Kyōdai Predator: Super Predator Of The Game Preserve
The Kyōdai Predator was a male Super Predator in Jonathan Maberry and Louis Ozawa's Kyōdai, from Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey. He hunted on the Game Preserve Planet weeks after Hanzō, the yakuza swordsman from Predators, had died in a duel on that world. He ran a pain-implanted adult Xenomorph as a hound, then accepted a helmet-off honor duel when Eiji Kawakami showed him Hanzō's katana. Eiji beheaded him, smashed the control device, and followed the freed hound into twilight.
Biography
Hunting With A Xenomorph Hound
In a grass field on the game preserve, the hunter stood at least eight or nine feet tall, his body packed with muscle under exotic armor, and his helmet tapered like a stylized bird of prey. He held a segmented spear in one hand and a small electronic clicker in the other. A Warrior Xenomorph ran ahead of him with a round, metallic implant set into the side of its head. When the creature slowed, he pressed the device, the implant flared bright yellow, and the hound collapsed in pain. He then only showed the clicker, and the Xenomorph backed away, hissed, and went after the prey on his command.
Two humans were running the field, a blond Jegertroppen operator from Norway firing a Heckler & Koch MP7, and a burly gunman in a torn uniform that Eiji thought might belong to the Niger Delta Avengers. The hunter let them pull ahead, then followed with the hound. Eiji later found both bodies with the skull and spine taken as trophies, and no monument raised for either fight. Trees and rocks were melted where the woman had made her last stand, and green blood spattered the ground as if from gunshot wounds. A soldier and a man in sweatpants with South American prison tattoos lay farther on, their trophies already gone.
Monument To Hanzō
The same field held a monument welded from scrap metal, with a bird-of-prey helmet nearly identical to the one this hunter wore. Pollen and droppings on the helmet made it look weeks old. A bladed gauntlet stood behind it, and an old unsigned katana lay in front in a place of honor. Under a glass plate was skin cut from the back of Hanzō Kawakami, showing his tattoo of the Sengoku-era warrior Hattori Hanzō. Eiji, an Inagawa-kai enforcer and Hanzō's younger brother, had been dropped onto the world with a parachute and a full pistol after a midnight gunfight at the Shinjuku Granbell Hotel.
Eiji read the monument as a war memorial rather than a simple trophy pile, and judged that Hanzō had won a duel against the hunter who wore that helmet and gauntlet. He took the katana, left his shoulder holster on the plinth, and wrote the kanji for Kyōdai with a moistened finger, a word that meant siblings, brothers in arms, and brothers in the yakuza. Far off, automatic fire and human screams told him the hunter and the hound had caught their prey. Eiji then ran after them, now armed with the sword his brother had used on this world.
Waterfall Camp
At a small waterfall as an eclipse darkened the preserve, three similarly armored hunters stood together, each with a writhing hound whose implant glowed under fresh pain. Their kit differed in the details, with horns on some helmets and necklaces of bones, ears, and fingers. After a short talk in grunts and clicks, two of them released their hounds into the jungle and vanished as the air shimmered under a cloak. The remaining hunter stayed behind to clean trophies. He set a cooking pot by the brook, poured a flask of vile liquid into the boiling water, and dropped those four spines and skulls in one by one.
Eiji stepped into the clearing and scuffed the ground so the hunter would turn. A massive blade slid from the hunter's gauntlet, and a shoulder device that first looked like a camera put three red targeting dots on Eiji's chest, marking it as a gun. Eiji brushed the dots away as if they were dirt and showed the katana in a fading shaft of sunlight. The hunter recognized that particular sword, his body stiffening, and he gave a single nod. He removed his helmet, small tubes falling away with a hiss of exotic gasses, and left the hound down rather than sending it in. He accepted an honor duel instead.
Helmet-Off Duel
The unmasked face looked, to Eiji, as if it had been fashioned in hell, but the hunter still raised his gauntlet blade as if in salute. The blade curved toward the hunter's body, which made a backhand cut the likely first strike. Eiji drew the katana, dropped into a low guard to goad a head attack, and let out a kiyai, a warrior's scream. The hunter answered with a roar that shook the clearing, then waited, trying to make Eiji come forward out of fear. Eiji was colder and more precise than his brother, and he would not charge the way Hanzō had.
Eiji feinted a two-handed thrust to the sternum, then slid aside as the hunter tried to smash the katana. The old sword sheared through the hunter's back and side, and green blood flew as he staggered and howled. Even wounded, he whirled and slashed, still fast, and a cut to the right biceps hit bone and slid off. Eiji then meant a lateral cut to the side of the head, but the hunter was too tall and the blade bit deep across the back of the neck instead. The head rose with its eyes open in surprise, then rolled toward the hound, and the body crumpled in glowing green blood.
