothing more than a clone. No! Hojo was dead. Cloud wouldn't let a dead madman play mind games with him.

Cloud's eyes scanned the room until they fell upon Vincent. The man remained unmoving in his dimly lit corner of the room. The man's body had been so still the whole time, Cloud had almost thought Vincent had fallen asleep, but two glowing, crimson red orbs floating in the darkness told Cloud otherwise.

Vincent didn't seem inclined to inform the group about Lucrecia, so Cloud took it upon himself. "But, unfortunately, things have still gotten a bit more dangerous. Lucrecia was kidnapped as well, a few weeks ago."

Cloud quickly caught Tifa's eyes straying towards Vincent. He was sure they would be just the first of many sets that would stare upon the man in shock. Vincent wouldn't like that one bit. Cloud quickly spoke in an attempt to draw attention back to him.

"Well, I don't know if you all are aware, but at one time Lucrecia was a large part of the Jenova Project. She was more important than even Sephiroth himself for a time being. So, we're missing Reeve, Jenova cells, an animation chamber, every file in the Shinra Building concerning the Jenova Project, and Lucrecia. I think that about covers it. Any questions?"

Nearly everyone in the room started speaking at the same time. There were questions, and a lot of them. But, despite the racket being cause by seven or eight different voices trying to talk over the other, a deathly low voice from across the room still managed to reach Cloud. "… the tunnel…"

"Oh yeah!" Cloud waved his hands about and cleared his throat to regain the focus of the large group. "Thank you, Vincent, for reminding me. During our search of Midgar earlier today, Vincent found the probable route that our kidnapper has been using. There's an underground tunnel that runs from Midgar directly to Junon."

Reno's face turned into one of shock at the sudden realization. "The old Turk Tunnel! I can't believe I forgot about that! Fuck! I knew that fucking thing was long, but I didn't think it went clear to fucking Junon!"

"Well, it does. And it's very likely that our kidnapper has been entering and leaving the city through it. Oh, and that wasn't the only thing Vincent found…" Cloud's eyes locked with Vincent's. He wanted the ex-Turk to explain this himself. After all, he was the one to see it, not Cloud."

Reluctantly, Vincent agreed to Cloud's silent requested. He braced himself (he hated speaking in general, let alone in front of ten people), then opened his mouth. "Yuffie, Red and I encountered some men in Midgar. They were Mako enhanced and injected with a substantial amount of Jenova cells…"

Simultaneously, Yuffie and Red both came to a realization. Red held his head low in shame. So that is why he wanted us to leave. He was only trying to protect us… Red couldn't believe how easily he had doubted Vincent's motives.

Yuffie's eyes were wide in surprise. Wow… Those guys were enhanced with that crazy stuff? And Vincent just took them out in a few seconds like it was nothing… And GAWD! I was right next to those freaks and didn't even know the difference! Yuffie remained in awe at Vincent's skill, but chose not to dwell on her unobservancey.

Now, all eyes were on Vincent. He felt them scanning him. He could feel at least one pair resting on his metallic claw. He assumed it was from one of the Turks, someone not used to seeing the monstrosity as often as the AVALANCHE members were. He could feel others trying to look into his eyes. Even after traveling with them for nearly a year, Vincent knew most of his former teammates were still scared stiff by his eyes.

He sat there for a two or three minutes, feeling the eyes dig into him like the needle of that twisted professor. He couldn't take it any longer – them probing him in the silence. Surely speaking would be better than this.

"I assume that whoever took that equipment used it to alter them. He might've had access to some Mako through Reeve, or he used former SOLDIERS. But I'm sure that the operation was recent. If the Jenova cells had been in them long enough to fully develop, I can assure you we wouldn't have made it out so easily."

The whole time Vincent spoke, his eyes darted all around the room trying to avoid eye contact. He had spoken much longer than he intended, but he knew silence would only give these humans more time to search him and silently ridicule him. Finally his eyes fell on Cloud and silently begged him to speak.

