C096 - MPLR: Move Power Leaderboard Rankings

The week after the wedding saw a lot of change on the farm. For one, Courtney had talked with Luna and Carl about adding another house to the farm grounds for just her on the other side of the hot spring. Construction started with Pete's express approval because, of course, he didn't mind his partner moving out if it was just a minute walk away. What he had more than anything on the Evergreen Meadow was open space.

Free real estate, if you will.

And speaking of free real estate, his pokemon and the girls' pokemon opened up a sort of open-air battle-gym that resembled a quarry more than anything on the other side of the lake.

It took a while to get there for the smaller pokemon, but it was meant for the bigger pokemon in the first place. The four trainers living on the farm, as in Pete, Jasmine, Courtney, and Valerie, decided that a crucial new training would be added to the training regiment they already worked through: Power Training.

What their pokemon were asked to do was repeatedly use a move at its full power to raise the level of output they could wield it at. That was where the quarry came in; they repeatedly destroyed the ground, boulders laying around or just rocks by wielding the moves against nature instead of other pokemon.

Like that, they could recklessly go all out without the fear of unplanned damage to themselves or others. The few bruises and sore muscles they would get through this kind of training were easily fixed by the many pokemon with healing moves on his farm.

The choice to put the training field there on the other side of the lake was mostly to make sure the noise didn't bother the farm, but also because there was little nature to destroy at the already rocky beach. With his Mega Milotic being the supreme ruler of the lake, there was little the water pokemon living there could do to sway the pokemon moving there.

Then, two unprecedented evolutions happened on the farm. The pokemon already existed, and the evolution condition was known. But Courtney bonded to two Eevee, and they evolved into Vaporeon and Glaceon after Courtney focused on the bonds. They evolved without their evolution stones.

It was easily explained, of course, if you knew that Courtney was the avatar to a legendary water pokemon. And since it said it 'presided' over water AND ice despite the mono-water-typing in the games, Pete brushed away that Courtney managed to evolve an Eevee into both typings just like that.

Yet, since he didn't want to advertise Courtney's status as a legendary's avatar, the observations and conjections he noted down would not be published in the near future.

With another week ending and his impending Alola trip, Pete stood near the cliff of the waterfall near his home, Ilex Falls. On his shoulders sat a freshly hatched Rookidee, given to him as an egg from Jasmine's brother who owned the shiny Corviknight, and on the other sat a slightly older Fletchling from his most recent egg haul.

Next to him was a bunch of expensive looking equipment with Devon Corp logos over most of them, and Pete was currently tapping his tablet PC to do some last-minute adjustments. Thankfully, the equipment came with comprehensive and all-encompassing software ready made, and all Pete wanted to change was how the data was saved to account for all the different pokemon and categories.

The first move power leaderboard rankings, or MPLR for short, were about to be recorded. Pete settled on quite a few categories to give many of his pokemon a chance at winning. There was raw power for every typing, divided by stab and non-stab. It was also divided by attack and special attack, as well as several moves that were more or less universally learnable throughout most species.

Then, there was a setup category where pokemon were allowed to use a single move to power up first before. Otherwise, Pete feared his pokemon would become too one-dimensional despite never stopping their spars or battles in the forest. That was also why every four weeks, the used moves for the raw power rankings would rotate to a different move, lest his pokemon only trained the power of a singular move. The raw power ranking was recorded once every two weeks, so they could compete twice throughout the categories.

The other 'major' category Pete included was power growth. It was only divided into stab and non-stab and would record a pokemon's % growth in attack power over the weeks with the same move.

Pete's condition for a pokemon to go with him to Alola a little over a week later was the highest %-growth in a move's power for the fully evolved pokemon when another ranking was recorded. Raw power ranking was his pokemon using a prepared move while the growth category was a move of the pokemon's choosing.

Whenever he was at the farm, Pete would hold the growth ranking every week while the raw power category was recorded every two weeks. That was, of course, subject to change if he ever felt it necessary.

"You look like a big nerd typing away on that tablet, you know?"

"Sorry - but if it wasn't my big nerd brain, what else made you fall for me? My amazing sense of humor? My cute butt?"

Jasmine slapped her husband's arm slightly and retorted with a pout, "I certainly didn't fall in love with the fact that you don't allow a single setup for a joke or how you win every argument before we even have one."

Pete looked up with a grin, "I love that about our relationship, though."

"Ugh, finish your task. My pokemon are getting impatient."

"And mine aren't? Look! Your one Rhydon already fell asleep in the shadow of the cliff while my Conkeldurr are both shadowboxing as warm-up. Clearly, my pokemon are more pumped about this than yours."

