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Chapter One: The Priest and the Hunter

Dwight ran forward as rain fell down on his face, sweat running down his face, his feet pounding against his ground. He was on Planet PKX - 234, chasing a random criminal for which he received a bounty. He was currently in a river, in a large city, concrete walls on both of his sides.

It was in the dark of the night and he had to be quick to keep a lock on the criminal. He was close enough that he might be able to lounge on the criminal, but he loved to play his ego.

Then the criminal decided to jump grabbing onto the underside of a bridge. Dwight stopped for a second to look at the sight of a man jumping up almost seventy feet in the air; he decided to continue the chase in air.

Dwight was a large green, scaled lizard-like dinosaur. He has a muzzle mouth with sharp teeth, and a face like a velociraptor. Humps ran down his spine. His hands had sharp claws and with his tripod feet, he can run very fast and sleekly with his legs.

He wasn't a real dinosaur, more like a highly evolved subspecies. His DNA was made mostly out of velociraptor, as it was the easiest to give a human posture and a larger brain. They put it some other stuff like his DNA was Legos and he just happened.

He looked at the jumping criminal and knew he had to chase him, so he raised his left hand and formed a grappling hook in his hand. He pulled the trigger and caught on the side of the bridge. The grappling hook pulled him forward up towards the bridge.

He wore a grey shirt and a black armor longcoat over his body, covering his large body. However being a mutant did had some benefits, as he flew up towards the jumping criminal he held out right arm and pointed his index finger out like making a toy gun, as children did.

Unlike other people though, he had a gift. Other people with the right combination of DNA would have a different gift and some like the criminal he was chasing choose to abuse it.

There was an orange burst of energy from his hand, and as his hand released energy, orange pistol formed in his hand. He quickly shifted his hand, and grabbed the gun. It was a transparent glowing, orange gun.

He was pulled toward the bridge and as such towards the criminal, who was currently attempting to climb up onto the bridge. He hovered over the bridge with his wings and aimed his weapons. He hit the trigger and again and he was paused in the bridge, he fired two shots at the criminal but he missed, the criminal grabbed the side of the bridge and climbed on to the main deck.

Dwight pulled the trigger again and was pulled up again. He pulled himself up onto the other side of the bridge.

"Give up Bouncy; I'm the greatest bounty hunter this side of the galactic center. Now then I can arrange a deal for you if you let me handcuff you, but I do enjoy a fight, and I do love to see how my ranking goes up when I beat you too a pulp." Dwight yelled over to the other side of the bridge, luckily it was late enough at night that no cars were on the street.

"Please now would I honestly give up this early in the game you just began to chase me, now come on them chase this!" Bouncy said as he pulled in his legs and jumped into the sky disappearing into the darkness of the sky.

He reached into his pant pocket and grabbed a tiny little device. It was his mobile stellar communication device; however, he could easily call it a space cellphone. That however, sounded stupid and it sounded better with long words and descriptive verbs.

He waited a few moments as setting up the FTL, as in faster than light signal took a few moments to set up properly. During this, he stepped off the edge of the bridge onto the sidewalk, listening to the ringing of the phone.

"Listen Marian, activate the Void's DNA Tracker there be some of his DNA on the edge of the bridge here." Dwight said into the cellphone as he started to pace a bit. "No, no, not like that. Just activate the remote programming, use the on-world scanner to find his DNA and then search for him. He should still be on this planet, unless he jumped high enough to get out of the atmosphere."

"Yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds but come on let me crack a joke everyone and a while." Dwight said into the phone, "Ok, thanks I got the transmission from the ship."

He hung up the phone and placed it back into his pocket. He reached into one of his longcoat's pockets and pulled out a PDA, his spaceship connected to the device. The PDA allowed the transmission of signals between the two.

The PDA was as a device that fit in his palm; it had a small black screen and a light red bezel of plastic surrounded it. He turned it on and switched into map mode, the town's roads and buildings displayed on a grid. There was a blinking dot on the screen to the north of his location.

He ran to the other side of the road and started to run down the bridge. He hit what seemed to be a main road of the town, with four and five story buildings lining the road. Cars sparely populated the roads and the sidewalk even more so; then again, Dwight would hope there would be no cars on the sidewalk.

