Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Pokemon or any of its' characters. This is a fan-based creation and is not endorsed or funded or by any means meant to make a profit. This piece of fiction is solely for entertainment purposes. Please read, review, and enjoy.

Despite shuffling through mountains of paperwork and sitting in front of a computer for more than five or six hours a day all in the past three months, junior Pokemon professor Abby Cypress had nothing to show for it. It was barely a day until she was going to give her dissertation on the psychological analysis of the legendary golem trio, specifically Registeel, and this wasn't the first time she had considered scrapping the topic entirely and moving to something else. She regretted to admit to herself at this point that maybe her father had been right all along. A doctorate in Cryptopokemonology was a joke, and if it was mystery she sought, she would be much better off in paleopokemonology...

At least they had material to work with, she envied. Fossils, ancient plant life, ancient baterias - and then suddenly the field had exploded overnight with new hopefuls once Dr. Stone of the Devon Corporation had unveiled a way to take bone fragments from Pokemon fossils, submerge then in a quasibio-organic liquid doused with a sprinkle of nanobots, and together with the analysis and precision of a supercomputer recreate an almost exact copy of the ancient species with a variable of 0.00065% DNA difference. Now the Pokemon of the past were living and breathing in laboratories, and filling in the gaps of Pokemon evolution even easier than before.

But for the cryptopokemonologists, this kind of advancement was only a dream. The Pokemon they searched for were so rare and so seldom seen that most of the human world was convinced that they didn't exist at all.

Abby knew that the legendary golem trio was real.

Her memory of the encounter was crystal clear. It was one cold winter night when she was a small child. She had been playing in the woods near their house with her friends and sun was setting over the horizon; the dense mass of trees was growing dark fast. Somehow in their hurry home, she had managed to get separated from all of the others and began to wander the forest alone. Though she was comfortable and could find her way in the daytime, the forest was completely alien at night. She could remember shaking in her boots and pulling her scarf closer to her. She hugged herself and crouched low, head down looking for the exit. There were rumors about what scary Pokemon roamed the woods at night- hungry Liepards, flocks of Zubat, chattering Murkrows, and red-eyed Rattatas- and could be lurking around every bush and tree trunk. It wasn't long before Abby had become very scared, very tired, very cold and very much missing her mother and father. Not knowing what else to do, Abby sat down at the base of a tall pine tree and hugged her knees close, shedding little tears on her woolen mittens. Suddenly, there was the sound of a tree branch snapping and a rustling among the leaves. Abby sat up straight, wide-eyed, and trying her darnedest not to make a sound searched around her for the source of the noise. She could make out nothing, but the crunch of fallen leaves was growing louder. It soundly distinctly like footsteps- very large footsteps- and they were getting closer.

iClomp, clomp, crunch, clomp, scccccratch,/i and then a big pithy ihuff/i.

Abby was shivering wildly now with cold and fear, and her teeth were chattering, lip quivering to hold back a stifled terrified snob.

iClomp, clomp, clomp.../i

And then it stopped. Not even five feet in front of Abby were the glaring golden eyes of an alpha Ursaring. A hungry alpha Ursaring. He had smelled her.

Abby screamed. The sleeping Pidgeys in the trees jolted awake and took wings, warning others of the danger down below. The Ursaring reared back and gave a growl.

But then there was the flash of a bright red light from behind the trees and huge gust of wind burst around her. The Ursaring hadn't expected this at all; it too terrified turned to the hills and ran as fast as its' stout paws would carry it. Abby pulled her knit cap over her eyes and cried out again; then she felt something rush past her. The wind from which ripped the cap from her hands. Abby caught the distinct glow of seven red eyes and a shiny metallic body run out in front of her and fade away into the fog that floated through the trees. It wasn't long after that then the people of her hometown found her. They had been looking anxiously everywhere and were shocked when Abby had told them she hadn't heard them shouting her name.

When she became older and more accustomed to the cryptomon names, Abby knew she had an encounter with Registeel. Registeel was real. She became obssessed.

While her memory of the night never faded as she got older, Abby's belief that it had been Registeel grew dimmer and dimmer. Now, she was skeptical if she could trust her six or seven year old self at all; if it had been just a trick of the light or her overactive imagination... It was all she had, and she had relied on that memory alone to propel her where she was today... almost a doctor of cryptopokemonology, specifically the legendary golems.

Abby sat slouched in front of her desktop computer. She switched from her contacts to glasses hours ago, and gone through several cups of coffee (as obvious by the little coffee rings around several pieces of paper littering her desk.)If only she had some sort of physical proof of the golems! Even a chemical analysis of their makeup would reveal facts of their nature no one understood before! Instead she was having to rely on the two facts science did know...
- The golems' bodies could not be scratched or dented.
- The golems' bodies were hollow.

These two facts alone she was depending on to make her dissertation.

Abby tapped her forehead with two fingers chanting, "Think, Abby, think" to herself. She forced herself to replay her memory in slow-motion. Was there anything out of the ordinary that night? The golem did not appear to come to her aid; it merely rushed by as if following a command to "come here" ... if that was certain, then the legendary golems were indeed like the golems of Jewish folklore. The question that remained was... who was the master?

She decided to recount the spooky encounter to her panel of judges and offer that there were even more forces at work in the world of cryptopokemonology. Forces that were sure to secure her doctorate and on a quest to discover what more mysteries drive the Pokemon world.