Author's Note: I'm back! Sorry it's been awhile. I got kind of burnt out on writing for this pair by the time I'd finished with The Kingdom of Illusions. But enough time has passed that I started to feel like writing for it again. So I thought I'd give this another go. Here's theme #32.

Renovation.

Ash had never quite mastered the concept of R and R. Part of this was just a matter of his inclinations. Whenever he'd go to new places it wasn't the thought of relaxation that excited him, it was the thought of getting to see new Pokemon and finding new trainers to battle. The idea of finding out new strategies and getting to try out his Pokemon in unfamiliar fields was infinitely more interesting to him than laying on the beach and working on his tan. He already had a tan; tans didn't take work. Now, becoming a Pokemon master, that took work. And it was work he was all too glad to do.

But there was another reason that Ash never managed to relax for too long, and he could only put it down to… fate. He'd plan time off (or, more accurately, his friends or his mother would plan time off for him), but by the time he got wherever he was going, some sort of calamity had already started and fixing it was much more important than sipping coconut juice or having a pajama day. For example, his home town of Pallet was calm verging on boring nearly every day of the year except whenever he got anywhere near it. Then, inexplicably, Team Rocket would attack, or someone would go missing or need help, or a hurricane would hit, or the dead would rise from their graves to attack the living (it happened). It would've been an awful lot in life for Ash to have disaster constantly at his heels were it not for the fact that he had an almost super human ability to put together the scraps of things and turn ruin into… resolution. No matter how bad things looked, there would always be a happily-ever-after sunset before he left. And all that made strife less of discouragement, less of a thing to be feared and more of… an adventure.

And this was why it came as absolutely no surprise to him when he walked up to the doorway of the Cerulean Gym on his way to meet Misty and spend a leisurely day with her in Cerulean City before heading back home to visit his mom, that before he could even say a hello, she dragged him into the building, shoved a dirty dishrag into his hands and frantically informed him: "We need to work fast!"

And with that she dashed back into the main building before Ash could register much more of her than a panicked ginger blur. He exchanged a look with Pikachu whose shiny black eyes radiated rodent concern. With the air of someone unsure if he was walking into a trap or not, Ash stepped forward into the main part of the gym.

It certainly didn't look the way he remembered it. The Cerulean Gym was usually all… shiny surfaces—lapping water and the reflections it cast against the walls, bright lights that picked up every gleam of the moist tile. Now it was dry and stripped. The tiles had been pried loose from the floor and sat in a dusty pile in the corner, the wallpaper had been scraped from the walls leaving only concrete with paper residue, and, mostly noticeably, the main pool that was site to both battles and ballet was now completely empty of water.

Also, the place smelled of fish. …Or perhaps worse than fish.

"Misty, what's—" he began, casting his eyes around for her.

Misty was descending down the ladder on the side of the dry pool. "I'll explain in a minute, just please hurry," she urged him. "I haven't got any time to waste!"

He took her at her word and tucked the dishrag she'd passed him in his back pocket, following her down the ladder to the surprisingly deep bottom of the pool. One look at the grimy floor told him that what he'd smelled before wasn't exactly fish, but was a natural… shall we say, end product of fish.

He also got a better look at Misty herself. She was still a few inches taller than him, which was somewhat of a disappointment because he'd secretly hoped that his puberty growth spurt (the only good part of the process) might have given him a few inches on her. She wasn't dressed like she usually did, but he put it down to whatever desperate situation she'd landed herself in as opposed to a change in her style in the time they'd been apart. She wore old, paint-flecked jeans that looked like they were only in use when there was a dirty job to be done, a similarly worn t-shirt with the word 'LIFEGUARD' cheaply emblazoned on it, and yellow kitchen gloves that went past her elbows. She leaned down on the dirty floor and dipped a towel in a sudsy pail before vigorously scrubbing the mucky surface. Around her, Politoed, Psyduck, and Corsola were busily following suit with toothbrushes that hopefully were no longer going to be used on actual teeth. Well, Politoed and Corsola were; Psyduck was just staring at his toothbrush with a look of profound incomprehension.

"I'm sorry about this," Misty said briskly, eyes focused on the filthy pool floor. "Those idiots!" she said angrily to herself. "I give them one task—just one! Hire a remolding company to revamp the gym—and Lily said she did it. So I organized everything and arranged to close the gym for a week—gave everyone the week off and got the place ready for the renovation—drained the pool, primed the walls, and so on. And what happens? No one shows up! I tried to call the company but they said they never got a call back from Lily about it, and of course they're too booked up now to send any guys over and my sisters are all off in Saffron City—which is typical. And since they're gone there's no one left to fix the place up and it's just me and I'll never get everything done by myself in a week!"

