Ki'Sei: The Hurricane Katrina Predator

Name: Ki'Sei
Species: Yautja
Sex: Male
Role: Lone hunter
Known for: Rougarou hunt during Hurricane Katrina, August 2005
Setting: Louisiana bayou and New Orleans
First appearance: Predator: If It Bleeds, "Storm Blood" (2017)
Status: Alive, left into the hurricane
Weapons: Cloak, bio-mask, shoulder cannon, wrist blades, tracker
Confirmed kills: Rougarou · Tito · Cryptozoid Crackdown film crew in the bayou

Ki'Sei was a Yautja hunter in Peter J. Wacks and David Boop's Storm Blood, published in Predator: If It Bleeds in 2017. In late August 2005 he hunted a rougarou, a giant intelligent wolf, through the Louisiana bayou and into flooded New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina came ashore. He spared a wounded survivor named Ro, gave her a tracker to find a missing boy, and killed the rougarou at St. Louis Cathedral. He took its skull and spine as a trophy and left into the storm.

Biography

Hunt In The Bayou

On 28 August 2005, former HairForce rockers Darren and the Maestro took their amateur show Cryptozoid Crackdown into the bayou to film a rougarou. Frankie's father had been hired to play the creature in costume, and he had also tranquilized a real rougarou cub. Ki'Sei was already hunting the adult beast in the same swamp. Their Hi8 footage showed the crew firing at a huge wolf-like animal while a large cloaked figure attacked them as well. The camp ended in blood and torn bodies, and Frankie told the crew his father had been killed by something other than the rougarou.

Cameraman Jason died on the airboat as Haitian Creole driver Romilly Sibian, called Ro, pulled away with Frankie. The next day Ro crashed her Jeep as she tried to get the boy out ahead of the hurricane. A Louisiana National Guard fireteam under Sergeant Lejeune found the wreck on 29 August, took the unconscious Frankie and the camera, and left Ro for dead under a fallen tree. The story did not show who killed each member of the film crew, so the bayou deaths are credited to the hunt only in general.

Ro And The Tracker

Ro woke under the hunter after the Guard had gone. Katrina's rain had shorted his cloak, so she could see him standing over her. He studied her and repeated the word "boy" after she told him she only wanted to save Frankie. He then named himself Ki'Sei, tossed her a triangular tracker locked on the boy, and vanished. Ro tied her injured arm in a sling made from a seat belt and went after the Humvee. She later told the soldiers that one of the two killers in the storm was a nine-foot cloaked hunter that had let her live.

The rougarou struck the Humvee first, slamming into the windshield as a bear-sized gray wolf. The fireteam took cover in a supermarket, where Ro arrived by airboat and warned them about both creatures. The rougarou broke in, seized Inigo by the thigh, and tore his leg free. It fled after Nevaeh Khanna's shotgun tore its shoulder and neck, and Lejeune found no pulse on Inigo. With the building no longer safe, the survivors left the supermarket and drove to a nearby church to make another stand against the storm and the two killers.

Battle At St. Louis Cathedral

At St. Louis Cathedral, Ki'Sei came through a stained-glass window and landed on the altar. He put three targeting lasers on the rougarou and fired a plasma bolt that collapsed the rear doorway. Tito opened fire on him and stabbed him in the shoulder, and the hunter killed Tito with wrist blades through the chest. The rougarou then ripped off his bio-mask. Lejeune clipped a winch hook to her vest, jumped onto the beast's back, and looped the cable around its neck as the three-way fight went on.

His blades went through Lejeune's leg and pinned her to the rougarou's hide. Ro rammed the Humvee into the pile and drove off into the storm with the cable still attached. Ki'Sei jerked the cable free, drove his blades through the rougarou's eyes, and tore out its skull and spine as a trophy. He glanced at Ro and left into the hurricane. A Coast Guard Dolphin lifted Ro, Lejeune, Frankie, and Nevaeh off the cathedral on 30 August, and Ro broke the tape and dropped it into the flood.

Appearance And Weapons

Ro described Ki'Sei as about nine feet tall. The story gave no clan, rank, or age for him, and the only words he spoke to Ro were "boy" and his own name. He used a shoulder cannon that projected three targeting lasers and paired wrist blades, and he carried a triangular tracker that he gave away. The rain shorted his cloak in the street, and the rougarou tore away his mask in the cathedral. He fought the rest of that battle bare-faced and with a stab wound in his shoulder from Tito.

Confirmed Kills

The story confirms only two kills by Ki'Sei on the page. The bayou footage linked him to the deaths at the Cryptozoid Crackdown camp, but it did not count them or show each one. The rougarou, not the hunter, killed Inigo in the supermarket. Ro, Lejeune, Frankie, and Nevaeh all survived, and Lejeune lived through the blades that pinned her to the beast. The list below keeps to what the text shows.

Rougarou: 1. Killed at St. Louis Cathedral with blades through the eyes, then skull and spine taken.
National Guard: 1. Tito, killed with wrist blades through the chest.
Bayou camp: uncounted. Members of the Cryptozoid Crackdown crew, possibly including Frankie's father.

Behind The Scenes

Storm Blood was written by Peter J. Wacks and David Boop for the 2017 Titan Books anthology edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt. It is one of the Earth stories in the collection, set in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina, and its prey is the rougarou, a werewolf-like creature from Cajun folklore. The narration mostly calls the hunter "it," and the story did not state his sex directly. The name echoes "ki'sei," listed in the Yautja language as "I agree, I understand." The story ended in the rescue helicopter, where Frankie opened his backpack on the battered rougarou cub his father had tranquilized before the killing started.

Conclusion

Ki'Sei was the hunter who chased a rougarou from the bayou into New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He spared Ro and helped her find Frankie, killed Tito in the cathedral, and finished the rougarou after it tore off his mask. He left into the storm with its skull and spine, and the Coast Guard lifted the four survivors off the cathedral two days after the bayou attack. Ro destroyed the Hi8 tape, so the only recording of the hunt went into the floodwater.