Cielo and something spoilerific
How to make me essay, heavily paraphrased:
"PS essay on Cielo and *****"
"....but I already did."
"Really?"
"Yep, but it kinda sucked and I really only covered a tiny part of it."
"Essay again?"
"....."
"I'LL ESSAY BACK"
"......actually I think the saddest part is I'd decided to do so before you'd even offered any inducements."
….Seriously. MOST EASILY TOPPED ESSAYER EVER. A-also I'm now past 30,000 words of essays for Cielo. Sob.
So basically, I'm essaying more on Cielo's death. More precisely, his suicide, what exactly is happening there, why it's suicide, how it completes his character arc, and what's going on in his head at the time. Especially since despite it being suicide, it's not really as…okay it is despairing but it's Cielo's way of staying hopeful while despairing. I've always found that to be a neat trick!
Also I want you to have this video open and watch it while reading this: Cielo's death scene
Character arc
The first thing to do with Cielo's death is place it in context. In the context of his character arc, it completes it! The very first time he becomes a significant character is when he's just failed to protect Sera, and failed to die in his failure. …Granted, Heat didn't really want him to die for his failure, he wanted him not to fail in the first place, but he was a convenient half-conscious body to throw around. All the DDS characters in some way resolve their initial issues with their deaths. Roland reaches a redemption for not having saved Greg by being willing to die to save his comrades. Argilla basically reaches peace with her hatred of devouring by dying, and not letting her comrade die alone. Heat resolves his love triangle with Serph and Sera by telling Serph to take care of her. Gale resolves his love for Angel by…mutual KO. THANK YOU DDS FOR BEING NONDEPRESSING oh wait. With his death, Cielo proves…well. Not exactly his competence, considering he could have survived if he'd really wanted to. But his willingness to die rather than fail his tribe. It's really, really not a coincidence that his death comes when the last surviving fighter jets started shooting at Serph and Sera, and he manages to ram himself into the jet despite the fact that he's already missing a wing and managed control the direction of his flight in order to slam straight through the middle of a jet that's probably going several hundred miles per hour. That takes a lot of sheer, bloody-minded determination.
When Mick kidnapped Sera when Cielo was supposed to be watching her, he came out of it surprisingly uninjured. At the time, he was an unawakened AI, and as such, tended to react more based off logic than emotions. When faced with a numerically superior force, led by a demon one hell of a lot stronger than him, it really wouldn't make a lot of sense for him to fight to the death! Cielo fought, undoubtedly! And probably did pretty well. But he didn't have the same bloody-minded determination to protect his comrades that he'd gain with awakening, and with Heat yelling in his face about not protecting Sera hard enough. Post-awakening, Cielo would have fought hard enough that Mick couldn't have taken Sera and left him to leave a message for his comrades, because he'd have died before allowing Sera to be taken like that.
Add in the fact that by that time, Sera'd saved his life by singing a starving Gale into non-berserkness. He owed her. To have failed her cut him deeply. I don't think it's a constant presence in him anymore, because he did save her. But anyone trying to kidnap Sera again or harm her when Cielo's around will have to kill him to do it. And that includes fighter jets aimed for the airplane she was in.
There's also the fact that Cielo developed from…someone who had optimism and reasons for it to someone who clung to the last threadbare shreds of optimism knowing he was probably wrong, but not capable of giving them up. I don't think I can even say how much he hates the real world. It's the place that caused his comrades to schism and die, that devours children, that's ruled by a bunch of weenies who think that they're better than everyone else when they're the ones who break down at the thought of the world ending while the AIs and the uneducated terrorists are the ones trying to fix things. To reject that world as the real one, and willingly die to leave it and seek the real Nirvana is very much something Cielo would do.
Communication
At the time of his death, everyone in his tribe was dead but Serph and Sera. Even Johnny the awesome shop ninja was dead! (And yes, Cielo cried for him.) And Sera was dying. Cielo was flying alongside the plane that Serph and Sera were flying to a place where Sera could hopefully talk to god. Note that this section is very heavily dependent on my interpretations of Serph and Sera's mostly non-verbal communications with Cielo, and if either of you two want to correct me on what they're thinking, I'd be thrilled! I'm not as good as I'd like at interpreting, well, Sera in particular but really both of them.
