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Coluan Quirkiness

Summary:

Twenty random facts about Querl Dox. For added fun, try to see how many Lyle/Brainy stories (both mine and not) I reference.

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Coluan Quirkiness

 

 

 

 

1. Querl didn’t know what to think when he was ‘asked’ to join the Legion. Science was the be-all and end-all of his existence. Being a ‘superhero’ had never entered his thoughts, not even when he’d gone over the history of his progenitors, one of whom was a L.E.G.I.O.N. officer before becoming a rebel, and an earlier one of whom was a supervillain.

 

But if the head of the UP thought he could do it…well, who was he to disappoint them? And their state-of-the-art laboratories?

 

2. Most of the other Legionnaires seemed to be put off by his attitude. This kept them from touching him all the time, as humans and various other species are wont to do.

 

When Superboy showed up, with his Tactile Telekinesis, Querl got…not precisely scared, but someone who could touch him from across a room without his permission was…not someone he wanted touching him.

 

In hindsight, perhaps he made too big a deal of it. The forcefield belt came in handy, though, even if he did eventually get his own forcefield powers.

 

3. Coluans don’t touch much. At least not physically. When Querl was banned from the Sleepnet, he…lost something. The Sleepnet became like a giant mental orgy that he was no longer invited to, but always aware of, because everyone else on his home planet still was invited.

 

Well…maybe not an orgy. A giant mental ‘cuddle party’ then. But when he was banned from them, not only did he develop occasionally recurrent episodes of insomnia, but he also stopped trying to tone down his arrogance in his genius so as to make socialization easier.

 

Then he started to make friends in the Legion, and…well, a habit is easy to fall into, but getting rid of it is eleven point nine times harder. But it’s worth striving for, so he does.

 

4. He doesn’t actually hate Bartholomew Allen. Querl just finds him so sprocking annoying that he can’t think when he’s around him, which annoys him even further. To have that kind of intellect – a level eight, at least; he’s never been able to get Bart to stay still long enough for intensive tests – in the mind of a hyperactive teenager toddler is just…criminal.

 

5. It took precisely four months, three days, seven hours and eight minutes for Querl to get to know Lyle well enough to figure out that there was no way Chameleon didn’t understand Interlac. For one thing, the amount of Durlanese Querl managed to pick up in that time indicated that when Reep and Lyle were ‘talking’ to each other, they occasionally made jokes about the other team members – which Lyle ‘translated’ as ‘helpful’ comments on their situation.

 

For another, Lyle was a fantastic liar – but Querl was an even better one, and it didn’t take him long to figure out Lyle’s ‘tells’.

 

6. Querl had become very good at lying to others – and himself – by the time he was four years of age. He knew his mother hadn’t wanted him, and the people charged with his care on Colu seemed to find him alternately frustrating, worrisome and annoying.

 

Querl told himself that they were just jealous he was smarter than them, and anyway, he didn’t need their help, or their…friendship.

 

7. Querl would never say it, but it’s good to be working with Rond Vidar again. On Talus, he was the only person who didn’t act like Brainiac 5 was a walking time bomb towards technology.

 

Even though, in his teenage impetuousness, he…kind of was.

 

Well, he’s grown up a bit now (though he’s still a teenager), and he blows up quite a few less labs these days, so that’s all good. And Rond is there to handle the more annoying cases sent labwards, such as Lori Morning’s former accelerated aging. It leaves Brainy more time for important work.

 

8. When Querl was evolved into Brainiac 5.1, for a time he reveled in being so open with his feelings. But then he started to feel as if he was…faking it. This emotional connection to other people had been something he’d lacked since he was banned from the Sleepnet; even being allowed back hadn’t awoken it. But it wasn’t him. Who he was, was a young man who was brash, not very good with people, but excellent with technology, and very lacking in socialization skills. To have all of his people problems just solved for him smacked of cheating.

 

And anyway, the people he was truly closest to didn’t seem to need him to change in order for them to like him.