He started to run down the streets and followed the dot, he doubted that Bouncy would know that he was tracking him and would eventually settle into one location, probably a safe house where he could hide from the police forces.

He walked forward and blended in, being a dinosaur he didn't exactly blend in as much as other races, but at least he wasn't human, they stick out like a sore thumb in a universe of red skinned communists with ridged foreheads.

He looked forward and the dot stopped moving, quite ironically as it seemed that Bouncy decided to settle back into the river. He stopped and looked ahead; there was a bridge that went over the river as it turned.

"Ok, I can get the jump on him as he goes under." He decided to have fun with Bouncy and as such, he put out his hand and formed another weapon. This time it was a simple stick, but if one trained in pole combat, it could be a deadly weapon. However, no one ever trained him, when one can create an armory of almost every weapon you learn to dabble in everything, and switch up tactics often.

It was his style; he looked down at the PDA as he stood on the bridge. Bouncy was approaching and he got ready to jump. However, he was surprised as Bouncy appeared in his face. He fell back on the street as Bouncy landed on the bridge.

"Wait how'd you know I was here?" Dwight said with a hint of uncertainty and nervousness in his voice.

"You're standing on top of a bridge with a glowing orange stick, how in the world wouldn't I have missed you!" Bouncy said as he pulled back his fist, able to put the same force into his punches as well as his feet.

Bouncy jumped forward and tried to punch Dwight; however, he twisted out of the way, but left his pole behind. Bouncy's punch did leave an effect, bursting through the first layer of concrete in the bridge, they did not notice though.

Dwight dodged another punch as Bouncy came running towards him again. He ducked under the punch and ran towards his stick. He ducked as he grabbed it and Bouncy quickly jumped up toward his. Bouncy landed near the growing hole and decided to ram Dwight. He pointed his head forward and shot out towards the Dinosaur.

"Shit." Dwight said as the criminal rammed him. His armored longcoat absorbed some of the impact but as he landed on the ground, he grabbed his side in pain. He stood up and wobbled forward, Bouncy was next to him with presumably large amounts of head damage.

However, in his pained state he failed to notice the growing hole in the bridge. He started to tip over into the hole, which woke him up to what happened. He quickly used his powers to construct a platform, an, but he kept falling off each, but he made enough to slow himself down and not splat in the ground.

He landed on the ground and stood up in the water. He definitely had some sort of internal bleeding and the falls crushed a few of his ribs. He looked up to the bridge and knew he had to go capture Bouncy before anything worst happened.

He groaned as he wondered how all the other bounty hunters would react when they knew that he was taken down by a hundred foot fall. Luckily, he caught himself right in time and was able to stop himself a second into the fall, another second and he would be a puddle of meat and feathers on the ground.

He climbed up the bridge and looked at the situation. There would be a massive hole in the bridge, so that would need fixing. Otherwise compared to other excursions this was a barely a dent compared to other times.

However, when he reached the top of the bridge he found something else. There was a person in either a black suit or other form of wear that was kneeling towards Bouncy.

He seemed to be darker than the night itself, whoever this person was. Dwight was more so shocked when this person rose up a scythe and violently cut Bouncy's head off. He stood up and looked at Dwight before suddenly disappearing into pure darkness.

He ran over to the criminal and found that Bouncy was dead, and he could not do anything about it. So instead, he reached into another pocket and found a flash drive. He pointed it at the remains of Bouncy and he was teleported to the brig on his ship in a flash of red light. Dwight took the flash drive and pointed it upwards and again a blue light engulfed him.

He arrived in his spaceship, which was currently orbiting above the planet. It was dark in the spaceship, except for in the bridge. There was a counter with buttons to control the ships various functions, there were five seats arranged through the room.

The front seat was closest to the buttons and had the steering wheel. It was not a large ship, only about three hundred feet from front to back, and the only thing of real value it had was the warp drive.

Instead of hightailing it off the planet, he decided to deal with his injuries first. He started to walk to the area behind the bridge, groaning and moaning as he passed through the kitchen and dining area. The ship was a massive cylinder in the back and was spilt into two floors. There were four possible ways to go up, down, left, or right.