There's a moment right after Cielo first sees the fighters and draws Serph's attention to it, that he pauses and looks away, like he's thinking of something. And Serph seems to know what he's thinking, and nods. That's most likely the moment Cielo decides what he's going to do. Cielo could, probably, have survived that if he'd wanted to. He had his mouthlaser, he had spells, he had lots of things that he could have used besides a purely physical attack. Cielo chose not to. …Seriously, I love that moment of interaction with Serph SO HARD. It's just like. A perfect example of how the Embryon don't need to talk with Serph to communicate, plus possibly (Serph, would you like to chime in?) Serph basically giving him permission to do what he decides to do.
The next moment, Sera's noticing the missiles, and Cielo tries to cheer her up! …Which I think Sera recognized as the signal that Cielo wasn't planning on coming back, since that's when she starts crying. Cielo wouldn't try to cheer her up like that before a perfectly ordinary battle because he wouldn't feel the need to. He'd be fine, she'd be fine, she shouldn't worry too much! But Cielo's…very good at dodging, but very bad at outright lying, and he wouldn't mean to deceive her for very long, anyway. And so she caught in general terms, what he planned.
That's when he gives up the act and says "See you in Nirvana, ja?" …IT TOOK ME YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW HOW MANY REPLAYS OF THIS SCENE BEFORE MY EYES STOP TEARING UP WHEN HE SAYS THAT. Oh Cielo ;; That's…really the single moment in the game where Cielo's most purely himself to me. OPTIMISTICALLY SUICIDAL. But really, throughout most the game, even when he's trying to cover up his negative feelings with optimism and "be happy guys! :D?", it feels like he's trying too hard to be optimistic and really kind of failing at even convincing himself. But at the moment when he gives up on forcing himself to be optimistic and trying to cheer the others up, he still ends up optimistic. Cielo, at the core, really does think that things can't stay bad forever and I kinda love that about him. Basically, in my opinion, he spent large parts of the second game was blocking himself off from his real optimism by trying to fake it into reality.
And then he leaves before Sera can do anything other than cry.
But what surprises me most about this is how much communication is going on before Cielo kills himself! He basically gets Serph's permission (?) before killing himself, and he says good-bye to Sera. Most the Embryon do get to say their goodbyes before their death, but…I don't quite know how to put it. It feels to me like it's a more vital part of completing his character arc for Cielo to say good bye to Sera than it is for any of the other goodbyes. Especially since he then proceeds to die gruesomely in front of them.
What Cielo was thinking
After he catches Serph's attention to warn him about the missiles, Cielo pauses. Basically, in my opinion, to think. "Well, I might survive this. Do I want to?"
And that has a lot of reasons behind it. Mostly, I think, he was thinking that he didn't want to survive his tribe. Cielo has been alone only once in this lifetime - when he first arrived in the real world immediately after the Junkyard was destroyed, and was immediately captured by the Lokapala and mistreated. There is nothing in this world for him once his tribe's left it, and so he decided to hope that death would bring him to a better one. Keep in mind, when you're thinking about that, that Cielo KNOWS reincarnation and the afterlife exist without a shadow of doubt. He's seen it in the Junkyard, he's aware that Serph defeated Sheffield's spirit, hell, he remembers a tiny bit of his past life himself. In some ways, all his suicide is is a gamble that the next life, whether it's the afterlife or rebirth, will be better than this one. After all, it can't possibly be worse. …Granted, he was also aware that there's some risk that it'll be a permanent end for him, but that's still infinitely better than surviving in a world he hates without his comrades.
