#ciph.meta

The way Jovi interacts with Ardos breaks my heart. And here's why.

Jovi calls Ardos "Mr. Cool Man" and later refers to him as a "nice person". She's in awe of witnessing him and his Pokémon in action and thinks he's a nice guy. I've talked about how the game sprinkles in hints that Ardos is a bad person early on in a different post, but Jovi is a young child; she can't spot those hints and fully buys into the persona Ardos is putting on.

This little girl thinks the man who will go on to try to kill her brother is nice and cool. Because she's a precious baby who doesn't know yet how cruel the world can be, especially with Cipher in it. Can you imagine how much it would shock and disturb her to hear what happened on Citadark Isle?

Admission time. I've been so focused on making sense of Venus just randomly dropping the Subway Key after successfully "duping" Wes and saying that she won't let him and Rui use the Shadow Liner and coming up with more narratively interesting answers than "plot convenience" and "video game villain does something dumb" that I was genuinely wondering what she even meant by having duped him.

If I'm the only idiot here, and you're now rolling your eyes like, "OMG kat, it's so obvious what she meant/was doing", fine, I'm taking the L and you can scroll past this post. But those who are also wondering what she was doing, keep reading (this will be a canon analysis).

Of course the goal of the game is to catch and purify all Shadow Pokémon Cipher made. But due to aforementioned reasons, there can be situations where you might strategically choose to take advantage of Shadow Pokémon. One example for this is how it's often recommended that you go into the fight against Greevil with only five Pokémon, catch XD001 (immediate Master Ball ideally) and use it to stall out his full team of shadows so you can catch them. If you want to catch all of Greevil's Pokémon, doing so without any shadows on your own team is hard - potentially nearly impossible for casual players or highly dependent on luck or you have to rematch him several times.

Why do I like this so much? Because on one hand, you get to use Cipher's own creations against them. Karma. But on the other hand, you don't get to easily maintain the moral high ground. Yes, you use Shadow Pokémon in battle to lower their Heart Gauge and eventually purify them, but one could argue that you still benefitted from Cipher's work - and therefore the abuse of Pokémon - in the process. Of course, you could go out of your way and complete the games by only catching the Shadow Pokémon and lowering their Heart Gauges either exclusively with methods that don't involve battling or battling with them in a way that has only the non-Shadow Pokémon attack and knock both opponents out before they can attack. Because if your shadow takes a hit, someone could try to argue again that, due to it serving as an alternative target, you benefitted from battling with a Shadow Pokémon.

One XD strategy guide further draws attention to the moral dilemmas surrounding Shadow Pokémon by pointing out that stealing Pokémon from their Trainers is normally unethical, but Prof. Krane believes it's justified if done in the name of saving Shadow Pokémon. The stealing is technically a wholly different aspect to this, but I felt it was relevant to add in order to show that there is - at least in the vast majority of cases - no perfect moral purity on our protagonists' part. Which is redundant to point out for Wes the former criminal, but interesting to consider for Michael.

He knew that it would break Jovi's heart and possibly forever change the way she interacts with the world if she found out that "Mr. Cool Man" was not a "nice person" and in fact tried to kill her brother. After she already lost her father (possibly to Cipher as well).

He knew that Lily, Krane and the other adults would never forgive themselves for letting him get into such a dangerous situation in the first place.

And Michael just wanted everyone to be happy, as his reward for his hard work as a hero, not be upset and heartbroken about things that happened. So he left out parts of the story. I like to think that he said he went to the dome to face Greevil and defeated him and then ended his tale there. At some point, Michael definitely also had to catch Eldes before he could drop the truth bomb, as part of his efforts to make amends and come clean about everything, and made him promise to not say a word either.

I like to imagine that Eldes asked Michael if he was sure and said that it's not his responsibility to protect him, his father or his brother, and that Michael told him it's more so for the sake of his own family, which actually made Eldes feel better about it. He wasn't happy to agree to this, not because he was at all looking forward to telling Lily that his brother almost fucking murdered her baby boy, but because he wanted no more lies and to finally face the consequences of his own and Cipher's actions, so that he can be free from it all after. Still, he agreed because it was Michael's wish and he felt that Michael alone should get to decide this, not he (Eldes).

It doesn't bother Eldes that only four people, himself included, know what he did that day. That he saved many lives and arguably accomplished a tiny bit of heroism himself. The shame that he feels about the actions of Ardos and Greevil is far greater than any pride he could take in his own, and he views them as the only right thing to do in that moment and what he as just a human being was supposed to do.

Michael has shouldered many burders a boy his age shouldn't have had to carry, so to him it's simply "what is one more?". And so he takes on one more, just to make sure his loved ones don't worry about him more than they already have. He also hides the threatening message he receives from Ardos after defeating him in Orre Colosseum (if we want to consider that canon), possibly even from Eldes to also not stress him out any further.

And even though Ardos is most definitely the last person Michael cares to protect with this - if he ever finds a way out of Cipher fanaticism, changes his way and truly regrets what he did, Michael's action might also allow him to come back from something there usually is no coming back from. I don't think too many people have considered an eventual redemption arc for Ardos and it's not something I necessarily plan to make canon in my verse either, but if we want to entertain that possibility for a second, we can appreciate that Michael saved him too, in a way.

Imperial March is playing. For no particular reason.