As Jasmine looked over, Pete finished the setup and asked his first pokemon to test out one of the hardest devices to create. The one recording the strength of non-material special attacks from typings like fairy, psychic, ghost...

'I'm ready, Pete. You want me to use Extrasensory, correct?'

Pete nodded toward Mega Reuniclus and gave her the go-ahead. After the attack landed, which only made the device shake a little once, a ping was heard on his tablet to show the PV or power value it recorded. The number was the first ever recorded at 580, which didn't awe the trainer or his mega evolved pokemon. With nothing to compare it to, this number meant nothing to Pete or Mega Reuniclus.

It did, however, make Pete appreciate Reuniclus' power when his Espeon used the same move and it 'only' recorded a 394. When it was Metagross' turn and the move was recorded at 404, Pete grew excited at Mega Reuniclus' apparent strength.

Recording every move he wanted took hours where he only had a brief pause for lunch where Courtney recorded the rest of the moves because she accepted the task of continuing the rankings when he wasn't at the farm for all the pokemon present.

"So? Who had the absolute highest attack and special attack?"

Jasmine had made herself comfortable on Pete's lap as he tiredly sat on the couch to relax his muscles. She gently brushed his hair, looking at him as he pondered her question with closed eyes.

"Do you want me to include our mega pokemon or just the... what will we call them? Regular pokemon?"

"Do both, I want the highest for megas and regulars," Jasmine hurriedly decided.

"Hmm, highest stab move recorded for all pokemon period was Mega Milotic using Hyper Beam as a test, but technically Hyper Beam isn't part of the rotation... Anyway, Pixilate seems to be absolutely broken for a pokemon of her power, and I fear what Clair's Mega Altaria is capable of among all the other dragon pokemon."

"Oh? What did the reading say?"

Pete opened his eyes and said in a disbelieving voice, "2.930..."

"That sounds like... quite a lot."

"It is, especially if you consider Hyper Beam can hit quite a lot of targets... For example, Mega Reuniclus' Hyper Beam got recorded at 2.023 while the older Rapidash's Hyper Beam hit for 1.110 PV. The highest stab move for regulars during the recording was my Serperior using Energy Ball at 503... I knew Serperior was a bonafide genius and goes into the forest for battles a lot, but he blew everyone else out of the water. Turns out my other pokemon, like Metagross, only really trained control over their powers and a wide moveset so far and even Metagross just barely managed to land over the curve with Flash Cannon at 438, clearly showing that he put more effort into his steel moves," Pete explained before sighing, "It really makes me wonder about the benefits of bonded affinity, though. His steel move was almost 10% stronger than his psychic move. And don't get me started on Arcanine getting a 475 with Fire Fang despite me not even having a fire affinity. Whatever she does in that hot spring all day must be amazing training..."

'Which is even more baffling since I know the numbers from the game and while most moves I chose for this contest today have either 70 or 80 power, Fire Fang has 65,' Pete inwardly thought. 'Well, Arcanine has a rather high base stat all things considered. Plus, my Arcanine does train quite a lot despite my joke.'

"So most of the fully evolved pokemon landed somewhere between 400 and 450-ish?"

Pete opened his tablet that was beside him to show Jasmine the numbers, "Actually the median is somewhere between 390 to 425 for stab and 255 to 270 for non-stab since they don't train those moves as much - is what I'm guessing. And that's only considering the better of the two scores between physical and special. We only have these few outliers where every pokemon from your team is in except for your Gliscor and Camerupt," Pete explained while showing his wife a sorted list that highlighted the highest score they earned for stab and non-stab in the physical and special category. "Both of them told my Reuniclus that they weren't very familiar with the chosen moves for today, but they had fire in their eyes when I told them to train them hard during these two weeks to show a better score."

"Wow, I mean I learned about the difference between physical and special attackers in school, and we had an entire textbook full of examples, but getting these numbers is amazing! I never knew Gliscor's special attack was so low!" Jasmine shouted in amazement before getting shocked while scrolling through the list. "And Mega Steelix! He barely scored higher than Donphan in special attack, and her score is almost 1/3 lower than her attack score! My only two pokemon worth training in special attacks are Claydol and Camerupt! Oh, Petey, you're amazing!"

"Yep, and don't forget to send your Garchomp over to Dragon's Peak with a kick to his butt. His score for stab dragon moves suck hard."

Jasmine looked over the numbers and shook her head, "His ground attack Drill Run scored a respectable 478 beating even your Arcanine, I'll let him off the hook this time. But he really should train his Dragon Claw... a 399 is really low..."

"Like I said," Pete said with a shrug.