But Serph's not dead! Serph…is the next person who chooses to die after this. Would he have chosen to survive if Cielo'd chosen to survive? …Honestly? I could argue either way! On the one hand, Serph wouldn't want to abandon Cielo. On the other hand, he wouldn't want to abandon Sera. And he does love Sera a little more than he loves Cielo, even though it's hard to really quantify past the "would die for you without a second's hesitation" point. I'm…inclined to say that Cielo'd tell him to stay with her, and that Serph would agree, especially with Cielo's vaguely hinted at psychic powers meaning that there's some chance that he'd pick up on the fact that both Sera and Serph were needed for God and Serph's tendency to let his comrades make their own choices. But I'm not sure how it would play out. Serph if you want to chime in?
But in my opinion, one of the things Cielo was thinking about when he chose was this. I think…he didn't want to risk dividing and distracting Serph and Sera's loyalties. Cielo's seen what happens when comrades are forced to choose among their comrades, and he never wants to see that again, much less be the cause of a choice.
There's also the fact that…just as much as I doubt Cielo being the only surviving comrade would be enough for Serph to be happy, I doubt that Serph by himself would be enough for Cielo to be happy. Cielo loves Serph and is unhesitatingly devoted to him. But, as I've essayed before, he's just not that close to him. In order of closeness to Cielo, I'd roughly peg the Embryon as: Gale - Sera - Heat - Argilla - Serph. Serph has added symbolic points as leader of the Embryon, plus jesus points, but. I'm really not sure how well Cielo's handle the only remaining other Embryon being Serph, especially with past life issues. Granted, I think if he was alone with Serph for a while he'd get completely over his past life issues because Serph's good at jesusing and Cielo does love and trust Serph already. (As a side note, when I talk about Cielo loving his comrades, while I don't completely exclude non-platonic love, non-platonic love isn't at all important to him. Just thought I'd clarify there! XD)
I think Cielo did kind of figure that his choice guaranteed that Serph would not survive this. And I think that was part of the reason he did kind of ask permission from Serph to commit suicide. Granted, I think he was doing his best not to think about that. If Serph had refused him, Cielo would not have committed suicide. …Well. Not then. I'm not going to make any predictions whatsoever as to how long he'd have lasted past Serph and Sera's death. But Serph honestly could have told him not to die, if only because he didn't want to have to watch his comrade choose to die, and he didn't want Sera to have to watch it (and Cielo's the only Embryon who died in front of surviving Embryon, unless you count Heat.) And Cielo would have survived! Possibly he'd have died alongside Serph and Sera and we'd have gotten an enlightened hermaphrodite with two cocks! Or idk he'd have gotten to the sun some other way. …Hell I could even see him going back to Fred at the end of the day and helping him build a new government after everything. It wouldn't have been a job that Cielo's strengths were particularly useful for, and without his tribe and still having to devour I doubt he'd have lasted long before cracking, but Cielo has a very, very broad capacity to sacrifice himself when certain people tell him to do so. He could be Fred's assassin! Or something idk.
….Thank you, DDS for putting Cielo in a position where his suicide is less depressing than the implications of his survival. SERIOUSLY. WHAT.
Sera also could've probably convinced him not to die! Unlike Serph, she's not his leader, but she is still someone that Cielo feels he owes and hates making unhappy. (And yes, she created them and I do think that did leave an effect on their psyches.) And Sera, unlike Serph, has a history of making the Embryon's choices for them. Granted, by that point in the game, she'd mostly grown past that! But, well, I have a hard time getting into Sera's head and I honestly don't know if she'd tell Cielo to do his best to survive or not if she'd had time to think. I think that's the reason why Cielo didn't really give her much of an opportunity to object.
Weirdly, I think Cielo found the experience of dying strangely exhilarating. Not the pain part! Cielo has a high pain tolerance when he has to, but I'm really pretty sure that vomiting up blood and having a wing cut off before being blown up passed that pain tolerance. (Seriously, most gruesome and painful looking death in DDS besides Roland's. And Roland was getting eaten alive.) But Cielo's someone who wraps himself up in obligations and how his comrades are doing and what he's worth and trying not to hate the world while trying to save it and generally is far more unhappy than he looks. Freeing himself of everything but killing those fighter jets before they caught up to Serph and Sera because he knew that he'd have nothing else to worry about that had to come as a relief after the mental state he spent most of the second game in. Plus, you know, giant adrenaline rush apparently big enough to make him glow pink wtf.
