If Shelke had actually been ten years old, she would probably have had a flower in her hands, carefully, delicately, and nervously plucking petals off of it, chanting that timeless chant which knows no barriers of language or age.
"He loves me…he loves me not…he loves me…"
Shelke really hated how divided her mental state was of late. She'd hoped that by downloading the rest of the Omega reports and by watching Vincent, she'd finally be able to cordon the pesky scientist to a corner of her mind. No such luck. Instead, the woman's presence only got larger, more complete, more coherent…and all the more distracting.
It was rather frustrating. It's not like Shelke wanted to avoid him, it's just that…it became difficult to function properly around him. It's too bad. She'd really like to be friends with him. It would be nice to have a friend for once. That was certainly something she'd never had in Deepground. She never had any time to make friends with anyone. It was one of the things that she hated the most about Deepground. It wasn't that it was dark, hot, and totally miserable. It wasn't the constant training or torturous…engineering of her physical structure. It was the fact that she had to go through all of it alone. The crushing loneliness was the worst.
When she'd had the data fragments from Professor Crescent downloaded into her head, she'd secretly been a bit…happy. It was like having an imaginary friend inside her head (albeit an annoying and irrational one that was missing a lot of pieces). It made the last few weeks of being in Deepground…bearable. When the Omega Report completed Professor Crescent's data (as much as it could anyway), the overflow of emotion and connection to others (relative to Shelke anyway) was…overwhelming.
If only she hadn't had to inherit a specific connection of a specific type to a specific black-haired gunman! It was a distracting thing, a nagging thing, an all around irksome thing…and the worst part of it was that a part (a small part…a really really tiny part) of Shelke really didn't care all that much. That part of her actually managed to enjoy…being in love. There. She admitted it to herself. Well…perhaps this emotion was better described as Shelke's first girlhood crush. Shelke was aware that if this was true (and there was a 95.87 chance that it was), it would be unusual on a large scale…apparently, it was abnormal for someone to have their first crush at the ripe old age of…19 years. Highly unusual. Not that Shelke deluded herself into thinking that she was anything but unusual. After all, no one who had once called herself a Tsviet could even remotely consider calling herself "normal" in their wildest fantasies. Shelke didn't mind the fact that it was odd in the slightest. The infatuation was inconvenient because she came in contact with its object on such a regular basis.
Shelke had been assigned by Reeve to do two things. She would sort out the massive amounts of information that the WRO accumulated about the planet (geology, ecology, etc.), its people (population density, demographic distribution, etc.), and the WRO itself (personnel data, financial data, etc.). This was a pretty simple procedure. Synaptic Net Dive into the central WRO computers and act almost like an upgraded processor, aiding it in the collation of the information that was passed to it. Easy. Her second job consisted of doing intelligence and support for field operatives like Yuffie Kisaragi, Cait Sith (when Reeve was feeling adventurous) and… Vincent Valentine. A lot of the latter, actually. After all, he was one of the WRO's two most reliable agents, the other being Yuffie, whose assignments often dictated that she maintain absolute radio silence for stealth purposes (it was almost disturbing how the ninja could go from being the most incredibly loudmouthed person in the WRO to being a completely silent, invisible shadow in the blink of an eye). On top of that, Shelke would also run into Vincent Valentine in the hallways of the WRO headquarters building from time to time. Those were the worst. When he was on a mission, at least Shelke had something else to think about…to distract her, to focus on. When they were both off-duty… Shelke tried her very hardest to try and stay rational, to keep her relationship with the gunman on a professional level. She also hated herself for hoping, wishing that she would fail one day.