Mikachu

Once, she was an assistant to a disgraced scientist.

Hailing from Shibuya prefecture in Tokyo, Japan, Mikachu was once on the cusp of witnessing something amazing. In her teens, she worked part-time as an lab assistant for Professor Banzo, a man who was dedicated to the cause of discovering a new planet deep in the depths of outer space. It went way, way further than any of them could've predicted when their radar system picked up signs of alien life coming from that planet. One night, Banzo contacted her after-hours telling her one of those lifeforms had travelled to Earth - but when they went to the coordinates said to have been where the lifeform had landed, in the river just a few miles from Mikachu's home, they found nothing.

As the years went by, Banzo never stopped monitoring the mysterious planet. Mikachu, however, became dissillusioned with the idea the more their research hit a dead end. It seemed the ridicule Banzo faced from the scientific community was for good reason, and soon Mikachu herself began to believe it. When she graduated from high school, she obtained a philosophy scholarship for an international university in Australia, and left Japan - and their failed 'tamagotchi' project - behind.

Half a decade later, with a citizenship in progress and a plan to permanently move into a townhouse near the centre of Melbourne, Mikachu's life is once again about to be turned upside-down...