Misty breathed in deep, which was probably unwise considering the perfume of the room was largely made up of fish leavings, but she didn't have much choice since she'd delivered that entire diatribe in one frantic breath. Ash might've broken in at this point, but he knew Misty, and he knew that she wasn't done. Rants about her sisters never ended that quickly.

"And Daisy had the nerve," Misty continued sharply, "the nerve to tell me it was no big deal! That we could hold gym battles in some pond or something and just keep the gym building closed for a month or so until it's ready. First of all, no, no we can't! A pond is not a gym. My sisters nearly got the Cerulean Gym decertified with that kind of attitude before and I'm not going to let that happen again. Secondly, even if that were true, how are we exactly supposed to finance closing the building for the more than a month it would take to get this place up to code without a contractor? How much of my income do you think is actually from being a gym leader?"

Ash was, by this point, on his knees and scrubbing the fishy floor as well (it seemed like the 'in' thing to do), and after a few seconds realized that the last question was not just Misty talking to herself and therefore required an answer. "Ummm… like… sixty-five percent?" he guessed.

Misty gave a scornful laugh. "Try five percent," she answered. "The Pokemon League pays peanuts and you should remember that if you're ever tempted to take a job with them. No," she went on, "I'm able to pay the bills to keep this place running through the admission we charge the public for the pool and aquarium parts of the gym, with a little extra from shows we do. That's why I have to keep at it and fix this place up so it's fit to reopen or we could really go under… even if I have to do it alone."

She threw her rag down and glared furiously over her shoulder. "They knew. My sisters knew how much I was looking forward to having this week off during the remolding—They knew that you were coming and how much I wanted to spend the day with you and show you around the city before you have to go back to Pallet Town. And now I'm just…"

She paused, as if her head had suddenly cleared of all the rage that had been swirling around it, and suddenly she was looking at Ash as though she had just seen him as more than an excuse to vent her frustration. "Oh Ash," she said in a very different voice. "I'm so sorry!"

"Why are you sorry?" he asked. "Sounds like your sisters were the ones that messed up."

"No, it's just…" Misty began wretchedly, "I was going to take you down to the harbor and this nice seafood restaurant I know, and it… it was going to be a really fun day for the two of us to catch up with one another and now I'm just dragging you into my gym improvement nightmare. I… maybe you should just go ahead without me."

"Are you kidding?" Ash said skeptically, "you can't do all of this yourself. Anyway," he said, dunking his dish towel into the sudsy bucket before applying it once more to the floor, "we can catch up while we do this. It'll make the work go by faster."

"Pika pi!" Pikachu agreed, scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush he'd taken from Psyduck (who wasn't using it properly anyway).

Misty closed her eyes, relief flooding her features. "Thank you both so much. I don't know what I do without the two of you when you're not here."

"Well, from what I hear you give challengers a hard time," Ash said with a grin. "Every time I meet a trainer with a Cascade badge they always tell me how crazy strong the gym leader here is and how hard she is to beat."

Misty dunked her towel in the soapy water too, and settled down to clean next to him with a smile. "And what do you say?" she asked as their shoulders brushed lightly against each other, "That can't be, because back when I knew her she wasn't that strong?"

"Not a chance. I believed every word of it," Ash said, nodding solemnly.

"Well," Misty said, unable to totally hide her pleased expression, "I have picked up a few tricks since I became a full-time gym leader."

"I bet," Ash said. "Hey," he added brightly as an idea struck him, "how about once this is all done you can thank me for helping out by battling me?"

Misty rolled her eyes. "Typical Ash."

"Is that a 'yes'?" he nudged.

"Yes," she said in a warm, would-be weary voice.

"So…" Ash said, screwing up his nose so as to avoid smelling the heady mixture of shed scales and ocean-dweller excrement, "we gotta clean up the pool… and then what else?"

"Well, after the pool, we've got to clean the tanks," Misty said, her tone somewhat apologetic in the face of yet another dirty job, "and then we've got to fill them—it's important to get that done soon because the Pokemon don't have any place to swim right now. Then we've got to take care of laying down the new tile, getting rid of the moldy old carpet upstairs, and painting the walls… then there's the plumbing…" She winced. The Cerulean Gym plumbing was treacherous and labyrinthine. Even after all the time she'd spent desperately trying to fix the system, while her sisters complained that the rising water was ruining their eight-hundred dollar designer shoes, she still didn't have it all entirely figured out. "…And the lighting has to be rewired with the new set-up…"

She bit her lip and looked nervously at Ash. "…I don't suppose you know anything about electrical wiring, do you?"

"Not really," Ash was forced to admit.