 

9. Querl’s favorite food is a type of Durlan fruit. Its name is unpronounceable by the Coluan tongue, but it is exceedingly delicious. The outer skin is a mottled green, and the inside is purple; Querl first decided to try because it looked like his uniform, which, admittedly, was a rather whimsical reason, but he’s never regretted it.

 

He gives in to whimsy a lot more these days, too.

 

10. Querl’s name means ‘Strength of Heart’ in Coluan. He’s always wondered (since he was a month old and capable of intense mental thought) why his mother gifted him with that name.

 

Facing down Lyrl Dox in her attempt to kill him, Querl finally decides that his name is, unlike previously thought, most appropriate.

 

11. Querl has no idea who his paternal genetic donor is. After his mother’s death, he decides it’s better that he doesn’t.

 

12. Lyle was right – he did miss having Koko around. But the manic monkey was almost as annoying as Bart, and what he really missed was having a pet, not that specific simian. It’s why he got himself a rasta cat on his next trip to Titan. They, like all felines, are independent and extremely hygienic, plus the rasta cat is also very empathic and…well, ‘cuddly’ for lack of a better word.

 

Brainy felt validated in his choice when Ryl – which meant ‘Freethinking’ in Coluan – took to Lyle like a bird to the air, yet shunned some of the more annoying (read: hyper and/or gregarious) Legionnaires, like Lori and Triad.

 

It didn’t hurt that her deep purple fur matched his uniform perfectly.

 

13. When he and a few of the other Legionnaires were lost in the other universe, Querl focused all his energy on getting them home. Because even if home was where the heart was, only part of his was with him.

 

When they discovered that Apparition was really an apparition, and Imra and Garth were the only couple still together, it made him realize that he’d been jealous of the two couples, for having something in each other that he could never hope to possess.

 

It also brought home to Querl how much he had come to love the people he lived and worked with.

 

Love had become more important to him than logic.

 

14. Querl really doesn’t quite know what possessed him to kiss Lyle that one time. He was relieved that his…friend, his…best friend…was safe and sound, of course, but…

 

It seems this was one time when his subconscious mind was way ahead of the rest of him on what he really wanted.

 

15. Has nightmares sometimes about when his teammates were caught by the Blight. When he Lyle starting pursuing a relationship, the ending of the dream changed. Instead of himself being Blighted, Lyle never came back after the Blight was defeated.

 

16. The first time he and Lyle make love, Querl changes his mind about preferring pure theory over practical applications of data. At least, in some cases.

 

17. Querl really wishes he had at least one family member that cared about him. Then Lyle asks him to marry him, and Querl thinks that it’s better if he makes his own family…here in the Legion.

 

They plan the wedding for a week later. The ceremony goes off without a hitch, but the reception is interrupted by an outbreak of a mitochondrian fever on Xanthu. Fortunately, neither Lyle nor Querl are needed.

 

And luckily, news of the fever’s cure and no demise of those ill is what interrupts the fourth day of their honeymoon.

 

18. Lyle was right when he said that Querl had started to think of COMPUTO as a son. But with his…son…gone, it was easier to try and forget those nascent paternal feelings. He managed it for a few months – until the elders of Colu brought up the fact that he had not yet passed on his genes. They were in the midst of selecting an appropriate female for him to reproduce with.

 

Which meant that Querl had a very short amount of time in which to figure out how to combine his and Lyle’s genes into a child – one with a twelfth-level intellect, of course. The intellect would have to be adjusted for, of course; no child of his was going to be an outcast on his homeworld because he or she wasn’t smart enough.

 

19. Querl spent three hours agonizing over what sex to make the child before finally deciding to leave it up to chance. His mother may have been a sociopath, but his male progenitors weren’t much better.

 

He and Lyle would be there for their child, and that will, hopefully, make all the difference.

 

20. They name their daughter Rylea, ‘Great Gift’, and consider her perfect. She has Querl’s skin color, only a few shades lighter, and Lyle’s hair color, only a few shades darker. Her eyes are, of course, green, and she smiles easily and brightly.

 

She says her first word to them both when she’s five days old.

 

It’s ‘Dadas’.