Light-Stepper was a Yautja hunter who earned his place in his clan by killing a Xenomorph on his first hunt in Aliens vs. Predator: Blood Time, the 1994 Dark Horse story by Randy Stradley. Acid from that kill burned away his right hand, and he hunted with one hand from then on. He returned on Ryushi in Aliens vs. Predator: Duel, where he speared one of the Colonial Marines and then killed a Predalien beside another. He made a last brief appearance aboard a hunt ship at the start of Aliens vs. Predator: War and survived every story he was in.
Biography
The Swamp Trial
Light-Stepper was one of ten young bloods that the veteran Top-Knot led into an unnamed swamp for their blooding. The prey on that ground was the most dangerous their tribe had found, and a single kill there was worth more than twenty lesser trophies. Failure on that hunt almost always meant death. After two days of wading through the marsh, Two-Stripes grew impatient and believed that their guide had lost the trail. Light-Stepper heard a clicking in the growth ahead and showed the others that the trail lay right in front of them.
The First Kill
The first sign of the prey was a torn flying reptile under the trees, with a broken spear and a burn from Xenomorph acid beside it. Light-Stepper reached the body first, but Two-Stripes knocked him aside and claimed the discovery, and Top-Knot let the claim stand. Soon afterward the Xenomorphs came out of the trees and struck the hunting party. Light-Stepper was at the front of the fight. He leaped from the ground with his spear raised, drove it into one of the creatures, and the two of them came crashing down into the water together.
Losing His Hand
The spear snapped under their weight, and the dying creature's blood sprayed over Light-Stepper as its jaws hung over his face. The acid ate into his right arm and dissolved his hand while he lay pinned in the shallows, with smoke rising from the wound. He had still killed the Xenomorph, and the kill was his, but it made him one of the Predators who lost limbs. Two-Stripes had stayed close to him through the fight. He knew what had to be done, and time was short. He stood over the fallen hunter and took the head of the dead creature for himself instead of helping him, then carried it back toward Top-Knot.
Carried Out Of The Swamp
Two-Stripes presented the head as his own kill and waited for the rise in standing that it promised. The other hunters brought Light-Stepper back alive, held up between two of them with acid still dripping from his arm, and the truth came out. Top-Knot, a veteran of many hunts whose word was law, rejected the false claim. The party stripped Two-Stripes of his armor and weapons, tied him to a tree, and left him to the creatures as their ship lifted off. He was remembered as a bad blood, while Light-Stepper was blooded on his kill.
The Grudge Fight On Ryushi
Later Light-Stepper hunted on Ryushi, the ranch world where a wrecked Yautja ship lay in a canyon. A platoon from the combat ship Brilliant had answered a distress call from that hull and found a chained Xenomorph Queen inside. When the marines came back out, Facehuggers and adult creatures were waiting on the rocks. Light-Stepper was in the middle of that fight in blue armor, with a wrap over the stump of his right arm and his spear in his left hand. Captain Glass took it for a grudge fight that he wanted no part of.
Killing Cogeletti
The marines believed the hunter had come to help them, and Cogeletti stepped forward to thank him. He told Light-Stepper that they had received his signal, had come to help, and meant him no harm. The hunter answered by running him through with the spear and lifting the blade high with blood running down the shaft. To Glass, the first meeting between mankind and an intelligent alien species had ended without any gratitude. The hunters were as much monsters as the creatures they had brought with them. The same fight also killed the sergeant of the platoon.
Charging The Marines
With Cogeletti dead, Light-Stepper charged straight at the marines around their all-terrain vehicle with his spear in hand, while Glass shouted for Megyesi to blow him away. Rounds burst in the sand around his feet. A second hunter faded from sight behind the vehicle, and the platoon cut it down with pulse rifle fire before racing away. They carried the hunter they had pulled from the ship, and a Chestburster with a mane of dreadlocks broke out of his chest on the drive. That birth produced the Predalien.
