Battle Event: Locke and the Merchant/Officer

What if...since that part of the battle event with the clothes/sprite change seems to be hardcoded for character 01 (Locke), you load/swap character 01 back in right before the battle and give him the properties of Shadow as well as the graphics/palette/name? Then change it back to Shadow 100% afterwords, before the event is wrapped up. I might be missing something important that would prevent this from working, but it's all I can think of atm besides just removing the whole battle event, or ending it early or editing it to be a bit different so it doesn't look unfinished. But if my idea is executed correctly it should look rather seamless and work I'd imagine. Might have to work in a screen fade though maybe, when swapping the character ID...I'm unsure about that without trying it myself. It's an idea though!