Going left or right would have taken him to the wings of ship where the crew cabin and sublight engines stood. Down the stairs would have taken him to the cargo bay and the maintenance area for the warp engines. He wanted to go up wards.

"God I needed to buy the escalator upgrade, I regret nothing!" Dwight said as he grabbed the railing and started to pull himself up the stairway.

Dwight's face turned pale for a second as he started to climb the stairs. He reached the second floor eventually and reached into his pocket. He pulled out the flash drive from before and stuck it into the keyhole of the Medbay's door.

In the future people needed a way to store personal data, as well as credentials and access locks. This was provided in the flash drive, with some medication it could provide all the possible access to everything. Isometric controls allowed on certain people to certain flash drives and the data was encrypted so people couldn't modify their access level.

Dwight threw his body into the medbay, his vison becoming blurry as he walked over to the healing machine. He was pretty sure that he was losing a lot of blood internally and had to get into the machine before he passed out. He noted that was the flaw in the system.

He sighed when he reached the edge and pulled himself into the medical device. It was a large cylinder that could hold a large bear if it had to, he pulled himself up and the machine started. The machine let out a cold blast of air, frosting the window. Dwight closed his eyes and went into a medically induced sleep.

Soon the process stopped and the machine beeped to let him know to wake up.

"Uhhh, nothing works better than a good night's sleep." Dwight said as he grabbed the edge of the opened doorway and walked out. The pain in his side had stopped and his ribs felt more intact than they were a few hours ago. The machine worked well and gave a nice time to sleep as well.

He walked out into the bridge of the ship, easily walking down the stairs that had been a problem for him a few hours ago. He walked past the kitchen and the dining room. While the rest of the ship walls were dark grey steel, rivets visible and holes in the hull visibly and quickly fixed, the dining room was the one place he tried to decorate.

He hung a curtain over the window, picked up a nice wooden table from the crafting planet and put a chandelier up. Understandably, he put an inertia canceler, as not to end up after a warp with crumbled glass and metal everywhere.

He grabbed his flash drive and plugged it into the starter port. The ship rumbled to life as all non-medbay and non-life support systems activated. For obvious reasons the ship always gave medbay and life-support always had power. The sub-light engines on the wings activated and the warp engine prepared for use.

The system to pilot the ship was quite simple; there was the steering wheel and a few simple buttons or knobs. Such as the two knobs that controlled the energy input to the sublight engine, such as for space drifting. The button that released the energy in the warp engine as a speed blast, such as for speeding up or killing enemies behind you as you board the ship. Lastly, the button that activated the ship's landing and take-off maneuvers.

The computer input screen handled everything else , such as opening or locking doors on the ship, automatically targeting and firing the turrets on each wing, regular warping, and space parking.

However, before he could warp to another planet system his computer started to beep at him. He received a message. Dwight walked over to the computer and opened the barely used system. He read the message that apparently came from the base of the planet.

"Hello, I've had heard about your services from a friend. Instead of hunting down a person could you instead protect a person, as it would be the same practical thing, come to the attached coordinates if you would like to." The message said, it didn't say from who, but anyone wishing his services would be rich.

He wasted no time and changed the teleporter coordinates. Dwight shut down the craft again, and pointed the flash drive to the ceiling. He closed his eyes and wondered where he had landed. It was still night, so he figured the planet had a slowed down rotation. It was colder than earlier in the night, so it had to midnight-ish.

He was in front of a large building with gothic windows. He walked forward and figured that the door was going to be open. He walked in and he saw the gothic inside of the building.

"Ah Space Christianity, all gothic sacraments and building designs of Roman Catholicism and the moral understandings of Buddhism." Dwight said as he looked inside of the church. It was a large church; there were large arches inside the building. Around the church the windows were filled with rainbow colored glass.

On the wall of the church, there were diagrams of emotional faces with labels of the emotion below. In the back, lesser emotions such as pride and ambition hung on the wall. Dwight looked at the pride face, and thought it looked similar.

He walked forward down the main isle and figured that the priest of the church must off send him the message. He hoped it was not a fire and brimstone priest, as that would get in the way. Dwight didn't want to get involved in many new age religions as all of them told him he was going to hell.