Prosperity Wells
A hunter's plasma cannon destroyed the shuttle of the marines, and they made a stand at Prosperity Wells, the ruined colony where they raised a flag over a line of mines. The Predalien killed Reed inside their position, and when the motion detector sounded, Glass set off the mines and caught two of the clan in the open. Another hunter died to the hybrid in the ruins. Light-Stepper came through it all with his mask gone. He leaped past Glass with his wristblades out, and the captain saw that it all came down to choices.
Killing The Predalien
Light-Stepper slammed into the Predalien with his blades, and the two of them grappled on the ridge. Glass was out of ammunition, so he swung his empty rifle into the creature as a club. Between them they tore the hybrid apart in a spray of acid. The captain could not name a clean reason for joining a fight beside the hunter who had killed his men, beyond Reed and the certainty that the hybrid would have killed him too. Sometimes, he decided, a man did not know why he made certain decisions, and crazy choices were the right ones in the short run.
Truce On The Ridge
When the Predalien was dead, neither survivor had another fight left in him. Light-Stepper stood breathing hard beside the human, and Glass bent over with sweat running off his face. Together they had taken out an enemy that would have killed them both, and for a moment they reached some kind of understanding. They knelt side by side on the ridge under the Ryushi night sky with nothing to do but wait and see whose people showed up first. It was one of the rare team-ups between a Predator and a human in the comics.
The Marine Banner
Light-Stepper lived through Ryushi and turned up again among the last stragglers whose ship docked with Top-Knot's clan before the hunt on Bunda. He was still young, but he carried scars that would do a veteran proud. The hunters crowded around him, and Machiko Noguchi judged that he must be important, since only someone like Top-Knot drew that kind of attention. Around the stump of his arm he wore a strip of Colonial Marine banner marked in red. In S. D. Perry's novel of War, he came aboard with two aides and the banner tied around his right wrist.
Conflict With Machiko Noguchi
Machiko saw the banner and said aloud that it was human, made by humans, a Marine's, and she reached out to touch it. Light-Stepper knocked her down with the shaft of his spear. She made the submissive gesture that the clan expected without thinking, but her mind stayed on the cloth. No hunter would wear such a thing, she reasoned, unless it had been taken in a fair fight, as the code of the hunt demanded. The insult cost her standing among Top-Knot's students, and the only way back onto the hunt was a pit fight against Shorty.
Weapons And Armor
Light-Stepper favored the spear above every other weapon. He killed his first Xenomorph with one in the swamp, ran Cogeletti through with another on Ryushi, and wielded it with his left hand after the acid took his right. On Ryushi he wore heavy blue armor with a smooth blue bio-mask over a mesh suit, and his dreadlocks were bound with orange rings. The stump of his right arm stayed wrapped in cloth. For the last fight with the Predalien he had lost the mask and closed in with his wristblades. When he came to the Bunda hunt, he wore the Marine banner on the stump as a trophy.
Conclusion
Light-Stepper began as a young blood who lost his right hand to Xenomorph acid on the hunt that made him a blooded warrior. Two-Stripes tried to steal that kill and paid for it, while Light-Stepper went on hunting with one hand. On Ryushi he killed a marine who offered him thanks, then fought a Predalien beside Captain Glass and shared a tired truce on the ridge. He came to the Bunda hunt with a Marine banner on his stump. He survived every story he appeared in, which makes him one of the most underrated Predators in the comics.
Appearances
- Aliens vs. Predator: Blood Time (Dark Horse, Dark Horse Comics #25, 1994)
- Aliens vs. Predator: Duel (Dark Horse, #1 to #2, 1995)
- Aliens vs. Predator: War (Dark Horse, #1, 1995)
- Aliens vs. Predator: War (Bantam Spectra, novel by S. D. Perry, 1999)
Tag Categories: Individual Predators | Predators Who Survived | Predators From The Comics | Predator Lore
