Vagouti: The Predator Huntress Who Fought A Rematch

Name: Vagouti
Species: Yautja
Sex: Female
Mate: Nakande
Young: Unnamed, plural
Role: Hunter
Known for: Oregon rematch against Sloane
Setting: Oregon forest, nine years after Alaska
First appearance: Predator: If It Bleeds, "Rematch" (2017)
Status: Dead
Weapons: Cloak, shoulder cannon, wristblades, self-destruct
Kills (Rematch): 3 humans shared with Nakande · 0 solo named · self-destruct 0

Vagouti was a female Yautja in Steve Perry's Rematch, published in Predator: If It Bleeds in 2017. She came to Earth with her mate Nakande to hunt Sloane, a Vietnam sniper who had killed Yautja in Alaska nine years earlier. They attacked a meth-lab RV first. Nakande died in an ambush, and Sloane killed Vagouti with a rifle shot and a revolver before her wrist bomb exploded.

The Alaska Debt

Rematch is the sequel to Steve Perry's novel Predator: Turnabout. Nine years after the Alaska hunt, Sloane still lived with Mary, now in a remote Oregon forest. Fragments of recordings from that earlier fight had reached a Yautja ship, and the pair came for the sniper who had killed hunters there. Nakande called Sloane old and slow, but Vagouti said an old man could still be dangerous, which was why they hunted together.

Oregon And The Bikers

They found Sloane on an overcast summer morning and let him walk home unarmed. Mary said that would not be sporting, and Sloane took that as the reason they waited. The pair then flattened the tires on Sloane's truck and turned to a meth-lab RV by a pond, where three armed bikers, Harvey, Martin, and Beau, were making crystal.

Nakande treated the bikers as warm-up prey, and Vagouti said they were clumsy but better than nothing. A plasma blast tore a hole through Martin's stomach, Beau's arm was blown off, and deputy Mac later found all three dead. The story never says which hunter fired which shot.

Nakande's Ambush

Sloane and Mary left the house in ghillie suits, taking a custom .610 falling-block rifle and a .500 revolver. Nakande wanted to kill Sloane with a plasma bolt and leave Mary to Vagouti. He boasted that he had killed Xenomorphs in single combat and refused to treat the Alaska hunt as a warning. Vagouti reminded him that Sloane had already killed Yautja there, then stayed quiet when he would not listen.

Sloane and Mary ambushed the cloaked hunter on a narrow trail and hit Nakande twice, once through the lung and once near the hip. He admitted he had underestimated Sloane, then died coughing bright green blood. Vagouti shut off his self-destruct so the explosion would not kill the humans before she could.

The Wait And The Tree

Vagouti expected them to run for the RV and its trucks and bikes, so she went there first. She used wristblades to slash the tires on a truck, three motorcycles, and the RV itself. The most obvious firing position looked like a trap, so she chose a second spot and waited instead of chasing them through the trees. She meant to take Sloane's skull and go home to tell their children why their father was gone.

Sloane, Mary, and Mac circled through a gully toward Mac's cruiser. Mac lost his footing on the slope and broke a sapling, and Vagouti heard the crack, then left the RV to cover the car instead. She had hunted dangerous prey on a dozen planets, and she planned to put a plasma bolt through the cruiser once all three were inside. Sloane expected that ambush, sent Mary into the back seat, and only pretended to climb in front.

Death

Vagouti climbed about five meters into a Douglas fir and stayed cloaked. A pine cone dropped from her branch, Sloane followed it back up the trunk, and he fired the .610 into the empty-looking space where she had to be sitting. The shot broke a rib, punched through her side, and knocked her out of the tree, and the cloak failed when she hit the ground. She got back up and fired one low plasma bolt that dug a two-meter trench just beside Sloane. He finished her with the revolver from sixty meters.

Sloane, Mary, and Mac walked up to the body. She was smaller than the Alaska males Sloane had seen. She looked at him, spoke in Yautja, made a sound like a laugh, then coughed and died as a wrist device began to flash. They were half a mile away when the bomb went off and the shockwave spun the cruiser on the road.

Appearance And Weapons

Vagouti was smaller than the Alaska males Sloane had seen, and she was female. She hunted cloaked until the fall wrecked the device, carried a shoulder cannon, used wristblades on the vehicles, and wore a wrist self-destruct that armed after she died.

Confirmed Kills

Her confirmed Earth kills were few, and they were shared with Nakande:

Solo named humans: 0. Sloane, Mary, and Mac all lived.
Shared humans: 3. Harvey, Martin, and Beau died at the meth-lab RV. It is not clear which hunter fired which shot.
Self-destruct: 0. The humans were half a mile away when it blew.
Prior hunts: uncounted. She had taken dangerous prey on a dozen planets, with no names or numbers attached.

Nakande's Xenomorph boast is his record, not hers. Her last shot missed Sloane, and the wrist bomb killed no one.

Conclusion

Vagouti was the female hunter who came to Oregon with Nakande to settle the Alaska debt against Sloane. She shut off her mate's bomb, waited at the RV, and died after Sloane shot her out of a fir tree and finished her with a revolver. Her own self-destruct went off after the cruiser was already half a mile down the road.