Ardos is fascinated - almost obsessed - with the past, specifically Ancient Orre with all its glory, achievements and culture. He sees the destruction and downfall of Ancient Orre not as an inevitable and perhaps even justified consequence of endless wars and battles and massive abuse of power and resources on every side; he sees it as a tragedy that must be reverted. Essentially, Ardos hopes that Cipher's rule could be the first step towards restoring this old power and glory that Orre once had and eventually bring it back to a place where it and its inhabitants are taken seriously and no longer branded as a filthy den of lowly criminals (ironic, coming from a man who is a criminal himself and whose father is probably one of the biggest thieves - by virtue of being a billionaire - the world has ever seen). Needless to say, Ardos also pictures himself as one of the rulers and masters of this restored realm.

Eldes believes - due to aforementioned reasons - that there are damn good reasons why Ancient Orre fell and that it should be left buried under the sand and its dreams of power and conquest laid to rest forever. He wants a better future for his home region, but it should be a future that moves on from the past and doesn't repeat the same mistakes. This is why Eldes takes such a liking to Michael and develops a strong desire to both guide and protect him: Seeing what a genuinely good and positive person Michael is and how he works hard to save and protect people and Pokémon makes Eldes believe that this future could become reality, despite all the corruption, injustice, spite and hatred poisoning Orre to this day, manifested in Cipher (chiefly but sadly not exclusively). It has since become his goal to preserve this better future - through its "avatars" like Michael - at all cost.

When Michael defeats Eldes, he invites him to keep going and try to stop Cipher's plan but also makes it clear that he doubts that Michael can beat Greevil. Which is less about doubting him and more about Greevil being crazy powerful (fair point, man has four shadow legendaries), though outcome is the same.

When Michael defeats Ardos, he also states that things are in Greevil's hands now but leaves to prepare a helicopter to escape in. He confirms that he did so after Greevil is defeated, so we can assume this is indeed what he proceeded to do after walking away from the battle with Michael.

And this in turn means that Ardos very much saw the possibility of Greevil losing and had much less faith in his father's strength. If you really wanted to, you could chalk that up to Ardos being so confident in his own strength and abilities that he assumed someone who can beat him will also be able to beat Greevil (and Eldes), though I'm not sure that's all there is to it. Yes, he is arrogant and loves to belittle others, but he can see and acknowledge when someone is strong. I'm sure he is aware that he's the weakest link in his immediate family, with both Greevil and Eldes being stronger than him.

So, aside from the "Ardos vastly overestimated his own strength and just happened to be proven right" theory, there are three more explanations I can think of right now:

Ardos was simply being careful and prepared for escape just in case

Ardos is a much better judge of Trainers and their abilities than we ever realized

Despite being loyal to Cipher and its leader, Ardos just doesn't think too highly of his father

Some of you may think that 2. would be giving him a little too much credit perhaps, but consider this: Both Eldes and Ardos acknowledge Michael's extraordinary strength and talent when he defeats them in Orre Colosseum. Moreover, the game suggests to us that Eldes is a bit of a "special" Trainer himself, with his training at Mt. Battle and the way he gives Michael advice like an Elite Four member or Champion would in the mainline games. So, if we agree that Ardos probably knows he's weaker than Eldes and that he can acknowledge when someone else is strong and we add in that it's very likely that the brothers regularly train together, we can assume that Ardos might have gotten an idea of what makes a Trainer "special" and superior to their peers, even if just subconsciously. And that he therefore actually had a better grasp of the true extent of Michael's abilities.

(Considering how Eldes appears to lack confidence and faith in himself, it's definitely not far-fetched to assume he doesn't think defeating him is that big of a deal.)

With 3., we have a bit of a spicy option. A lovely contradiction. Wouldn't that be so interesting? One brother doubts the syndicate and its ideals, but his belief in his father's power is almost absolute; the other brother fanatically believes in the syndicate and its ideals, but not so much in his father's power.

As per usual, it comes back to the question of just what these two think about Greevil deep down. Personally, I think it has something to do with Greevil favoring Eldes over Ardos (more on that here). Despite all the doubts and moral objections Eldes has, he appears to share a deep bond with his father - he is the one Greevil ultimately listens to when the brothers argue about the fate of Cipher, he calls him father, he gets through to him, he even physically reaches out to him. If nothing else, I imagine that Eldes feels on some level responsible for Greevil (I mean, he immediately attempts to parent Michael, a complete stranger, once they have a chance to talk alone, so I guess Eldes just parents everyone in his life, including his own parent).

Meanwhile, Ardos is likely to hold some sort of resentment over this, and just this once his anger is entirely valid or at least human. His relationship with Greevil is already showing some cracks. But this also shatters the illusion. Because what Greevil's more positive relationship with Eldes does, even if Eldes rationally understands that his father is doing some very wrong and terrible things, is keeping him in that childish adoration and dependency on an emotional level, especially since he isn't given the opportunity to physically remove himself, take the time to truly realize and internalize these facts about his father and rethink their relationship. Hell, Greevil even keeps Eldes with him on Citadark Isle while Ardos is out on his own. You can take this as illustrating the issue quite nicely, if you choose to view it in this context.

Greevil's treatment of Ardos has, in a way, released Ardos from his bonds a little bit - perhaps just enough for him to doubt his father more than his brother is currently capable of. Make no mistake: A parent should never favor one child over the other. It's bad parenting, it's harmful to all children involved, it causes deep issues. And at the end of the day Ardos' fanatical belief in Cipher makes it so he can't and/or doesn't act on whatever advantage this might give him on the road to freeing himself from Greevil's control (the level and magnitude of intentionally controlling and abusive behavior on his part is a question for another time, though I dare say that regardless of Greevil's intentions, he ended up putting his sons in a harmful position and family dynamic for sure).