trans_9 | What is... God? [ Open ]

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What is... God? [ Open ]

Cielo had come to the Media Library in hopes of finding something out about the pods they all popped out of. He wanted... needed to find his comrades. There were people here, and they've all been nice to him so far, putting up with his seemingly endless stream of questions. There were people, but they weren't his people. Just as he had never seen the sun, he'd never been without his tribe. The thought seemed... impossible. To him it was impossible. So if it was impossible then the rest of them were there. Somewhere.

Simple as that.

So he slipped into an empty pod room and plopped down so he was sitting cross legged, wondering if this was some sort of Dissemination Machine. Before he could do anything he was hit with a familiar hunger pain that churned his stomach and made the back of his throat taste sour. He gripped his right thigh and pressed against the Atma that burned there, pulsing faintly before fading as he shoved that hunger down.

Dyaus was hungry.

Luckily, he didn't feel like he was going to loose control. Whatever was in that stuff the ship fed him helped at least somewhat, but whatever it was it wasn't alive. So it wasn't enough.

"Ain't gonna be eatin' our buddies now, eh?" A chuckle, then a sigh. "Wish I knew what-"

द्यौष्पितृ
Dyaus Pita

(Hinduism) In the Vedic religion, the Sky Father,
1998, Ramacharaka, Yogi Ramacharaka, The Philosophies and Religions of India, Kessinger Publishing, p. 250:

Thus in the early Vedas we find records of Dyaus-Pita, or “Father-Heaven,” accompanied by Prithvi or “Mother-Earth”; also Ushas or “Dawn-Goddess”; Vayu or the “Wind-God”; and Agni, the “Fire-god”. Companion to Varuna, the "God of the Celestial Ocean and Keeper of Law."

"What, what, huh??!!" Cielo scrambled when the screen popped on with information that just didn't seem real. "No way! How you know all dat? Is dat what we are?"

Avatar
In Hinduism, Avatar or Avatara , often translated as 'incarnation', literally means descent (avatarati) and usually implies a deliberate descent of a god from the higher spiritual realms to lower realms of existence for special purposes.

Cielo furrowed his brow, this didn't make any sense at all. He didn't know who God was, but Sera always spoke of him as something else. Something...bigger. "But I t'ought we was demons. Not gods."

Asura
In Hinduism, the Asura are a group of power-seeking deities, sometimes referred to as demons in later years. They were opposite to the Devas. The earliest texts have the Asuras presiding over moral and social phenomena (Varuna) and the Devas presiding over natural phenomena (Vayu).

So that's what an Asua is? That was... good right? He was still having trouble understanding but none of that shone any bad lights on what they had been turned in to. But then , didn't say anything about them having to devour living beings for sustenance. Then the screen changed again, this time without him even asking any questions.

Distortion
An unwanted change that results in a misrepresentation and/or malformation of what had been initially intended.

Well, certainly didn't help ease the sour pit of his stomach in the least bit.

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The door opens slightly and a head pokes around it to take a look into the room. Just a head, there doesn't seem to be any suggestion of shoulder or body beyond that like there would be for someone who can't extend their neck a sizable length.

Brainiac 5 pauses once he sees the pod is already occupied and his eyes dart sideways for a moment in a surprisingly nervous gesture.

"My apologies, I thought this pod was empty," he says, before retreating a little. However he's a little curious about the expression on the other's face and the rest of his body comes into view, allowing his neck to return to a more human length.

"You seem... perturbed," he observes.

Cielo jumped faintly at the voice, having been so caught up in trying to decipher what to him seemed like some cryptic code. He didn't really react much to green skin or stretchy neck, weirder things wandered about in the Junkyard. The blue-haired boy was clearly on edge, and he didn't look well.

Everyone was a potential enemy, and he was without the protection of his tribe. "Dat's okay."

He looked back up to the screen for a moment, then turned his attention to the stranger and pointed up at the list of definitions. "De Dissemination Machine just started tellin me stuff dat don make any sense."

Brainiac 5 blinks and enters the pod properly, tucking away a couple of pads into a compartment in his chest as he does so.

"If I recall correctly the machine is supposed to be telepathic, most likely it was responding to what you were thinking about."

He glances up at the lines of text, scanning the contents rapidly. "Oh. Religion," he says dismissively.

"Tele...pathic?"

He sighed softly, looking up at the stranger and blinking curiously at the chest compartment, likening it to how he and his comrades store things in their throat sometimes. In their demon forms anyway.

"What is...religion?" Cielo was finding existence on this ship to be very frustrating. He never seemed to know what anyone was talking about. As sad as the thought may be, things were so much simpler in the Junkyard.

Edited 2009-06-26 06:37 (UTC)

That gets a raised eyebrow. He doesn't have any data on the boy, so he was likely another who had arrived while they were away on the mission. It's faintly annoying, if Brainiac 5 knew more about him, then he might have an idea why he seems so confused by things. But in a way it reminds him of the first few weeks after Clark had joined the Legion and having to explain everything from the coffee maker to the simchamber to the hero.