The opponents
Cielo is the only one of the Embryon to die taking down faceless mooks, that may have been preprogrammed AIs. (While they were jets, Gale did say "You have no one left to die to carry out your orders" to Angel, and he's probably right. In some ways, I do bitch about that! Cielo's death was the most loosely integrated into the story of them all, and I'm not particularly fond of that. At the same time, in some ways it works for him. Cielo has the weakest connections outside the tribe of any of his comrades except Serph. No one outside the tribe ever really…convinces him that he wants to spend significant amounts of time with them and generally start viewing them as somewhat close to comrades. Cielo's always been fairly narrowly focused on his comrades, and not putting in someone with a face to kill him off mutually keeps that focus. I bitch, but in some ways I like that.
How it affects him in camp
This is, incidentally, part of the reason why I've been somewhat struggling with Cielo recently! He started off as viewing camp not as Nirvana, but as the next best thing. He died hoping to go to Nirvana, and he ended up in a place that wasn't, but was infinitely better than any other place he'd been. And so even though he'd basically committed suicide, he was okay with being alive because he'd accomplished what he'd hoped to with his death. But while it's never gotten nearly as bad as the real world in DDS, enough things have happened that Cielo's opinion of it has dropped drastically. He's gotten coma'd, killed, temporarily maimed, mildly betrayed, and had two of his comrades…well! He hopes they're not dead and does his best to be optimistic about it, or being optimistic about them being in Nirvana if they are dead, but Cielo's seen way too much not to have a hard time with that. And with Gale's disappearance being a death, Cielo's good at optimism, but he can't deny away everything. Cielo has started to see camp as having an arc into suckiness similar to the real world's, if not nearly as bad yet, and he's very wary as to what might happen next.
"PS essay on Cielo and *****"
"....but I already did."
"Really?"
"Yep, but it kinda sucked and I really only covered a tiny part of it."
"Essay again?"
"....."
"I'LL ESSAY BACK"
"......actually I think the saddest part is I'd decided to do so before you'd even offered any inducements."
….Seriously. MOST EASILY TOPPED ESSAYER EVER. A-also I'm now past 30,000 words of essays for Cielo. Sob.
So basically, I'm essaying more on Cielo's death. More precisely, his suicide, what exactly is happening there, why it's suicide, how it completes his character arc, and what's going on in his head at the time. Especially since despite it being suicide, it's not really as…okay it is despairing but it's Cielo's way of staying hopeful while despairing. I've always found that to be a neat trick!
Also I want you to have this video open and watch it while reading this: Cielo's death scene
Character arc
The first thing to do with Cielo's death is place it in context. In the context of his character arc, it completes it! The very first time he becomes a significant character is when he's just failed to protect Sera, and failed to die in his failure. …Granted, Heat didn't really want him to die for his failure, he wanted him not to fail in the first place, but he was a convenient half-conscious body to throw around. All the DDS characters in some way resolve their initial issues with their deaths. Roland reaches a redemption for not having saved Greg by being willing to die to save his comrades. Argilla basically reaches peace with her hatred of devouring by dying, and not letting her comrade die alone. Heat resolves his love triangle with Serph and Sera by telling Serph to take care of her. Gale resolves his love for Angel by…mutual KO. THANK YOU DDS FOR BEING NONDEPRESSING oh wait. With his death, Cielo proves…well. Not exactly his competence, considering he could have survived if he'd really wanted to. But his willingness to die rather than fail his tribe. It's really, really not a coincidence that his death comes when the last surviving fighter jets started shooting at Serph and Sera, and he manages to ram himself into the jet despite the fact that he's already missing a wing and managed control the direction of his flight in order to slam straight through the middle of a jet that's probably going several hundred miles per hour. That takes a lot of sheer, bloody-minded determination.