"Then would you like to give it a try, or would you like to be the one on standby to dial 9-1-1 while I do it?" Misty asked in a half-joking voice.

Ash gave it some thought. "I'll do it," he said, because, despite his ineptitude in matters of romance, he had a gallant streak, although it might have just been that he was truly kind. "How hard can it be?"

Misty gave him a concerned look because she knew the reaction a cruel universe usually had to a taunt of 'how hard can it be?' "No, I'll do it," she cut in. "It's my gym and my responsibility, so if anyone's going to the emergency room today, It'll be me. Besides," she said, elbowing him in the side, "since you're on my property then I'm probably liable for anything that happens to you and I'd have to pay for your medical bills."

"You'd have to pay for your own medical bills too," Ash pointed out. "And if I was the one to get zapped then at least you'd be up and around to pay for them. Besides, I'm used to getting shocked."

Pikachu had the decency to look mildly sheepish at this comment.

"Hmmm," Misty hummed thoughtfully. "In that case… then why don't we do it together? Pikachu can call 9-1-1 if we get fried."

Ash grinned. "Sounds like a plan!"

"Pikachu pi," Pikachu warned, in what might have been translated as: 'I don't think the dispatcher will understand me.' But the humans took no notice of this.

They scrubbed on in relative silence for a few moments. Ash stared up at the ceiling of the gym, because even in its stripped-down state it was much more attractive than the fish poo-encrusted pool floor. "Y'know," he said thoughtfully after a moment, "it's kinda weird being back here like this. I mean, the gym has changed a lot since I came here the first time."

"Back then my sisters got rid of most of the battling equipment to make room for their water shows," Misty sniffed, still a little sore of the subject of her sisters and their questionable actions. "When I got back I brought back more of the battle arena elements… but left a lot of the water show stuff since it really is a draw. We added a new wing to the aquarium last year, and built a shallower pool to teach the younger kids how to swim. It always seems to be changing."

"It's weird," Ash repeated, "y'know… to be in a place that you recognize, but to see that everything's so different. It's like… it's familiar, but it's not."

"It's like you," Misty observed shrewdly.

Ash pointed to himself. "Me?" he asked, caught off-guard by the comment.

"Yes," Misty said. "You're still the same old Ash I used to travel with… but you've gone out and done so much and I swear you're taller every time I see you and… well, you're not the same old Ash at the same time." She paused for a moment to savor a thought. "You've renovated," she jibed.

Ash shook his head. "Maybe a fresh coat of paint every so often," he replied, taking off his hat with yet another insignia from yet another league and using it to rub his forehead before he put it back on his head, "but other than that I guess I'm pretty much the same—otherwise I'd have won at the league."

"Oh, don't say that," Misty said, frowning. "Just because you haven't accomplished everything you want to doesn't mean you haven't made progress. You've learned. I know you have. After all," she continued, "you're not the same Ash who'd try to use thundershock on a Geodude."

Ash looked thoughtfully at Misty for a moment—her body consumed in the busy task of cleaning and her mind focused on him. That was the thing about Misty that was special. It was a sort of comfortable awkwardness that they had. After all, she'd been with him from the start. She knew all about his rookie mistakes, his stubborn ignorance, and his embarrassing moments—the kind of things he'd done in the past that made him groan at the memory. She was well acquainted with his faults and yet she could still use that… fond tone of voice when she talked about them.

"I actually did that just last week," he grudgingly admitted.

She threw a soapy sponge at him. "You did not," she challenged.

"Yeah," he said with a giant grin as he flicked the soap suds off of his jacket, "but this time I didn't do it because I thought it would have any effect; electricity just charges me up for battle!"

"Pika!" Pikachu cheered. He felt much the same way.

Misty laughingly shook her head. "Let's hope you feel the same way when we start playing around with the electrical wires."

"I'm sure I will."

They lapsed laughingly once again into a silence as they each stretched their arms forward in synchronized scrubbing movements and Misty thought of all she had left to do—but it seemed less weighty in her present company. Perhaps the renovation could be completed in time after all.

And yes… the gym and Ash… that sense of change that paradoxically equaled a sense of familiarity. Maybe it was because there are some things that never change; maybe it was because everything grows from a single point. Foundations—that's what it was. A building may grow, a person may learn, but the foundation is where it starts, and the foundation is what lasts.

"No matter how much you learn and grow and change in your travels," Misty thought out loud, "it's okay if you keep some part of you the same Ash who'd fight a bird with a worm."

"Misty?" Ash tried curiously. "What do you—?"

"Because it's about foundations," Misty said, closing her eyes. "And yours… is strong. I wouldn't change it. Not for anything."