"You're not as soft as I thought!"
Thick, black smoke blocks Kellogg's vision of the Vault Dweller, but his voice rings loud and clear. The mercenary hears her tearing through his through his synths in a blind rage and hisses at the pain in his leg. She got him good with that goddamn grenade trick. He's quickly learning that he should have never underestimated her. Blood-covered and fatally wounded, she's still going like a Deathclaw with it's arms blown off. Once the smoke clears, he sees her dash out into the open. The fire in her eyes makes him reach for the Stealth Boy in his pocket.
"Fucking coward!" She snarls, drawing her blade. "I'm gonna cut off that smart-assed tongue when I find you!"
Taking aim, Kellogg fires at her lithe form darting from cover to cover. A grenade sails through the stagnant air right at him and he rolls out into the open to avoid it. Boom! She curses from afar, her shadow moving against the wall and making its way towards him from the right. Or so he thinks. Turns out she tricked him again by ricocheting the explosive off the opposing gate. She catches him off guard from the left, somehow able to see his cloaked form.
"Not bad!" Kellogg growls, meeting her thrust with the muzzle of his pistol. Her feet stumble back, but she's quick to recover and come at him again and again. Where is this stamina coming from? He racks his mind for an answer. Couldn't just be the Jet, he concludes. She's got this hysterical strength flowing out of her, overtaking her, consuming her entirely. It's her, and somehow, it's not her.
"Give him back to me!" She screams in between the loud clashes of metal against metal. Small and light, she has the advantage of speed, while his height and stocky build gives him the upper on strength. In one motion, Kellogg manages to scoop her up and throw her down into one of the consoles.
"Shaun's gone!" He roars, kicking her sword away and grabbing her around the neck. "You'll never see him again."
Squeezing harder and harder, he watches the blood rise to her face and her body struggle under him. It's almost over. He wants to look away. Too intimate. He's used to shooting people from a distance. The choking sounds grow quieter as she fights him less and less. This kind of closure makes Kellogg uncomfortable, so he looks past her at some invisible point in time and space.
"I feel sorry for you," he tells her, jaw locked. "Came all this way for nothing."
Briefly, he looks down. A mistake. Her eyes are glossy and pained. Betrayed. Suddenly, there's a sharp pain in his side that makes his grip slack. He looks down with surprise to see that she's got a switchblade stuck in the junction between his torso and arm, twisting the weapon with a precise, deliberate motion. He tries putting more pressure onto his grip but finds that his body doesn't respond.
"Cut... tendon," she wheezes with a half-smile. "Hand... useless."
She pulls the knife out and stabs him again in his bicep. That causes Kellogg to let go entirely, reaching for his gun. He brings it down on her head, but the impact isn't as solid as he hoped. The pistol slips out of his dead hand and onto the floor. Over and over, he tries to flex. There's no feeling there, the nerve paths burning white hot as their signals fail time and time again.
"Argh! What the hell did you do to me?"
While he searches for a Stimpak, the Vaultie raises herself from the console and takes wobbly steps towards her discarded sword. The mercenary renders himself invisible with another Stealth Boy, making a dive for the farthest corner of the room. There's one more grenade in his pouch, so Kellogg pulls the pin with his teeth and throws it in her direction. What happens next floors him - in some crazy maneuver, she whips around bats away the grenade. The fiery blast tears away some of her Vault Suit, exposing hints of scarred skin and familiar symbols tattooed on her thigh. Her form parts through the smoke, sprinting towards him with incredible vigor.
"Hahahaha! Nice try! X marks the spot, Kellogg!" She cackles with righteous anger, swinging her katana towards his face. The shock of her blood loss has made her crack. She gets him good in the face and ribs, hacking and slashing away. There's a calculated method to her madness as she easily evades his attempts to defend himself, and before he knows it, his vision starts to go black. Her insane laughter dies in his ears, ringing deep in hollow as it disappears into a tunnel.
I'm finally coming home, Sarah... Mary...