"Hello, is anyone here?" Dwight asked, his voice echoing throughout the cathedral. There was a door located to the side of the alter and soon enough the priest walked out. He was dressed in the normal priest grab, black shirt, white collar and a striped vest.

"Hello there, I have called you for a very important reason, I believe that someone is trying to murder me." The priest said, of all the people Dwight had met on his journeys the priest was certainly the most forward. He couldn't of been more than 35, he was a grey wolf but he was at least four inches smaller than Dwight.

"OK, what do you want me do, give this a sepia overlay, get a smoking pipe and start an investigation. " Dwight said laughing a bit, but the priest didn't appear to get the humor. "How do you know someone wants to kill you, give me some physical proof?"

"Well when I was going through the raised funds, for reasons, I found this note in one of the baskets." The priest said not even looking at Dwight. The T-rex wondered how the priest even became a priest, he must of won a "collect 12 tickets and become a priest" contest. The priest handed Dwight a note, that was folded.

Dwight opened the note and looked at it contents. In red blood lettering "YOU WILL DIE TONIGHT" was written in massive font on the paper. This priest must have been a lunatic to not have packed his bags and got out of town.

"Ok, very carefully tell me who would attempt to murder you." Dwight said trying to get a fix on what was going on.

"Well some people know me as the Priest that attempted to fun back into funeral, so their families as well as the dead people might want to put a few blades through my body." He said completely straight face.

"Ok, then. How about least oblivious suspects, do you know if any of the space atheists want to take you out?" Dwight said making a joke, but once again the priest didn't "get" the joke.

"No, they don't bite. However, I'm sure you can figure it out, you are the best. Aren't you?" If the priest knew how to do something, it was how to manipulate someone's pride. Dwight took this as a direct challenge to his self-worth, and he was now trapped.

"Well let's see I've only been gone for a few hours, so could the man I saw early. If he can travel through shadows then we could be sitting ducks, waiting for him to attack, our necks could be sliced at any time." Dwight said hoping to get a reaction out of the priest.

"Ok priest if you want me to help I'm going to need you name, I can't keep calling you priest." Dwight said as he tapped the priest's back and took him away from the alter and walking towards the vestibule, which was the best-lit area.

"My name is Father Kory Reid, what's yours?" He said as Dwight sat the priest down on a chair in the vestibule.

"You don't know my name?" Dwight said in disbelief, "Wouldn't you know my name if you wanted to contact me?"

"No, I know yours I was just being nice." Kory said with a hint of sadness in his voice. Dwight really wondered how a person like him could become a priest. He wasn't being preachy, or using his position to give his voice power, he was just acting like a child.

"Ok here's the plan." Dwight said sure that the shadow person from before was reasonable, he was only a few miles from the collapsed bridge and it wouldn't be that far of a stretch.

Before he could tell the priest his plan, Dwight had to duck as glass broke with a clatter. He grabbed Kory and pulled him out of the way of the falling glass. He opened the door and ran out into the street.

The lights in the vestibule seemed to darken as a living shadow fell into the room from the broken window. Even in the light, Dwight couldn't make out features in the attacker, the shadows floating around him like gas.

Either the shadow managed to conjure an arm or he stuck it out of the shadows, showing a vile with a green liquid. The shadow beast threw the vile behind him, hit one of the pews and breaking. The green contents of the vile reacted with the air, turning red. Dwight knew what it was and pushed him and Father Reid to the ground.

As soon as the liquid reacted, a massive explosion blew out from the church breaking the gothic windows and collapsing the arcs. The church collapsed on the ground in green flames as the shadow seemly disappeared from the area.

"Well that's not going to be good for this week's mass; this town is going to need a new church." Kory said looking at the destruction of his church. "Bless this place." Dwight looked over and saw Kory making a praying gesture to it, like saying goodbye to an old friend.

"I'm sorry did I destroy that, rebuild that in three days." Dwight and Kory turned towards the source of the voice and found that the Shadow was down the road looking at them, ready to pounce.

"Now then why do you want to kill this idiot, keep him in the church he won't hurt anyone there, but know you got rid of that." Dwight said walking forward carefully.

"You don't understand, now that's not very creative. Then again you're not the toughest adversary I've ever faced, you're just a tiny pea on the plate of vegetables." The shadow entity said as he walked forward, he then jumped up and disappeared into the shadows.

