Damnit Cielo you're supposed to be the happy cannibal. Stop having issues.
%Cielo: So... De reason our hair and eyes were different colors is 'cause we became AI's...
Goddamn it, Cielo. I wanted my next essay to be on music in DDS, because that's really interesting. And so I write a tiny rushed essay about how Serph's past life badtouch affected him, that for the most part I really dismiss as "Well it's not like he remembers it so it doesn't really affect him beyond the subconscious level", and then I have to notice that line.
Unless you would like to contemplate the idea of Serph talking about his experience with the cat in sufficient detail to mention that all them have different hair colors in their past lives, I would say that it is fairly safe to say that Cielo remembers something about his past life. Especially since he mentions this in the same screen as the guy who talks about Cielo's original as
%KTR 1: Before the Cyber Shaman project began, there were telepathic ability
tests...
A lot of talented children went mad... ...and died.
I remember this one really bright kid from South America or the
Caribbean or something...
He was an early Shaman candidate.
...Heh, I can still see that little guy's dreadlocks.
I mean, it's not coming out and saying "Ja, I remember you being my asshole doctor, bro", but honestly I can't not say that it's a deliberate implication when it reaches that point. Especially since coming out and deliberately saying it wouldn't have worked plotwise for DDS at that point, since Heat's arc has already been completed and there flat out wasn't time. I mean, Cielo dies what an hour or so later, gametime-wise? So this also kinda confirms my whole thing about Cielo being his original's reincarnation as well as the AI modelled after him, and means I need to work out a decent headcanon for his past life and figure out just how much he should remember.
Generally, I figure his past life went something along these lines:
He was born as the only child of a loving family and a happy life in Jamaica. He was a completely normal child, with maybe the rare instances of knowing slightly more than he should know. His parents probably weren't rich, but they made sure that he knew that he was loved. I picture Cielo as having lots of cousins who were always around the place, but no siblings.
His parents decide to emigrate to New Portland for better jobs. They move there, enroll him in school there, etc. They die. Cielo goes into foster homes.
One of his foster parents hear about telepathic ability tests, and, having noticed Cielo's way of occasionally knowing more than he should and since they're probably offering some sort of reward, takes him to get tested.
Cielo does well on the Cyber Shaman candidate tests. His guardians hand him over to the Karma Society.
He undergoes the Karma Society's testing. I tend to figure he's the oldest Cyber Shaman candidate, since any older and they start being harder to control, not to mention that with the way Sera's body ages, and they flat out would die too fast if they were any older. But since Cielo's personality's...flexible but also fairly submissive, and he's an orphaned foreign kid, I'd imagine that the Karma Society would feel safe in saying he's controllable, even if otherwise too old. The other reason I think he's the oldest candidate is because Sera included him with the adults/authority figures in her simulation, and I don't think she'd really quite do that the same way if he were aged up like her.
A month or so after he starts, Sera starts getting tested. Since she's almost certainly the youngest candidate, and Cielo in my headcanon is the oldest candidate, I figure he did his best to take care of her.
Lasts through another five or six months of being badtouched by Sheffield before going mad and dying. I think he died in the EGG, but that's mostly because it would be creepy and wrong and is therefore the most plausible in DDS.
Fortunately it's safe to say that he really wouldn't remember much. About the only thing Gale really remembers about his past life is dying, and what David felt as he was dying. Considering Cielo at this point in the game in a different area says "Loneliness? We all gonna be lonely at de end... Dat means we should appreciate our friends while we have 'em, ja?" I'd say he probably remembers dying. And that he was lonely when he did. Madness is very lonely after all.
If he remembers anything more than that...hm. Clearly stuff that has very strong emotions would be the easiest to remember. Dying I would imagine is the easiest, because not only would the emotions be very strong at that point, but they'd be close to returning to God and I imagine that would make it the most likely thing to remember. Other than that, Gale remembers Angel also because she's something...unresolved that he has to deal with. Cielo's story arc in DDS revolves around failing his comrades. I would imagine that something that involved him failing in a significant kind of way would be something he'd remember as well, but I can't imagine what, besides dying, that would be.
