Georgia left without a battle, though she did say she wanted one in future, and after some careful consideration Iris decided to make sure that Axew had the tools to defend himself against both Ice and Fairy types.

"So basically you want to turn him into a Duraludon," Excadrill said.

"No, I just want him to have options," Iris replied. "...honestly I'm probably going to ask Mew if there's any good moves for him that involve fire or steel."

"Ooh!" Mew began, appearing from out of Iris' hair. "I've got some ideas about that one! We might need to contact May Maple to borrow her Skitty though, that kitty's got a real dab hand for altered moves."

"How long have you been in there?" Iris asked.

"Your shampoo tastes funny," Mew answered, which wasn't an answer but did give a hint. "And what do you think about the idea of Steel Fang? Or, um, Iron Incisor? Metal Molars? Name needs work? Name needs work."

Iris stopped.

"That… actually does sound useful," she confessed. "Wouldn't it mean Axew has to get really close to Fairy or Ice types, though?"

"Eh, you kind of want that anyway," Mew waved off. "Besides, I think I can teach him to eat the attacks."

"We had enough trouble stopping him eating his own attacks…" Iris said, shaking her head. "Is that even possible, though?"

"I just sort of assume everything is possible and work from there!" Mew giggled. "Especially recently. Even the Type Chart is ki-i-ind of malleable!"

"Okay, so what you need to do is to do… this!" Skitty said, and used Bite. "Only, more Steely!"

Axew nodded. "Okay! How do I do that?"

Skitty did it, but Steel-typed.

"Right!" Axew said. "So I need to turn my teeth into steel, and then bite down with them!"

He smiled brightly. "All I need to know is how to do that bit and I'll be set!"

"Which bit?" Skitty asked.

"All of it!"

Excadrill sniggered.

"Hey, be nice," Iris chided gently. "Remember, she offered to help you with a custom trick as well."

She turned her attention to May, who was trying to be nice and awake despite the time difference. "And thanks for coming over. I guess you must be a good friend of Ash's, huh?"

"Ash is the kind of person it's easy to have as a friend," May replied.

"Well, I'd say any friend of Ash's is a friend of ours, but that's a bit presumptuous," Cilan said. "It might be like how you have it with mint and apple, where they both go well with another food but they just don't go well together. Not something you can rule out!"

He turned his attention to a big table of ingredients. "Now, because it's a different time of day for you, I thought I should make something that could be a midday meal or something for the end of the day. How do you feel about a big pie?"

"That sounds nice," May agreed, then yawned. "Oh, sorry…"

"There's no need to apologize," Cilan told her. "And, hmm, what about if I make some canapés as well for your Eevee?"

Then Ash came into the clearing.

"Hey, guys, I caught a Roggenrola!" he announced.

"You were only gone five minutes," Keldeo objected.

"And in that five minutes we met a Roggenrola and they decided they wanted to come with us," Pikachu said. "...no, really. That's pretty much what happened. Apparently they once met Terrakion?"

Roggenrola came out of their Pokéball. "Terrakion helped me out a lot," they said. "And they said that their friend Keldeo had been helped by – wait, are you that very same Keldeo?"

Keldeo frowned. "Probably not, unless time travel is involved, so the most honest answer is that I can't rule it out."

May smiled wistfully. "Wow, I missed this kind of thing."

"Oh! Hello, there!" a woman called. "Aren't you Ash Ketchum?"

"No, not at all!" Cilan replied. "He is, though."

"That's right, I'm Ash Ketchum," Ash agreed. "What's your name?"

"I'm Doctor Fennel," the woman said, adjusting her lab coat. "I work with Professor Juniper, we're attempting an experiment and Professor Juniper heard you might be in the area."

"Why would that be relevant?" Pikachu pondered.

"I think I have a guess," Lokoko chuckled.

"Did she say why?" Ash asked, conveying the question in case Fennel hadn't heard.