When Mick kidnapped Sera when Cielo was supposed to be watching her, he came out of it surprisingly uninjured. At the time, he was an unawakened AI, and as such, tended to react more based off logic than emotions. When faced with a numerically superior force, led by a demon one hell of a lot stronger than him, it really wouldn't make a lot of sense for him to fight to the death! Cielo fought, undoubtedly! And probably did pretty well. But he didn't have the same bloody-minded determination to protect his comrades that he'd gain with awakening, and with Heat yelling in his face about not protecting Sera hard enough. Post-awakening, Cielo would have fought hard enough that Mick couldn't have taken Sera and left him to leave a message for his comrades, because he'd have died before allowing Sera to be taken like that.
Add in the fact that by that time, Sera'd saved his life by singing a starving Gale into non-berserkness. He owed her. To have failed her cut him deeply. I don't think it's a constant presence in him anymore, because he did save her. But anyone trying to kidnap Sera again or harm her when Cielo's around will have to kill him to do it. And that includes fighter jets aimed for the airplane she was in.
There's also the fact that Cielo developed from…someone who had optimism and reasons for it to someone who clung to the last threadbare shreds of optimism knowing he was probably wrong, but not capable of giving them up. I don't think I can even say how much he hates the real world. It's the place that caused his comrades to schism and die, that devours children, that's ruled by a bunch of weenies who think that they're better than everyone else when they're the ones who break down at the thought of the world ending while the AIs and the uneducated terrorists are the ones trying to fix things. To reject that world as the real one, and willingly die to leave it and seek the real Nirvana is very much something Cielo would do.
Communication
At the time of his death, everyone in his tribe was dead but Serph and Sera. Even Johnny the awesome shop ninja was dead! (And yes, Cielo cried for him.) And Sera was dying. Cielo was flying alongside the plane that Serph and Sera were flying to a place where Sera could hopefully talk to god. Note that this section is very heavily dependent on my interpretations of Serph and Sera's mostly non-verbal communications with Cielo, and if either of you two want to correct me on what they're thinking, I'd be thrilled! I'm not as good as I'd like at interpreting, well, Sera in particular but really both of them.
There's a moment right after Cielo first sees the fighters and draws Serph's attention to it, that he pauses and looks away, like he's thinking of something. And Serph seems to know what he's thinking, and nods. That's most likely the moment Cielo decides what he's going to do. Cielo could, probably, have survived that if he'd wanted to. He had his mouthlaser, he had spells, he had lots of things that he could have used besides a purely physical attack. Cielo chose not to. …Seriously, I love that moment of interaction with Serph SO HARD. It's just like. A perfect example of how the Embryon don't need to talk with Serph to communicate, plus possibly (Serph, would you like to chime in?) Serph basically giving him permission to do what he decides to do.
The next moment, Sera's noticing the missiles, and Cielo tries to cheer her up! …Which I think Sera recognized as the signal that Cielo wasn't planning on coming back, since that's when she starts crying. Cielo wouldn't try to cheer her up like that before a perfectly ordinary battle because he wouldn't feel the need to. He'd be fine, she'd be fine, she shouldn't worry too much! But Cielo's…very good at dodging, but very bad at outright lying, and he wouldn't mean to deceive her for very long, anyway. And so she caught in general terms, what he planned.
That's when he gives up the act and says "See you in Nirvana, ja?" …IT TOOK ME YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW HOW MANY REPLAYS OF THIS SCENE BEFORE MY EYES STOP TEARING UP WHEN HE SAYS THAT. Oh Cielo ;; That's…really the single moment in the game where Cielo's most purely himself to me. OPTIMISTICALLY SUICIDAL. But really, throughout most the game, even when he's trying to cover up his negative feelings with optimism and "be happy guys! :D?", it feels like he's trying too hard to be optimistic and really kind of failing at even convincing himself. But at the moment when he gives up on forcing himself to be optimistic and trying to cheer the others up, he still ends up optimistic. Cielo, at the core, really does think that things can't stay bad forever and I kinda love that about him. Basically, in my opinion, he spent large parts of the second game was blocking himself off from his real optimism by trying to fake it into reality.