Maybe that's why he takes a seat close by and tries to explain.

"Telepathic. It has the ability to scan thoughts and presumably used yours as a suggestion to display this information. As for religion... Generally speaking, it's a belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe."

He shrugs. "Beyond that I find the concept to be rather pointless and outdated. Something people fall back on to reassure themselves that the world around them has meaning and a purpose."

Sorry Cielo, the guy who comes from a society based on pure logic probably isn't the best person to talk about religion with.

Cielo pulled a face at the explanation of 'telepathic.' He really didn't like the idea of the ship or anyone sifting around in his head. It's not that he had anything to hide really, Cielo tended to be rather genuine and up front with people. It was the principle of the thing, his thoughts were his thoughts.

"You mean like God?" As far as he knew, God was just a somebody. A big and powerful somebody, but still just a somebody he hasn't met. "Sera'd talk about God a lot. She say he sad. But.."

He shifts so he could point up at where it says Dyaus Pita. "Dat's me! I tink... And dem?" His fingers run under the other names listed beneath it. "Day be me comrades."

Edited 2009-06-26 07:58 (UTC)

Faces or not, Brainiac 5 knows that the ship isn't likely to care about personal boundaries, so believes it's best to just ignore it.

"'God', and many other deities, tend to feature in most religions to my knowledge. It's not a subject I'm particularly inclined to research, but Gods are simply a creation of their respective religions. They can't feel anything."

His eyes follow the other's finger to the indicated text. "Most likely you were named for that figure, nothing more," he explains patiently. "Unless you have reason to believe it's anything else, it's hardly anything to worry about... Dyaus, I assume?"

Cielo was still not quite getting the idea of what religion was. He had no concept of prayer or worship, despite the fact that his world had a temple. It had merely been a place to learn what was required of them by law.

"Me name's is Cielo, mon.But Dyaus is parta me now." He looked over at the screen again. "And de ot'ers are parta me comrades."

Edited 2009-06-26 23:56 (UTC)

[sorry for fail T__T]

"Cielo, then." He makes a note of that in his internal database. "But I'm not sure what you mean about Dyaus being a part of you."

"We all turn int'demons, ya? Asura." At least he had a definition for asura now, they found things all over the Karma Temple that didn't make a lick of sense at the time. "Dey have names, but dey're not different from us."

(())

Edited 2009-06-29 22:53 (UTC)

"You're not making much sense," he answers, frowning slightly. "Demons are just fictional creations, part of a number of religions but not real. At least, not in the way most people think of them. It's more likely that what people think of as 'demons' are really just aliens or other unfamiliar lifeforms."

A pause, then he continues. "While I don't doubt that you are capable of some sort of transformation, that doesn't make you demonic or anything."

He feels like he's missing something, but it's difficult to tell what with the differences between what they both know.

"I dunno." He says, still confused about all this himself. "Nobody evah hearda demons b'fore dis happened, ain't got no religions.. Dey s'posed t'be de reflection of our Karma."

Cielo groans softly and shakes his head. "I don't tink I evah gonna be understandin' dis..."

Brainiac 5 privately agrees and he's tempted to just leave things there and go about his own business, but... they are supposed to be working together to some extent, and while this isn't like the Legion, he realises he should at least try to be somewhat civil with the others on this ship.

Not to mention that Cielo's vagueness about who, and more importantly what, he is has gotten him curious. It's a problem and he likes to solve them. If only to point out sometimes that he did.

"Maybe you should explain to me more about yourself," he suggests. "It might help me understand your problem."

"Well... It start when dis ting appear between de Embryon and Vanguard territory. A fight broke out when we go to see it, and den dis big light came. I don' remember what happen den, but when we woke up de Vanguards ran and dere was a girl in de ting so we took her to our base." Cielo somewhat useless ability number two. Rambling. He's good at it. Tended to drive his comrade's nuts after he spontaneously developed the accent.

"Later we started t'get real hungry, but we didn' know what dat was or how t'make it stop. Den Gale lost control of his demon-"

"-and he tried t'eat me! But den Sera started singin and Gale got better." Cielo gestures with his hands when he speaks, demonstrating and punctuation points. He lets his elbows rest on his knees once he's started winding down.

"After dat is when de temple call all de tribe leaders. Dey learn we been given de power of de demons, and dat de new law is dat instead of fightin normal like we been doing, we gotta be demons an devour our enemies."

He sits perfectly, inhumanly still as he listens, processing all the information to try and piece together a faint idea of what happened from Cielo's ~~rambling~~ explanation. One detail in particular stands out, and for obvious reasons.

"'Devour your enemies'?" he asks in surprise. "Do you mean that literally?"