"Well, we're trying to do an experiment on reviving fossils, and understanding the original development of the Flying-type," Fennel told him. "And we've been having trouble getting the machine to work, because the fossil isn't complete… so Professor Juniper told me she was going to use an option she didn't like."

The Doctor shrugged. "But I suppose she must have decided to contact you instead."

"Well, I guess Mew could help," Ash said, thinking. "They've been around for long enough."

"Maybe that's what Professor Juniper meant, then," Doctor Fennel decided. "Is it okay if you come and help, then?"

"Of course!" Ash agreed. "I'm always ready to help out a Pokémon in trouble!"

"Can't argue with that," Keldeo said. "Either the sentiment or the reality of it."

"Ah, good," Professor Juniper said, sounding like she either didn't mean it or didn't believe she was saying it. "Mr. Ketchum, I'm glad you're here. This should help solve our problem."

"Was there anything specific you were thinking of?" Ash checked. "I don't have Mew with me at the moment, but I can get them straight away?"

"Not yet," Juniper said, as quickly as she could. "I'd just like you to stand over there."

"Sure," Ash agreed. "If you think it'll help."

"Oh, I get what's going on here," Pikachu decided. "This is actually pretty amusing."

"Okay, let's try another run," Professor Juniper added. "Doctor Fennel, same parameters as last time."

"You're sure?" Doctor Fennel checked. "I know it sounds obvious to say it, but that run didn't produce a successfully revived Pokémon."

"I know, but let's try it anyway," Juniper said.

Shrugging, Doctor Fennel hit the activation key.

Immediately, the revival machine lit up and activated. A beam of light flashed out, hitting the fossil, and when it faded there was an Archen standing there.

"...where am I?" she asked.

"Okay, how did that work?" Fennel asked, as Pikachu started giggling. "We did the same parameters as before."

"Ash was in the room," Juniper replied. "Yes, I know, by all rights it shouldn't make sense, but… it happens."

Ash was already crouched down to speak to Archen. "This is going to sound a bit strange," he began. "But we revived you from a fossil. Do you know what a fossil is?"

"I don't know what you are," Archen admitted. "Or what a fossil is."

"I'm a human," Ash introduced himself. "My name is Ash. Humans turned up millions of years after you were born, and this machine just took one of your feathers that got preserved all that time and recreated you from it."

He looked up. "Just to check, Professor, was this about getting an Archen or this specific Archen? Because I've battled an Archeops in a gym in Johto, it's not like they're still extinct."

"I am very confused," Archen decided, then tried flying down from the revival pad and didn't make it. Instead she went thump as she hit the ground hard, wobbled a bit and sat firmly down.

"Ow," she added. "Why didn't that work?"

"Could you fly before?" Ash checked.

"I certainly thought I could," Archen muttered.

"What we're hoping to do is to study Archen to see how the Flying type first came about," Professor Juniper told him. "We think that the original Archen from millions of years ago might be different from the modern ones, and we wanted to be certain that the Pokémon we were looking at was as close to a stem form as possible."

"How the Flying type first came about?" Iris repeated. "Wait, uh… isn't there a Pokémon who's kind of important to the universe who's Flying type? Wouldn't it have to already exist… I guess Yveltal is a good start, right? Yveltal is the Pokémon of Death and I imagine death already existed before Archen did, even if Rayquaza didn't."

Professor Juniper rubbed her temples. "...I really wish we'd thought of that before now."

"Oh, I can help with that!" Ash declared. "Arc, do you think you can contact your Grandprogenitor and ask them when the Flying type came about?"

"That's not actually very good science," Doctor Fennel said. "Oddly enough, asking someone about something they personally experienced is more like doing history than doing science if it's about a significant event in the past. But if you have access to witnesses then we can at least record it as Personal Conversation, and move on from there to construct the right sort of experiment."

Ash's Roggenrola emerged from her Pokéball. "What about if you ask Mew about the evolutionary process? It would give you some starting data to use to form a cladistics diagram, and then you could see how often the Flying-type has independently developed."