And then he leaves before Sera can do anything other than cry.
But what surprises me most about this is how much communication is going on before Cielo kills himself! He basically gets Serph's permission (?) before killing himself, and he says good-bye to Sera. Most the Embryon do get to say their goodbyes before their death, but…I don't quite know how to put it. It feels to me like it's a more vital part of completing his character arc for Cielo to say good bye to Sera than it is for any of the other goodbyes. Especially since he then proceeds to die gruesomely in front of them.
What Cielo was thinking
After he catches Serph's attention to warn him about the missiles, Cielo pauses. Basically, in my opinion, to think. "Well, I might survive this. Do I want to?"
And that has a lot of reasons behind it. Mostly, I think, he was thinking that he didn't want to survive his tribe. Cielo has been alone only once in this lifetime - when he first arrived in the real world immediately after the Junkyard was destroyed, and was immediately captured by the Lokapala and mistreated. There is nothing in this world for him once his tribe's left it, and so he decided to hope that death would bring him to a better one. Keep in mind, when you're thinking about that, that Cielo KNOWS reincarnation and the afterlife exist without a shadow of doubt. He's seen it in the Junkyard, he's aware that Serph defeated Sheffield's spirit, hell, he remembers a tiny bit of his past life himself. In some ways, all his suicide is is a gamble that the next life, whether it's the afterlife or rebirth, will be better than this one. After all, it can't possibly be worse. …Granted, he was also aware that there's some risk that it'll be a permanent end for him, but that's still infinitely better than surviving in a world he hates without his comrades.
But Serph's not dead! Serph…is the next person who chooses to die after this. Would he have chosen to survive if Cielo'd chosen to survive? …Honestly? I could argue either way! On the one hand, Serph wouldn't want to abandon Cielo. On the other hand, he wouldn't want to abandon Sera. And he does love Sera a little more than he loves Cielo, even though it's hard to really quantify past the "would die for you without a second's hesitation" point. I'm…inclined to say that Cielo'd tell him to stay with her, and that Serph would agree, especially with Cielo's vaguely hinted at psychic powers meaning that there's some chance that he'd pick up on the fact that both Sera and Serph were needed for God and Serph's tendency to let his comrades make their own choices. But I'm not sure how it would play out. Serph if you want to chime in?
But in my opinion, one of the things Cielo was thinking about when he chose was this. I think…he didn't want to risk dividing and distracting Serph and Sera's loyalties. Cielo's seen what happens when comrades are forced to choose among their comrades, and he never wants to see that again, much less be the cause of a choice.
There's also the fact that…just as much as I doubt Cielo being the only surviving comrade would be enough for Serph to be happy, I doubt that Serph by himself would be enough for Cielo to be happy. Cielo loves Serph and is unhesitatingly devoted to him. But, as I've essayed before, he's just not that close to him. In order of closeness to Cielo, I'd roughly peg the Embryon as: Gale - Sera - Heat - Argilla - Serph. Serph has added symbolic points as leader of the Embryon, plus jesus points, but. I'm really not sure how well Cielo's handle the only remaining other Embryon being Serph, especially with past life issues. Granted, I think if he was alone with Serph for a while he'd get completely over his past life issues because Serph's good at jesusing and Cielo does love and trust Serph already. (As a side note, when I talk about Cielo loving his comrades, while I don't completely exclude non-platonic love, non-platonic love isn't at all important to him. Just thought I'd clarify there! XD)
I think Cielo did kind of figure that his choice guaranteed that Serph would not survive this. And I think that was part of the reason he did kind of ask permission from Serph to commit suicide. Granted, I think he was doing his best not to think about that. If Serph had refused him, Cielo would not have committed suicide. …Well. Not then. I'm not going to make any predictions whatsoever as to how long he'd have lasted past Serph and Sera's death. But Serph honestly could have told him not to die, if only because he didn't want to have to watch his comrade choose to die, and he didn't want Sera to have to watch it (and Cielo's the only Embryon who died in front of surviving Embryon, unless you count Heat.) And Cielo would have survived! Possibly he'd have died alongside Serph and Sera and we'd have gotten an enlightened hermaphrodite with two cocks! Or idk he'd have gotten to the sun some other way. …Hell I could even see him going back to Fred at the end of the day and helping him build a new government after everything. It wouldn't have been a job that Cielo's strengths were particularly useful for, and without his tribe and still having to devour I doubt he'd have lasted long before cracking, but Cielo has a very, very broad capacity to sacrifice himself when certain people tell him to do so. He could be Fred's assassin! Or something idk.