Whether Cloud had heard Vincent's unspoken request, or he just knew it was his turn to speak, Cloud opened his mouth once again. "And that's everything we know." The simple statement managed to draw all looks back to the front of the bar, where he remained standing. "Unfortunately, there are still a lot of gaps, but we do have more to go on now than we did before. Tomorrow we head to Junon to look for our man."

"Correction." Reno strode back up to the front of the room, hands placed in his pockets. "Tomorrow, you go to Junon. We will be heading back into Midgar. We'll borrow some welding equipment from some of the workers in the Neo-Midgar camp. We know where the entrance to the Turk Tunnel is. If that's what that bastard has been using, he's won't be using it after we're done with it."

Cloud was shocked. Reno hadn't interrupted him to start some petty argument, but to make a valid point. Maybe he had the Turk pegged wrong. "Plus, Turks don't take orders from terrorists." Or maybe not.

"Hey, Cloud!" This time, it was the deep voice of Barret Wallace that cut in. "Don'tcha think someone should be headin back to dat damn Shinra hell-hole and look for da damned cat? I mean, if Reeve controlled him, maybe dat thing's got some fuckin' beacon or some shit on it."

Strange, another interruption that was helpful. Things were starting to look up. Maybe tensions were finally starting to ebb away. "Good thinking, Barret. Cid, you'll head up that team. If something's wrong with Cait Sith, you'll be the only one with the know how to fix it."

Cloud quickly glanced around the room. "Take Yuffie and Vincent with you."

Cloud wasn't sure what to expect if they found their kidnapper in Junon. He wanted as much strong firepower as he could get to head to Junon. Yuffie was very agile and quick, but if it came down to a brawl, he still had doubts if the ninja youth could handle herself or not.

Vincent, although probably a stronger fighter than any of them, simply couldn't go. If they did find their kidnapper and he had Lucrecia with him, Cloud couldn't be sure how Vincent would react. The last thing they needed was the Chaos beast reeking havoc all over Junon.

After another hour or so of useless chatter (which, although useless, helped keep the group sane), everyone shuffled off to bed. Tifa was the first to go, followed by Rude and Elena. A few minutes later, Cid and Red retired to the room they had agreed to share. After returning from picking up Marlene, Barret headed up stairs with his sleeping, adopted daughter in his arms.

After another half hour of watching TV and being a nuisance, Yuffie made her way up the stairs. She was followed closely by Reno, who was playfully tugging at her hair. The two seemed to be getting along well, too well for Cloud's liking. As much as it made sense, both were immature and annoying, Cloud didn't like the idea of any of his friends getting close to any of the Turks, especially Reno.

Cloud soon felt gravity start to take a hold of his eyelids. It was time for him to head off as well. As he mounted the stairs, he caught a glimpse of Vincent. The man had not left his corner spot all night. "Oh, Vincent. You can stay in my room with me if you'd like. Or I'm sure Barret or Cid and Red wouldn't mind."

Vincent's emotionless eyes didn't even bother to look for Cloud before he answered. "I'm fine down here."

With a shrug, Cloud returned to his trek up the stairs. He didn't give it much thought. In fact, he wasn't even sure if Vincent slept.

A/N: Well, that little explanation speech was a lot longer than I thought it would be. And there wasn't enough angst and silly arguing! I'll have to make up for that later. Be warned the next chapter will probably just be for character development and planting the seeds of some possible (but not definite) future romances. But, fear not, if you're looking for plot, the next update will be a double one. The next chapter with all it's plot-less development goodness, and then the following one where we head out to Junon. Oh, and pwetty pwease review.

A/N2: For everyone interested in character history/interaction and all that good stuff, keep an eye open for a series of one-shots coming up. They'll consists of short, in-game (and maybe a few pre-game) scenes that'll show some history. The only one I have written (or at least partially written) is with Vincent and Tifa – to help explain why she thinks they should be able to talk to each other so easily.