Professor Juniper stared. "...how do you know the word cladistics?"

"I'm geology," Roggenrola replied. "It seemed important to know."

"Then you can focus on that and we can focus on helping Archen!" Ash said. "Everyone wins!"

"And yet, somehow I feel like I lost," Professor Juniper grumbled.

"Right," Emolga said. "So, here's the idea."

She moved around Archen. "Can you spread your wing? It'll give me some idea of what kind of area you have to work with."

"That matters?" Archen asked. "I always thought you just sort of flapped your wings and flying… happened."

"It matters, yes," Emolga replied. "It's because it affects what kind of flying you can do. I'm quite light and have quite a lot of area, but I don't have much ability to generate lift so I'm stuck with gliding."

"Is that something you're okay with, Emolga?" Iris asked. "If it's not, I'd like to help you with it."

Emolga looked back, surprised, then swallowed slightly and nodded. "I'd… that would be nice, thank you, Iris."

"That's good," Iris said, sighing in relief. "I keep feeling like I don't really have a chance to be a trainer for you, and this is a place I can help you learn something."

Emolga smiled shyly, then went back to Archen. "What I think is going on is that you've got a lot of power, but you don't have much wing area. So you need to be moving quite fast to provide lift, and you can't just hover."

"And you know what the solution to that is?" Sandile asked, popping up next to them and making Archen jump. "A montage!"

"What are you on about?" Emolga asked.

"Keep it up!" Excadrill said. "Run as fast as you can!"

"I'm already doing that!" Archen protested, flapping her wings as fast as she could and sprinting along the ground, then tripped over and rolled tail-over-muzzle. "Ow…"

"That's okay," Iris assured her. "We're still working on it."

"I don't know…" the Flying-type said, poking at a berry suspiciously. "This is nothing like I'm used to."

"That's what millions of years of time will do to the plants," Cilan shrugged. "Just try each of these bowls and see what you think, and I'll put together a mix you might like."

"If you need help with a spoon, I can do it!" Axew said. "I've learned a lot about not eating things recently!"

"Three, two, one… go!" Iris called, breaking into a sprint, and held Archen above her head.

Archen's wings flapped, and that coupled with how fast she was going was enough to make her rise into the air – only for her to lose contact with Iris' hands, lose speed, and fall down to something that was barely above a crash.

Iris had already skidded to a halt, and crouched down to help Archen pick herself up. "That's great!" she said. "We're nearly there!"

"If I can do it myself, maybe," Archen said. "But I'm not fast or strong enough."

"Well, about that…" Iris replied. "What about if I teach you a dance move?"

"I'm doing it!" Archen said, in wonder, as she rose slowly into the air with a red Dragon Dance glow around her feathers. "I'm really flying!"

"That's great!" Iris cheered. "Great work, Archen!"

"Told you," Sandile said. "Montage always works."

"We've been working on this for two days," Emolga grumbled. "You don't get to just call it a montage because things happened for a long time."

They left the lab not long afterwards, now that Professor Juniper and Doctor Fennel had finished the part of their research that needed Ash around to help.

They were at the part of their research where they had to work out the age of the Sky Plate based on radiometric dating, which would apparently in some way help.

"Professor Fennel was nice!" Ash said. "She was really good at explaining why things helped or didn't help. And it's nice you made a new friend as well, Iris!"

"Yeah," Iris agreed. "Though I do now have more Flying type Pokémon than anything else, which is doing weird things to my view of whether or not I'm a Dragon Master."

She looked at the latest Pokéball on her belt. "And I'm still not sure where Mew got this Feather Ball, either."

"It's a valuable confidence boost for Archen!" Mew said. "I think."

AN:

Well, she has an Archeops in B2/W2 so it's an obvious place for her to get an Archen-line Pokémon.

Though perhaps it would have been more on-brand for this fic if I had her find one in a cereal box.