He appeared behind Kory and prepared to behead him but Dwight quickly grabbed the priest and pulled him past the shadow. They started to run forward going towards another bridge. As they crossed the bridge, Dwight saw the river from before and the ocean it lead into.

There was a large carnival pier, with flashing lights, a roller coaster and other old time committees. He pulled Father Reid into the alley and crossed the empty road, their appeared to be some people left in the pier.

They waltzed into the pier and decided to blend in with the few crowds, as well as a dinosaur in an armored coat and a priest could. They looked like an odd bunch. They waited for the shadow to attack them, but nothing happened for a while.

They settled down and soon enough they let their guard down. However, right at the peak of dawn there was a loud noise coming from the rollercoaster.

"Well that doesn't look to encouraging." Kory said looking up at the stopped ride. They were at the top peak, about to fall down the rail but they were stuck. Everyone in an earshot could hear them screaming for help.

"Well then we should probably help them, wouldn't you say so father." He said reminding Kory of who he was. He snapped back to focus and they ran towards the roller coaster.

As soon as they arrived, they ignored the ride operator's demands and quickly started to scale the ride. They traveled up the side stairs quickly getting up the first half. Kory was keeping speed with Dwight, but after the halfway point, they started to slow down from the angle increasing.

The riders rejoiced at their appearance, but soon something else happened. With a puff of shadow clouds, the shadow cloud entity appeared again.

"Crap, Father, stay back I'll handle this!" Dwight said as he raised his hand and formed a sword to fight the shadow beast. He figured something solider would work better against the cloud beast. However, the shadow decided to raise him one and brought out his scythe.

As Dwight reached the top of the stairs metal clashed, the sword and the scythe hitting each other. He wasted no time attacking but whenever Dwight tried to hit the shadow, he simply avoided it somehow.

Father Reid decided to help the people and he figured the best way would to get them quickly out of the shadow beast's way. He then figured that best way would to get them out of the way was to push them down the hill.

He climbed up and reached the carts, he reached the front one by going around Dwight's fight. He got on the side of the cart and simple started to pull. The passengers started to scream, confused on why he wasn't letting them out. However, they stemmed to realize that something was going on as they went down the hill.

With thee railcart out of the way the shadow and Dwight's fight intensified and they were able to move around the rails. Kory ran up the rails raising a fist as he targeted the shadow. The shadow entity turned around pausing the fight and pushed Father Kory down.

Kory hit the ground and started to fall down the ride. He broke through the barrier and was about to fall. However, the priest grabbed the metal rail of the coaster. The priest's eyes opened fully as if understanding something fully for once, his eyes glowed purple.

Around him psychic energy collected and swirled around his body, shaking the ride. His grip on the ride clamped and psychic energy was sent like a blast through the metal rail.

The shadow entity turned around as a massive psychic blast was coming towards him. The energy jumped from the rail and a massive energy blast was sent from that point hitting and finishing the shadow entity.

Kory started to float, letting go of the rail. He floated on to the track and sent psychic energy through his legs and into the track. It circled around the shadow entity and trapped him into a confined space.

He floated up to the top point of the ride and looked at the shadow entity trapped inside the ball. The priest lowed his hand onto the rail and sent another burst of energy This time however, it sent the shadow entity flying into the sky off into the distance.

Dwight looking in shock and awe as the priest took control of the situation. He though he figured out why someone wanted him dead, so he figured it might be useful to protect Kory and keep him away from the people who want him.

"Ok, maybe it would have been better if I killed the shadow entity but whatever." He said as Kory's eyes stop glowing and he fell to the ground knocked out. He fell into Dwight's arms and didn't make a sound.

"Well then I hope you don't miss this planet, because I'm taking you to the shadow of space. The priest and hunter that going to be on to tell Marian. I wonder how's she's doing?" Dwight said as he grabbed his flash drive and beamed himself and Father Kory up to the ship.

He looked around and placed the priest on a chair in the dining room. He walked forward and started up the ship with the flash-drive. He maneuvered the flight-chair over to the computer and sat down. He activated the warp drive and set it for his home base, The Halo Trident System.