So for now, I'm guess I'm saying that all he's remembering is his death. If something came up that forced him to deal with it, he could probably remember more stuff that's relevant to that, but I doubt he could remember much more. If he blamed his own failure for his parents' death, he'd probably remember that, but I'm going to say no because really this is depressing enough without that. Going through the Karma Tower, especially in the upper floors where Sera obviously spent enough time to base a lot of the places in the Junkyard off the stuff found in there, I'd be willing to say that he had persistent vague deja vu, as he encountered someplace that his past life must've spent significant amounts of time being tested in, but I doubt he figured out exactly why. His line at the stopping point before the final boss battle in the tower: "Hey bro, I don't have de greatest feeling about dis..." This could be applied to either vague bad deja vu, or the upcoming encounter with Heat.
Okay so. This is something that Ine had to point out to me, but once she did, I realized that she was probably right. Cielo spends much of the second game having inexplicable gut feelings that turn out to be right. These are probably the psychic powers that made him a Cyber Shaman candidate.
The lines that I got this from:
Cielo: What de heck... I don't like de vibes I'm getting from dis machine, bro.
%Cielo: Hey bro, I don't have de greatest feeling about dis...
%Cielo: While you were gone, Argilla and Roland died, bro... I feel sad... ...But, it kinda feels like dey're not really gone.
Cielo: I found this on de ground. I don't really know why I was looking dere though...
There is also the fact that when he gets pissed, his hair gets all floaty in a strange wind he is very obviously generating himself. In human form. There is a possibility that it's from his demon, of course, but there's a couple things arguing against that. One is that it's not his element. It's Gale's element. Two is that he's in his human form, and he's not showing the usual signs of calling on his demon form. Generally speaking, when the DDS people's demon is very close to the surface, their atma starts glowing the color of their hair and eyes. The camera even shows his atma as the wind starts, and there's nothing. This is...pretty much unique in DDS when we're talking about characters displaying strong, angry emotions right before a fight.
It's not much! It's very clearly not much. The wind thing's a little more obvious, but the lines before then...he could just be getting lucky! But all these are lines where Cielo gets an inexplicable gut feeling that turns out to be right. Honestly, I'm not saying that his psychic powers extend any further than that. I would say "and he doesn't know about it at all" but that's what I said about Serph and Sheffield orz. And in my opinion it does explain the way he has a fair amount of confidence in what God would like in the whole jamming Latin rhythm thing. I...would actually say he does generally have a pretty good idea that he was a psychic in his past life, and that he still has some of those powers, but also that they aren't...actually really any use, when it comes down to it.
Okay the next thing I had to figure out is why the hell did Cielo never say anything about this. I mean, generally I'm someone who likes having a pretty concrete canon to work from. Having to construct all this from a few lines makes me highly dubious that I got any of this right. And a lot of this comes down to the fact that Cielo is consistently is an optimist. And for him to be an optimist in a world as grim as DDS... Cielo has a lot of practice at ignoring the dark side of things. When it comes down to horrible tragic things, he'd rather look at the happy side of them or ignore them all together. He does this a lot in the games. Or when he can't avoid it, he just kinda...skims over things. The one that's coming to mind at the moment is, after this horrible, heartwrenching dungeon where Heat's AAAANGST corrupts the dungeon's data and you have to fight him and he dies, he explains it to Fred as "Some things happened, and de machine broke." He won't cut out necessary information, but Cielo would have no hesitation whatsoever about editing the tragic parts out of his explanation if it's not something that has to be dealt with.