"Gotta eat t'live, ya?" He says it like it's no different then eating a hamburger. "De temple say we gotta eat livin tings t'survive."

"So, if I'm understanding you correctly," he says, a thoughtful look crossing his face, "there was some form of phenomena occurred and afterwards you were all required to eat others to survive?"

He fixes Cielo with an intense look. "Doesn't that bother you? To have changed so drastically?" Unless the other's culture was markedly different from that of most other humans, such a thing should have been considered taboo. It didn't make any sense that Cielo would accept it so readily... Unless his lack of understanding in other areas extended to that as well.

Cielo takes a few moments to think about that. People here don't all react so well to learning what he has to do to survive. Granted he'd rather not, but no one had a choice. He still doesn't. "Sometimes tings happen and you don' know why, and no mattah how hard you try de answer ain't gonna be comin. So you jus take one day at a time and survive de best you can. Don' got de time t'sit and be boddered."

He shrugs and grips at his ankles, knees bouncing lightly where they bent. "Don't tink I wanna go back de way we used t'be. Dere was nuttin den. No laughin or cryin. Just fightin and killin. Well, dere's still dat, but at least now I got me comrades, ya?"

Edited 2009-07-01 08:23 (UTC)

"Take one day at a time..." Brainiac 5 muses. It's a philosophy he's heard several times in the Legion, though one he's also always had difficulty applying. He's used to planning ahead extensively as often as possible in order to avoid problems. But, when he thinks about the situation he left the Legion in, he can understand why it might be better to try only taking things a day at a time. It isn't possible to plan ahead for if - when - he returns to his own dimension, and he'd rather not dwell on the matter if at all possible.

"But still," he continues, returning his attention to Cielo, "I imagine it will be particularly difficult for you here. Has there been any suggestions of how to deal with the problem?" After all, it doesn't seem to have been Cielo's choice to be like this, so Brainy thinks there's little point in taking offence at the notion. Better to focus on working out solutions if possible.

"Mr Wednesday say I should eat de stuff de ship makes so I been doin dat. Still hungry all de time, but don' tink I gonna be loosing control. So it gotta be working at least a little, ya?" The most he can do is pray that it'll stay that way. He knew that once he frees his comrades from the pods that 'working just a little' might not be enough anymore, at least not with Heat. The red-head might not loose control of his demon, but his temper is another story.

That's not going to stop Cielo from trying though.

"Hey... you know anytin about de pods?"

"I'm glad to hear that," he answers with a slight smile. All the same 'losing control' sounded dangerous and he makes a mental note to try and be on hand should anything like that happen. His physiology would make him the most logical choice in that case, after all.

"The pods? Not much, I'm afraid," he says. "I haven't been here long enough to investigate them myself. Why?"

"Me comrades gotta be down dere. Can't leave dem like dat, I gotta go get dem out!" There has never been anything he's ever been more adament about in his life.

"I tried when I first woke up but den Stacy stuck me in de neck wit sometin an I got all funny in de 'ead for a while."

Brainiac 5 sighs. He understands where Cielo is coming from - and given half a chance he'd also be searching the pod caverns for signs of his Legion - but he also knows that it's unlikely the effort would have any results.

"Stacy doesn't seem to be willing to let us try and find any others still locked inside the pods," he says. "And even if you could, how could you locate them in such a vast space?"

"Deres gotta be a way, ya? Just cuz it gwonna be a hard ting t'do don' mean we shouldn't do it!" Cielo is convinced he's faced worse things, harder things. At least then he wasn't alone though, the lack of his tribe is really starting to grate on him.

"Maybe I can stiff em out! I'll even go one by one if I 'ave too."

"Sniff them out? You can do that?" he asks curiously. He doesn't think it's likely to work, but he knows what it's like to feel lonely and want to try anyway, so Brainy decides that maybe it's not his place to point out his doubts about the situation.

"I can try! Can tell were tings are better when I'm all demony, and I can fly! So dat'll make it easier too." Cielo smiles a bit. He's grown a bit attached to his other self, despite the lack of eyes and elbows. And the cannibalism.

"Flight is both useful and somewhat enjoyable," Brainiac 5 admits. It hadn't been something he'd really thought about until Superman had joined the Legion those years ago and needed practice with his growing abilities. Then it had been... nice. For the two of them to take flights around New Metropolis together.

He misses those days. Things had been much easier then.

Not wanting to get caught up in memories around strangers, he blinks and focuses back on Cielo. "What other things is your other form capable of?" he asks curiously.

"I like flyin too!" One of these days he's going to have to give that sensorium thing a try himself. He wants to know what it's like to fly in a blue sky with fluffy white clouds.

The kind of sky Nirvana was supposed to have.

"All de demons be really big, ya?" He spreads his arms out wide. "I can call lightning. Wind too but not as good at it. Dere's a lotta magic I can do now, and I would heal me comrades when dey get hurt."

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