The city of Prosperity could be described as a relatively young mega-city, especially when compared to the other megacities of the world, it had only been constructed and given its status as a mega-city around 150 years ago. Yet it had caused more headaches and problems for the various legendaries that helped design and pay for the construction of the city, then a vast majority of the other cities in the whole world, with some legendaries even gaining concussions as a result of the banging their heads against various walls.

But that mattered very little to the general population of the city, who had rebelled against the legendaries well over 100 years ago. In place of a legendary ruling the city they instead started electing a city leader who would run the city in their place, becoming the second-ever city to have no legendary ruling or any legendary reside within the city limits for that matter. The city itself spread out as far as the eye can see, well over 3500 miles in diameter, the mega-city was originally a small sea trading port and was a mere fraction of its current size.

This, however, had very little importance in the overall history of the city, and by proxy, had even less importance to the Quagsire who was currently trying to relax on a taxi that was heading to the sections police headquarters for his job interview. 

The Quagsire in question, like most of his species, had light blue skin that glistened slightly in the light, he had to remain slightly moist at all times to avoid dehydration, he was primarily an aquatic species of pokemon after all. He had a purple pattern of skin trailing down his spine from the base of his skull, each pattern was subtly different to every other Quagsire, and was often used to differentiate between individuals, due to them having a rather featureless face, at least when they were in their natural form anyway.  

He had a rather stocky build with a fairly vacant looking face, he was lacking noticeable ears, with twin pit-like nostrils and fairly small beady eyes but a wide natural smile that almost permanently lingered on his face, a common feature of the species face, at the moment however it was notably missing, instead a more strained grimace was in its place. 

His stubby arms and rounded hands were tapping against his belly, patting down the shirt he was wearing.

He was wearing a tightfitting short-sleeved blue shirt with a black assault vest with the logo saying LFP on the left breastplate and across his back. He wasn't wearing any trousers or pants at the time as he simply didn’t need to, being in his natural form all his pubic organs were hidden away, like all pokemon they would only appear during times of extreme arousal to allow for breeding. 

He did, however, have a storage belt wrapped around his waist, containing food, water, medical supplies and various berries. Below that was a rather chunky tail with a dark blue ridge of flesh running along the middle of it, ending at the tail tip it carried up along to just below the base of his spine.

He was sitting together with his partner in a black electric car, it was a taxi that had been arranged by the police to take them from a designated pick-up point to the district's main headquarters for the LFP. 

His partner, however, could not be any more different to the Quagsire. To start he was a normal type Persian and was currently in his semi-humanoid form. As he was in human form to a certain degree, he was decked out in a white short-sleeved undershirt with a similar vest to his partner, he, however, was wearing trousers, a basic social requirement if you were in human form out in public. They were thick black cargo trousers that had various pockets along the legs. He also had a storage belt on his midriff, but a much higher quality one when compared to his partner. 

Being in his semi-human form he was slimly built with a more athletic appearance with bipedal legs, with external genitalia (that he had covered obviously), dexterous hands and longer and differently formed arms compared to his natural form. 

His fingers, however, were still claw-tipped and his head hadn’t changed at all meaning he still had a catlike appearance with a vibrant red jewel embedded in his forehead. In addition, he was still covered in a fine layer of light cream coloured fur, with two rounded ears perched on the sides of his head, near the top. His legs also ended in his natural paws rather than humanoid feet, pearl white tips claws poked out of the cream coloured fur that partially covered them, his tail was twitching between his legs, the end of it curled up tightly. 

He was clenching his hands around his belt as he stared out the cars passenger window, slit-like eyes darted across the pedestrians as they passed by slowly as if scanning for a potential threat. They had been stuck in traffic for the last 10 minutes or so, having hit the morning rush to the market area.

The Quagsire noticed this naturally after looking over to see how his partner was doing, he then blinked once, and the smile he was known for slowly started to creep back onto his face, almost as if the stress of his current situation had vanished, or rather had been completely forgotten somehow. His hands now started to rest against his belly as he grinned, deciding to try and break the ice. 

“...reckon you will finally let loose that slumbering tiger you keep in your pants?” The Persian’s head snapped around, his ears now flattening themselves against his head, a fierce blush was breaking through the fur on his face.

“Not everyone has a bombshell girlfriend like you Marsh!” he shot back in a pitch higher then he was expecting, before snapping back to stare out the window, though now it was more out of embarrassment than stress, he was sure he heard the driver chuckle at his partner's comment. The Quagsire just sighed, before moaning his reply.

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“For Arceus’s sake, Classy, me and Alyana aren't a thing, you know that full well” he chuffed, “Hell you introduced us, remember?”. 

The classy cat just groaned lightly as he put his head in his hands, mostly to cover the reluctant grin that was now etched onto his face as the memory of how that happened reemergence, he could never help BUT laugh at the memory. Vaal just grinned again knowing full his partner was grinning, he decided to capitalise on the moment of weakness.

“I can still remember the look on Matto’s face after you told him what happened, I swear we bust a gut at that” Ciel’s shoulders started to shake slightly, he could also remember the look the sand behemoths face, it was a mixture of pure shock, awe and fear and it was hilarious. The shaking stopped after a couple of seconds though as Ciel remembered what he was gearing up for. 