And this extends to his negative feelings. He'll occasionally admit to feeling down about something, or to being hurt, but not easily. In order to get him to talk about how the Lokapala treating him badly, you have to go all the way back through the freaking dungeon you just beat, and talk to him at the start of it, where he's surrounded by the still very unfriendly Lokapala. Judging from how much the Lokapala are in the contempt for the Embryon when they arrive, I'm guessing "I'm glad you found de Lokapala, bro. Dey didn't treat me too well... I thought I was gonna die." understates things. I mean, Cielo's a demon cannibal AIs among a bunch of terrorists who have every possible reason to HATE demon cannibals, and everyone who knows about the AI thing goes basically "Oh, you're just a bunch of inferior, not-human AIs." I don't think they made much of a deliberate effort to hurt him, outside interrogation at least, but I think they made their absolute contempt for him very very clear at every possible opportunity. And I also don't think they fed him until Roland got honor-topped by Gale.
And this is how Cielo was introduced to the real world! Is it any wonder he hates it?
So anyway, Cielo's tendency when he's hurt is...okay physical hurt, he's very pragmatic about and will heal it or get it healed if he can't, but mental hurt he is very likely to repress. And that, in my opinion, is what he does with remembering that he was basically tortured to death in a past life by his comrades.
And I mean, looking at the way Heat reacts to similar revelations, you'd think that Cielo would react more obviously. It's why part of me even now I kinda want to say "CIELO DOESN'T REMEMBER ANY OF THIS LET HIM BE HAPPY WITH HIS COMRADES DAMNIT", but the difference in their reactions also has to do with what their priorities are.
Heat's first priority is Sera. Cielo's first priority is his comrades as a whole. When Heat learned about this, it was being presented as threat to Sera, as Serph is a lying asshole who will hurt Sera (and you) like he did in his past life. So Heat's reaction is to attack Serph, especially when he sees Serph doing something that (unbeknownst to Serph) Heat knows will kill Sera. By the time Cielo learned about this, he'd already seen Heat's disastrous reaction, and how badly hurt all his comrades had been by his response to that revelation. He'd seen Serph die by Heat's hand, in a way that proved beyond all doubt that Serph was not Sheffield (at least since Heat and Serph are playing from the path where you get Heat at the endgame), and Heat die and been through the anguish that is Cielo watching is comrades fighting. And Cielo's first priority is, again, his comrades as a whole. Therefore, the logical thing for Cielo to do if he remembers anything about his past life is to dig it as deep as it will go, because all that revelation would do is hurt his comrades. And the last thing Cielo ever wants to see again is his comrades killing each other and that's what he would associate with these revelations coming to the fore.
I don't think it's a coincidence that in the second game, the comrade he becomes closest to is the one who he didn't know in a past life. On a rational level, he knows that his comrades are not the doctors and nurse he knew as a Cyber Shaman candidate. He really does. It's one of the reasons he's never brought it up. Argilla would never be as weak as nurse Argilla. Heat...I'm getting tired and can't really classify the differences between Heat and O'Brian, but in my headcanon Heat's the only one that Cielo actually liked, anyway. Heat tends to protect Cielo, and I think that is something Sera picked up on between Cielo and O'Brian. Serph is, as always the complicated one.
Cielo knows that Serph is not Sheffield. God is it obvious. For one thing, Serph doesn't talk XD But just, everything Serph does is like the opposite of what Sheffield would do. He loves his comrades. By the time Cielo would've realized this in canon, he'd have already died for Heat. He dies for Sera. You cannot understand Serph's method of communication through just a look without knowing Serph really damn well and Cielo knows just how good a person Serph is. But. Cielo, in my headcanon, loathed Sheffield. He saw damn well how Sheffield was using people and manipulating them, and he hated him for that. And he hated him for slowly driving him mad and killing him and never letting him stop being a Cyber Shaman candidate and always pushing him just a little more than he could bear. In that light, this line by Cielo is very, very interesting: " 'ey, even though we're data, we still get hurt, and feel pain. Don't work us too hard, ja?" That's one of those lines that utterly bemused me at first because it didn't make sense. Of course Serph wouldn't work them too hard. It's Serph. He loves his tribe. He wouldn't do that. But if you consider it as Cielo projecting his issues with Sheffield, especially the way Sheffield is, in the flashback scene, the one always pushing them just a little further than they could bear... well.
