Zac only had half her costume on, and that was to be expected, frankly. The long hair extensions that she wore on stage were only going to get in the way of her rolling around under the gym's main stage, checking cables and hooking up lights. The frills for her skirts were a hassle, and if she got any dirt on the cravat, it could be seen in outer space, probably.
This was all Leena's fault.
As it turned out, last night, at about 11:45 pm, a very cheerful, spirited, emoji-heavy message had gone out on all of the Patoh Gym's social media.
IT'S TIME TO PARTY WITH CREATION DAY AND ZAC AND LEENA TOO!! WE'VE GOT A SURPRISE CONCERT FOR YOU STARTING AT 6PM ON CREATION DAY!!!!!!!!!!1!
Zac's alarm was superseded this morning by her phone blowing up with re-posts and fan questions.
Of course, the last-minute nature of the concert and the lacking coffers of the Patoh City Gym meant that there wasn't going to be much by way of a crew.
Which is to say, the Pokemon were doing their best to help.
The idea had come to her in a dream-- a vision, really-- as she dozed off the night before, wondering what, oh what they could do to mark Creation Day?
It was her favorite day of the year. She loved seeing all the young trainers with their brand new Pokemon taking them out for a spin against their fellow rookies. She also loved that, without fail, at least one of them would try to challenge her gym immediately. Those were her favorites--she really liked winning. (If the Pokemon Center were for profit, Leena and Zac would probably get a kickback for every trainer they sent there.)
Ready to go to sleep and pass her Creation Day in the usual way (horribly beating young trainers' dreams into the ground), the idea came to her. A revelation. An idea for the ages.
A concert.
Hastily she fumbled for her phone and shot off her message to the world: tomorrow at 6pm, the Konah region's socks would be rocked clean off. For the great Zac and Leena would be taking the stage. (To rock. Which would then displace the socks, somehow. Leena wasn't a details person.)
She woke up at her usual time (11am) to see if Zac had finished preparations yet. Had she told her anything about this concert? Not strictly speaking. (No.) But she was confident her BFF could pull it off. Plus, she would have help from the magnificent Leena!
She stuck her head under the trap door of the stage to see what the progress was.
Startled by shrieks interrupting her solitude, Zac bolted straight upright and smacked her head on the stage above her. A string of creative swearing trailed behind her as she crawled out from under the stage, glaring daggers at Leena.
"Does Eve know how to set up a soundboard? Or do make-up? Or check the mics? Switch the gels on the spots?"
A better question would be, Leena, do YOU know how to do any of this?!
"Iunno. Ask her." She fished a Pokeball out of her skirts and in a flash of light, her Raichu appeared. "Eeeeve, do you know anything about those things?"
Raichu had not heard the question and also, did not speak English, so it wasn't particularly forthcoming with an answer.
"Alright, so I can go do the soundboard." She pulled herself up and stretched--this was her method of finding out from Zac what needed to be done so she wouldn't overdo it and do everything on her own. (She told herself that.) "I'll get the sound check done and I'll get the makeup done before we go on, so you just do the lights and...whatever's going on down there!" In truth, she was at least slightly more competent than she looked. Slightly. She fired a huge grin at her friend. "Soooooooound good?"
"Awww, you always say that but you never follow through." She put on her best pout and set off towards the backstage area to play with the soundboard. It should still be on most of the same settings from their last show--or had there been a play here since then? Welp, one way to find out.
Eve followed behind her, jumping up onto her shoulder to look at what she was doing. "See, Eve, this one is the MASTER volume. It's the most important of all, because it's the master." Or something like that.
It took another couple hours for all the wiring to be set up-- they did concerts from time to time here, after all, but normally they had a crew of some kind. Any kind. Zac spent a good long time with her Jolteon zapping the bejeezus out of the circuit breaker to get it to behave with all of the overload.
Finished with her chores (for now), she wandered to Leena in the soundbooth, leaning against the door with a sour look still on her face.
"So, what made you come up with this nonsense? And why didn't you call me about it?"