….Thank you, DDS for putting Cielo in a position where his suicide is less depressing than the implications of his survival. SERIOUSLY. WHAT.
Sera also could've probably convinced him not to die! Unlike Serph, she's not his leader, but she is still someone that Cielo feels he owes and hates making unhappy. (And yes, she created them and I do think that did leave an effect on their psyches.) And Sera, unlike Serph, has a history of making the Embryon's choices for them. Granted, by that point in the game, she'd mostly grown past that! But, well, I have a hard time getting into Sera's head and I honestly don't know if she'd tell Cielo to do his best to survive or not if she'd had time to think. I think that's the reason why Cielo didn't really give her much of an opportunity to object.
Weirdly, I think Cielo found the experience of dying strangely exhilarating. Not the pain part! Cielo has a high pain tolerance when he has to, but I'm really pretty sure that vomiting up blood and having a wing cut off before being blown up passed that pain tolerance. (Seriously, most gruesome and painful looking death in DDS besides Roland's. And Roland was getting eaten alive.) But Cielo's someone who wraps himself up in obligations and how his comrades are doing and what he's worth and trying not to hate the world while trying to save it and generally is far more unhappy than he looks. Freeing himself of everything but killing those fighter jets before they caught up to Serph and Sera because he knew that he'd have nothing else to worry about that had to come as a relief after the mental state he spent most of the second game in. Plus, you know, giant adrenaline rush apparently big enough to make him glow pink wtf.
The opponents
Cielo is the only one of the Embryon to die taking down faceless mooks, that may have been preprogrammed AIs. (While they were jets, Gale did say "You have no one left to die to carry out your orders" to Angel, and he's probably right. In some ways, I do bitch about that! Cielo's death was the most loosely integrated into the story of them all, and I'm not particularly fond of that. At the same time, in some ways it works for him. Cielo has the weakest connections outside the tribe of any of his comrades except Serph. No one outside the tribe ever really…convinces him that he wants to spend significant amounts of time with them and generally start viewing them as somewhat close to comrades. Cielo's always been fairly narrowly focused on his comrades, and not putting in someone with a face to kill him off mutually keeps that focus. I bitch, but in some ways I like that.
How it affects him in camp
This is, incidentally, part of the reason why I've been somewhat struggling with Cielo recently! He started off as viewing camp not as Nirvana, but as the next best thing. He died hoping to go to Nirvana, and he ended up in a place that wasn't, but was infinitely better than any other place he'd been. And so even though he'd basically committed suicide, he was okay with being alive because he'd accomplished what he'd hoped to with his death. But while it's never gotten nearly as bad as the real world in DDS, enough things have happened that Cielo's opinion of it has dropped drastically. He's gotten coma'd, killed, temporarily maimed, mildly betrayed, and had two of his comrades…well! He hopes they're not dead and does his best to be optimistic about it, or being optimistic about them being in Nirvana if they are dead, but Cielo's seen way too much not to have a hard time with that. And with Gale's disappearance being a death, Cielo's good at optimism, but he can't deny away everything. Cielo has started to see camp as having an arc into suckiness similar to the real world's, if not nearly as bad yet, and he's very wary as to what might happen next.