Cielo knows his comrades aren't their original models, which is part of the reason he'd never want to burden them with the knowledge that he remembers any of this. But occasionally without even realizing it, he projects his original expectations onto them. And he's just not as comfortable around Serph now as he used to be, although Cielo's always been in his own happy optimistic way, one of the most distant of the main cast. I've mentioned this before , but Cielo isn't the passionate rage against the world type like Heat and Argilla, and isn't Serph's main interpreter like Gale in DDS2, and so he doesn't tend to interact with Serph as much as the rest of them. So an odd lack of closeness with Serph isn't terribly odd, considering.
While I'm thinking about it, one of the things that interests me about Cielo is...how shall I put it. DDS has a thing about playing with people's elements and their love interests. In DDS2, Gale's closest to the two people who are strong in electricity, which is his weakness. Roland's weak to Earth, Argilla's element, and has a thing with her. Serph and Sera share an element, which is the opposing one to Heat's. And so on and so forth! Cielo's weakness is ailments, specifically the ones that affect the head (nerve/stun/charm/panic, if I recall correctly). No one is strong in ailments. I can't help but feel that this explains a lot of why for a happy extrovert type character, it's very rare for him to make an actual strong attachment to anyone.
Honestly, in day to day life, Cielo would mostly ignore this. I mostly am essaying on this because of the boggarts and general Halloween events, because I've been avoiding stuff that makes him reveal too much about himself, since this has been percolating through the back of my head as a vague issue that I needed to resolve before I tossed him into a situation where his normal ability to dodge subjects he doesn't want to think about is hampered.
Edited to fix a few typos and finish sentences and thoughts where I got distracted midway through. This is why you don't try to set speed records on writing essays.
Goddamn it, Cielo. I wanted my next essay to be on music in DDS, because that's really interesting. And so I write a tiny rushed essay about how Serph's past life badtouch affected him, that for the most part I really dismiss as "Well it's not like he remembers it so it doesn't really affect him beyond the subconscious level", and then I have to notice that line.
Unless you would like to contemplate the idea of Serph talking about his experience with the cat in sufficient detail to mention that all them have different hair colors in their past lives, I would say that it is fairly safe to say that Cielo remembers something about his past life. Especially since he mentions this in the same screen as the guy who talks about Cielo's original as
%KTR 1: Before the Cyber Shaman project began, there were telepathic ability
tests...
A lot of talented children went mad... ...and died.
I remember this one really bright kid from South America or the
Caribbean or something...
He was an early Shaman candidate.
...Heh, I can still see that little guy's dreadlocks.
I mean, it's not coming out and saying "Ja, I remember you being my asshole doctor, bro", but honestly I can't not say that it's a deliberate implication when it reaches that point. Especially since coming out and deliberately saying it wouldn't have worked plotwise for DDS at that point, since Heat's arc has already been completed and there flat out wasn't time. I mean, Cielo dies what an hour or so later, gametime-wise? So this also kinda confirms my whole thing about Cielo being his original's reincarnation as well as the AI modelled after him, and means I need to work out a decent headcanon for his past life and figure out just how much he should remember.
Generally, I figure his past life went something along these lines:
He was born as the only child of a loving family and a happy life in Jamaica. He was a completely normal child, with maybe the rare instances of knowing slightly more than he should know. His parents probably weren't rich, but they made sure that he knew that he was loved. I picture Cielo as having lots of cousins who were always around the place, but no siblings.
His parents decide to emigrate to New Portland for better jobs. They move there, enroll him in school there, etc. They die. Cielo goes into foster homes.
