Pokémon: 'Infrared'...

You pack up your stuff, and load it all into your car. :At least I've got a car, things could be a lot worse...: you think morosely. The car's an old beater Toyota, that's been in an accident or three. Your not sure how you're going to get a job, let alone an apartment, and after consultation with your bank you realize you are in dire straights. You've got 5064¥ to your name, which is just barely more than 45 dollars. That won't even cover a hotel for a week while you search for a job. It might not cover GAS for a week! It's in this worried mood that you look up the local womens homeless shelter on Google maps and drive there, feeling quite fortunate that Pallet Town isn't the hick burg of the original video game, and actually HAS a homeless shelter...

After you arrive and check in, you are taken to a tightly packed series of corridors, each of which is filled with those Japanese 'tube hotel' units, and assigned a bed. You are informed that you have one month to find a job/fiancee, get a place to live, and be moved out. They then take you to an area with "help wanted" adds and tell you each person staying here must make a minimum of three phone calls every day trying to secure an interview, untill they get a steady job. You look through all the adds and call the five most likely places, but get nothing but answering machines...

Hours pass, not much to do and no one to talk too, then it's dinner time. At dinner you get a bowl of rice, tofu, and broth; a slightly stale roll, and a cup of decaf tea, then take your seat in this big institutional cafeteria. Suddenly you spot something, there's this one table with only one woman sitting at it. She's not hideously ugly or anything, and she seems somehow familiar... It's just not right, everyone's giving her the cold shoulder for no reason: so you pick up your tray and go over to her table.

"Hey, name's Yolanda, mind if I join you?" You ask as you feel everyone look at you in horror.

"Huh? Oh! Sure!" The woman says, patting the bench beside her.

You sit and, smiling even though you feel pretty down, move forward with another conversational gambit. "What's your name?" You ask...

"I'm... Masako Katsuki!" The woman says, as she looks off into the middle distance for a second. Something about this chicks voice is NAGGINGLY familiar but you can't quite put your finger on it...

"So, you look like a outside-country-person, and I haven't seen you around before; what's your story Yolanda?" Katsuki asks.

"Came here for college, just graduated. No job, little savings, and I was living in the Dormitory, so nowhere to live except my car..." you explain and a gleam comes into Katsuki's eye.

"You just graduated but you don't have any Pokémon?" She asks, with this weird EDGE to her voice...

"Nope, the raffle passed me over completely," you tell her morosely.

"Tough break, but they say that whenever God closes a door he opens a window. What would you say if I told you that I could get you an apartment, a job which pays 50,000¥ a week to start, and two Pokémon tomorrow?" Katsuki asks in a whisper like a katana cutting silk.

"I'd say two things. One, if you can get me all that why the hell are you here? Two, what's the catch...?" You whisper back.

"Some answers of a sort. One, I'm here looking for someone to offer this job to. Two, remember the window thing? No one said it was your window or that the owner invited you in. You can decide to take your chances out on the street, trust me, no one else is going to hire a Gaijin like you and you can't get an apartment without money: or you can grab this opportunity with both hands and run like the wind, never looking back..." She says, and suddenly it clicks. She's changed her hairstyle, and her partner Butch is God-only-knows-where, but you arn't talking to Masako Katsuki, this is Cassidy Yamato!

You know your trapped now, she's just made you an offer you literally can't refuse: if you turn her down, now that she's seen you've recognised her, you are a dead woman; but...

Honestly...? You wouldn't have refused her anyway. If you can't be the heroine of the game, fine, you'll be the villainess! You certainly know how to do a sight better job of it than this chucklehead and her partner, let alone their arch rivals Jessica Musashi and James Kojiro!

"You've got yourself a deal 'Katsuki'," you whisper back, and she looks at you very oddly, but extends her hand and you shake on it.

"Just get on the bus to the train station with me tomorrow at six, we'll ride to sunset park and a car will pick us up. The job's everything I promised, but make no mistake, it ain't easy!" She says, and you both finish dinner in silence...