Sitting back with a deadpan face before coughing into his closed fist to get his partners attention, once he had that he then motioned his head towards the cab driver, who for the entire 30-minute journey had been remarkably silent, other than the occasional chuckle or sigh. Vaal’s grin slowly faded as his partner returned to pedestrian watching, he didn’t clench his hands or his tail again so the Quagsire just chuffed lightly turning to look out of his cab window and watched the pedestrians make their way to work, go on their morning jog, whatever they did in the mornings.

Vaal Marshtail and Ciel Padfoot were two rookies who till a week ago were enrolled in the LFP police academy. They were working towards a shared dream of joining the LFP police force. LFP police academy involved 3 years of specialised training in tactics, partner communication, specialized lingo, move tutoring, stat and level raising and character analysis in the most rigorous fashion possible. The course was so strict that if you fail a single test, you are kicked out of the course for a year and would be forced to restart all the way from the beginning. 

Each pokemon enrolled only has 3 shots at completing the academy course, and on average, only 40% of all pokemon that apply to the course pass the course every year. On average around 1500 apply per year to join the course each year, as typically the only pokemon that pass the standard police officer training course with flying colours are given the opportunity to apply for LFP training. This does mean, however, should a pokemon fail on all three attempts they can still become a standard police officer. 

LFP police pokemon considered to be the elites of the pokemon police force, being on average both a higher level and higher stat total then others on the force, the LFP in their name stood for Lethal Force Pokemon, they are pokemon that were typically sent into the worst crime areas, they were tasked to track and tackle pokemon that are considered far too dangerous for the standard police force to handle, such as murders, large scale organised theft, captive breeding, kidnapping and minor acts of terrorism. 

Today was the day of their job interview, they had successfully passed the academy, however, they still needed to pass one final inspection, which would be conducted by the police commissioner at police headquarters in the commercial district, next to the plumbing district. Ciel was more than a little nervous and was quite high strung for today anyway whilst Vaal was more layback, at least on the surface he was anyway. Vaal waited a couple of minutes as the cab slowly made it progress forwards before he glanced over his shoulder before sighing and closed his eyes, murmuring quietly to Ciel

“You need to breathe, Pad, you're starting to panic again” Ciel’s brows furrowed as he glared towards Vaal, he was nervous for sure, he would be mad not to be, but he wasn’t panicking. He noticed that Vaal’s hands were resting against his belly, a more vacant look on his face, that, or he was confused about something, it was always hard to tell in his natural form.

“You're using amnesia aren't you” More an accusation than a question, Vaal just slowly turned his head away as if he hadn’t heard the question. Ciel’s glare hardened on the Quagsire. 

“Don’t know what you're talking about” Vaal nonchalantly spoke as he started to try avoiding his partners now rather obvious death glare. 

Dinnggg -  

“What was that?” The driver of the taxi exclaimed in surprise as he stopped the vehicle suddenly, the vehicles in front of him had done the same. He spoke in the tone of voice that suggested he hoped it was something interesting. 

Both Ciel and Vaal had become alert as a result of the sudden sound, the tomfoolery and messing around had been forgotten they stared out the right-hand side windows looking for a possible source of the noise, they were in the middle of the commercial district so it wasn't uncommon for a fight to break out over a disagreement in payment or the theft of an item or money. 

The bell-like noise could indicate a sound-based move being used, however, there were no signs of a fight or any kind of disturbance could be seen anywhere. Instead, however, there were pokemon crowding the streets that looked just as bewildered as the two trainees. 

“What do you think?” Ciel asked in a hushed tone, Vaal gave it a moment of thought before he gave his answer.

“I say heal bell, there doesn’t seem to be any obvious damage done, likely someone just learned it recently or it was used for healing a status condition” Vaal gave his thoughts. 

“A battle healer maybe?”

“No, this is the wrong district, this is Dark triad territory isn’t it, the White triad has no pull here, or at least they shouldn’t, they are more residential, plus its too close the local police complex, they wouldn’t risk a triad street war anywhere near the LFP so no battle healers” Ciel argued back. 

“Could it be an uproar maybe?” Vaal shook his head side to side, leaning back into his seat as he relaxed, fairly sure about his answer now, the other pokemon around them were shrugging their shoulders before carrying on with their business as normal.

“No, it was only a single chime, it was far too soft as well, probably just a first time heal bell user” Ciel paused to consider this before nodded once and moved back down into his seat too, he had a relaxed look on his face and whilst curious about the noise, there were more important things to focus on. He concluded the findings.

“There is no proper disturbance, there are only curious pedestrians, there are no signs of a conflict or anything of that sort either. So I have to agree with you, it's probably just a first time user using heal bell”

The taxi driver, a Manectric in human form, just sat and listened seemingly absorbed in the two's conversation. On hearing their conclusion, however, a small smile appeared on his face as he shocked the engine back to life, completely without the knowledge of his two passengers he had been marking them, so far, he was liking what he was seeing. 

“Chiefs going to like these two I reckon, 10 dollars on them passing” he whispered quietly into a small microphone on his cheek. A tiny earphone fitted into his ear mumbled a confirmation to the driver as the vehicle started and carried on smoothly and quietly towards its destination. 

After all, the two rookies were told that today was the day of their job interview and their final test. However, they were never told exactly when and where the test would start after all. Pokemon will often pretend to be something they aren’t if they know they are being tested for a job, having the taxi driver be the first hurdle allowed the LFP to get a better understanding of a candidates personality and their relationship with their partner. 

15 minutes later, they arrived at the LFP building for the commercial and plumbing districts, where the next stage of their test would be held.