One of his foster parents hear about telepathic ability tests, and, having noticed Cielo's way of occasionally knowing more than he should and since they're probably offering some sort of reward, takes him to get tested.
Cielo does well on the Cyber Shaman candidate tests. His guardians hand him over to the Karma Society.
He undergoes the Karma Society's testing. I tend to figure he's the oldest Cyber Shaman candidate, since any older and they start being harder to control, not to mention that with the way Sera's body ages, and they flat out would die too fast if they were any older. But since Cielo's personality's...flexible but also fairly submissive, and he's an orphaned foreign kid, I'd imagine that the Karma Society would feel safe in saying he's controllable, even if otherwise too old. The other reason I think he's the oldest candidate is because Sera included him with the adults/authority figures in her simulation, and I don't think she'd really quite do that the same way if he were aged up like her.
A month or so after he starts, Sera starts getting tested. Since she's almost certainly the youngest candidate, and Cielo in my headcanon is the oldest candidate, I figure he did his best to take care of her.
Lasts through another five or six months of being badtouched by Sheffield before going mad and dying. I think he died in the EGG, but that's mostly because it would be creepy and wrong and is therefore the most plausible in DDS.
Fortunately it's safe to say that he really wouldn't remember much. About the only thing Gale really remembers about his past life is dying, and what David felt as he was dying. Considering Cielo at this point in the game in a different area says "Loneliness? We all gonna be lonely at de end... Dat means we should appreciate our friends while we have 'em, ja?" I'd say he probably remembers dying. And that he was lonely when he did. Madness is very lonely after all.
If he remembers anything more than that...hm. Clearly stuff that has very strong emotions would be the easiest to remember. Dying I would imagine is the easiest, because not only would the emotions be very strong at that point, but they'd be close to returning to God and I imagine that would make it the most likely thing to remember. Other than that, Gale remembers Angel also because she's something...unresolved that he has to deal with. Cielo's story arc in DDS revolves around failing his comrades. I would imagine that something that involved him failing in a significant kind of way would be something he'd remember as well, but I can't imagine what, besides dying, that would be.
So for now, I'm guess I'm saying that all he's remembering is his death. If something came up that forced him to deal with it, he could probably remember more stuff that's relevant to that, but I doubt he could remember much more. If he blamed his own failure for his parents' death, he'd probably remember that, but I'm going to say no because really this is depressing enough without that. Going through the Karma Tower, especially in the upper floors where Sera obviously spent enough time to base a lot of the places in the Junkyard off the stuff found in there, I'd be willing to say that he had persistent vague deja vu, as he encountered someplace that his past life must've spent significant amounts of time being tested in, but I doubt he figured out exactly why. His line at the stopping point before the final boss battle in the tower: "Hey bro, I don't have de greatest feeling about dis..." This could be applied to either vague bad deja vu, or the upcoming encounter with Heat.
Okay so. This is something that Ine had to point out to me, but once she did, I realized that she was probably right. Cielo spends much of the second game having inexplicable gut feelings that turn out to be right. These are probably the psychic powers that made him a Cyber Shaman candidate.
The lines that I got this from:
Cielo: What de heck... I don't like de vibes I'm getting from dis machine, bro.
%Cielo: Hey bro, I don't have de greatest feeling about dis...
%Cielo: While you were gone, Argilla and Roland died, bro... I feel sad... ...But, it kinda feels like dey're not really gone.
Cielo: I found this on de ground. I don't really know why I was looking dere though...
There is also the fact that when he gets pissed, his hair gets all floaty in a strange wind he is very obviously generating himself. In human form. There is a possibility that it's from his demon, of course, but there's a couple things arguing against that. One is that it's not his element. It's Gale's element. Two is that he's in his human form, and he's not showing the usual signs of calling on his demon form. Generally speaking, when the DDS people's demon is very close to the surface, their atma starts glowing the color of their hair and eyes. The camera even shows his atma as the wind starts, and there's nothing. This is...pretty much unique in DDS when we're talking about characters displaying strong, angry emotions right before a fight.