The Freed Hound
Eiji picked up the fallen clicker and showed it to the hound, which crouched, hissed, and watched him with murder in its posture. He dropped the device, stamped it until the casing burst in sparks, and the dull yellow light in the implant went dark. In that moment he cut the exposed section of the implant from the Xenomorph's head and sent it tumbling into the dirt. The hound sniffed the two broken pieces, still not attacking. Eiji then picked up the dead hunter's helmet, mimed the cut that had killed him, and tossed the helmet toward the other hunters.
He pointed the sword along that same trail and waited. Freed from the implant, the Xenomorph could have run, or it could have killed him in the next two seconds. It plunged into the tall grass after the other hunters instead, at least for that moment, because the shared enemy was closer than the man who had just cut the device away. Eiji did not believe the truce would last, and he did not treat the hound as his ally or his dog. He followed it into the gathering twilight anyway, still hunting the hunters, with two Super Predators and their hounds still somewhere in the trees.
Appearance And Weapons
The story never gives this hunter a Yautja honor name. Kyōdai Predator is the designation taken from the story title, not a name he used for himself. He stood at least eight or nine feet tall, with a body so packed and corded with muscle that Eiji compared it to a caricature from anime rather than ordinary life. His helmet was metallic and tapered like a stylized bird of prey, nearly identical to the one on Hanzō's monument, and it sealed with tubes that hissed when he pulled it off. His arms and legs were mostly exposed, and Eiji wondered how he had walked through automatic fire without obvious shielding.
He fought with a segmented spear, a single wicked blade in a gauntlet, and a shoulder gun that painted three red targeting lasers, though he never fired it once the katana was shown. The pain clicker on his belt ran the implant in the Xenomorph's head, forcing an unwilling hound to hunt. Green blood marked gunshot wounds in the grass and then the cuts that killed him, and some of it spattered the hound and Eiji's face during the duel. His two companions at the waterfall wore similar armor with different ornaments, including helmet horns and bone necklaces, and they left under cloak with their own hounds still living.
Similar Predators
The Kyōdai Predator belongs with the Super Predators who kept the game preserve as a hunting ground after the 2010 film. His bird-of-prey helmet matches the one left on the monument to Falconer, the hunter Hanzō killed in a sword duel in that earlier fight. Eiji's beheading then mirrors Falconer's death, down to a Kawakami brother and a katana, except that Eiji lived and this hunter did not land a killing blow. He now stands among the Headless Predators, killed by a human swordsman rather than a rival hunter. Tracker and Berserker hunted the same world with more conventional hell hounds, not a pain-implanted Xenomorph.
Keeper is another named male from the same Ultimate Prey anthology, a living-trophy collector who also dies when his head is taken. Another Yautja kills Keeper, though, rather than a human swordsman. Adelantado hunted Xenomorphs on a 1770 Caribbean island in the same book and left alive, the opposite end from a helmet-off death on the preserve. The story never says this hunter was a brother or clan-mate of Falconer by blood, only that he wore a nearly identical helmet, recognized Hanzō's sword, and hunted on the same world weeks later.
Behind The Scenes
Jonathan Maberry and Louis Ozawa wrote Kyōdai for the 2022 Titan Books anthology Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt and Maberry. In the foreword, dated 26 May 2021 from San Diego, Maberry called Predators one of his favorite films in the series and said he pitched a sequel to that movie, and to Ozawa's character, then wrote the story with him. Ozawa had played Hanzō in the 2010 film. The hunter has no honor name in the text, and Eiji draws the kanji for Kyōdai after taking the sword. That word refers to the Kawakami brothers, not to the Super Predator he later kills.
Conclusion
The Kyōdai Predator was a Super Predator who ran a pain-implanted Xenomorph as a hound on the game preserve, weeks after Hanzō's duel had been marked with a monument in the grass. He recognized Hanzō's katana at a waterfall camp, removed his helmet, and left the hound down for an honor fight. Eiji Kawakami feinted, cut through his back and side, and took his head. The freed Xenomorph went after the other hunters, and Eiji followed it into twilight, with the duel hunter already dead and two companions still in the trees.
Appearances
- Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey, "Kyōdai" by Jonathan Maberry and Louis Ozawa (anthology, Titan Books, 2022)
Tag Categories: Individual Predators | Predators From The Novels | Predator Lore