It's not much! It's very clearly not much. The wind thing's a little more obvious, but the lines before then...he could just be getting lucky! But all these are lines where Cielo gets an inexplicable gut feeling that turns out to be right. Honestly, I'm not saying that his psychic powers extend any further than that. I would say "and he doesn't know about it at all" but that's what I said about Serph and Sheffield orz. And in my opinion it does explain the way he has a fair amount of confidence in what God would like in the whole jamming Latin rhythm thing. I...would actually say he does generally have a pretty good idea that he was a psychic in his past life, and that he still has some of those powers, but also that they aren't...actually really any use, when it comes down to it.
Okay the next thing I had to figure out is why the hell did Cielo never say anything about this. I mean, generally I'm someone who likes having a pretty concrete canon to work from. Having to construct all this from a few lines makes me highly dubious that I got any of this right. And a lot of this comes down to the fact that Cielo is consistently is an optimist. And for him to be an optimist in a world as grim as DDS... Cielo has a lot of practice at ignoring the dark side of things. When it comes down to horrible tragic things, he'd rather look at the happy side of them or ignore them all together. He does this a lot in the games. Or when he can't avoid it, he just kinda...skims over things. The one that's coming to mind at the moment is, after this horrible, heartwrenching dungeon where Heat's AAAANGST corrupts the dungeon's data and you have to fight him and he dies, he explains it to Fred as "Some things happened, and de machine broke." He won't cut out necessary information, but Cielo would have no hesitation whatsoever about editing the tragic parts out of his explanation if it's not something that has to be dealt with.
And this extends to his negative feelings. He'll occasionally admit to feeling down about something, or to being hurt, but not easily. In order to get him to talk about how the Lokapala treating him badly, you have to go all the way back through the freaking dungeon you just beat, and talk to him at the start of it, where he's surrounded by the still very unfriendly Lokapala. Judging from how much the Lokapala are in the contempt for the Embryon when they arrive, I'm guessing "I'm glad you found de Lokapala, bro. Dey didn't treat me too well... I thought I was gonna die." understates things. I mean, Cielo's a demon cannibal AIs among a bunch of terrorists who have every possible reason to HATE demon cannibals, and everyone who knows about the AI thing goes basically "Oh, you're just a bunch of inferior, not-human AIs." I don't think they made much of a deliberate effort to hurt him, outside interrogation at least, but I think they made their absolute contempt for him very very clear at every possible opportunity. And I also don't think they fed him until Roland got honor-topped by Gale.
And this is how Cielo was introduced to the real world! Is it any wonder he hates it?
So anyway, Cielo's tendency when he's hurt is...okay physical hurt, he's very pragmatic about and will heal it or get it healed if he can't, but mental hurt he is very likely to repress. And that, in my opinion, is what he does with remembering that he was basically tortured to death in a past life by his comrades.
And I mean, looking at the way Heat reacts to similar revelations, you'd think that Cielo would react more obviously. It's why part of me even now I kinda want to say "CIELO DOESN'T REMEMBER ANY OF THIS LET HIM BE HAPPY WITH HIS COMRADES DAMNIT", but the difference in their reactions also has to do with what their priorities are.
Heat's first priority is Sera. Cielo's first priority is his comrades as a whole. When Heat learned about this, it was being presented as threat to Sera, as Serph is a lying asshole who will hurt Sera (and you) like he did in his past life. So Heat's reaction is to attack Serph, especially when he sees Serph doing something that (unbeknownst to Serph) Heat knows will kill Sera. By the time Cielo learned about this, he'd already seen Heat's disastrous reaction, and how badly hurt all his comrades had been by his response to that revelation. He'd seen Serph die by Heat's hand, in a way that proved beyond all doubt that Serph was not Sheffield (at least since Heat and Serph are playing from the path where you get Heat at the endgame), and Heat die and been through the anguish that is Cielo watching is comrades fighting. And Cielo's first priority is, again, his comrades as a whole. Therefore, the logical thing for Cielo to do if he remembers anything about his past life is to dig it as deep as it will go, because all that revelation would do is hurt his comrades. And the last thing Cielo ever wants to see again is his comrades killing each other and that's what he would associate with these revelations coming to the fore.
I don't think it's a coincidence that in the second game, the comrade he becomes closest to is the one who he didn't know in a past life. On a rational level, he knows that his comrades are not the doctors and nurse he knew as a Cyber Shaman candidate. He really does. It's one of the reasons he's never brought it up. Argilla would never be as weak as nurse Argilla. Heat...I'm getting tired and can't really classify the differences between Heat and O'Brian, but in my headcanon Heat's the only one that Cielo actually liked, anyway. Heat tends to protect Cielo, and I think that is something Sera picked up on between Cielo and O'Brian. Serph is, as always the complicated one.
Cielo knows that Serph is not Sheffield. God is it obvious. For one thing, Serph doesn't talk XD But just, everything Serph does is like the opposite of what Sheffield would do. He loves his comrades. By the time Cielo would've realized this in canon, he'd have already died for Heat. He dies for Sera. You cannot understand Serph's method of communication through just a look without knowing Serph really damn well and Cielo knows just how good a person Serph is. But. Cielo, in my headcanon, loathed Sheffield. He saw damn well how Sheffield was using people and manipulating them, and he hated him for that. And he hated him for slowly driving him mad and killing him and never letting him stop being a Cyber Shaman candidate and always pushing him just a little more than he could bear. In that light, this line by Cielo is very, very interesting: " 'ey, even though we're data, we still get hurt, and feel pain. Don't work us too hard, ja?" That's one of those lines that utterly bemused me at first because it didn't make sense. Of course Serph wouldn't work them too hard. It's Serph. He loves his tribe. He wouldn't do that. But if you consider it as Cielo projecting his issues with Sheffield, especially the way Sheffield is, in the flashback scene, the one always pushing them just a little further than they could bear... well.
Cielo knows his comrades aren't their original models, which is part of the reason he'd never want to burden them with the knowledge that he remembers any of this. But occasionally without even realizing it, he projects his original expectations onto them. And he's just not as comfortable around Serph now as he used to be, although Cielo's always been in his own happy optimistic way, one of the most distant of the main cast. I've mentioned this before , but Cielo isn't the passionate rage against the world type like Heat and Argilla, and isn't Serph's main interpreter like Gale in DDS2, and so he doesn't tend to interact with Serph as much as the rest of them. So an odd lack of closeness with Serph isn't terribly odd, considering.
While I'm thinking about it, one of the things that interests me about Cielo is...how shall I put it. DDS has a thing about playing with people's elements and their love interests. In DDS2, Gale's closest to the two people who are strong in electricity, which is his weakness. Roland's weak to Earth, Argilla's element, and has a thing with her. Serph and Sera share an element, which is the opposing one to Heat's. And so on and so forth! Cielo's weakness is ailments, specifically the ones that affect the head (nerve/stun/charm/panic, if I recall correctly). No one is strong in ailments. I can't help but feel that this explains a lot of why for a happy extrovert type character, it's very rare for him to make an actual strong attachment to anyone.
Honestly, in day to day life, Cielo would mostly ignore this. I mostly am essaying on this because of the boggarts and general Halloween events, because I've been avoiding stuff that makes him reveal too much about himself, since this has been percolating through the back of my head as a vague issue that I needed to resolve before I tossed him into a situation where his normal ability to dodge subjects he doesn't want to think about is hampered.
Edited to fix a few typos and finish sentences and thoughts where I got distracted midway through. This is why you don't try to set speed records on writing essays.