The combined smell of beer, spirits, gunpowder, human effluvia and a more intense version of Moxxi's luscious perfume struck Mordecai's senses when he entered the barroom. He could almost taste the muggy air on his tongue. The hunter had to take a moment to acclimatise before looking around. The boozing patrons had all left or had been thrown out, but their battlefield remained. Pizza boxes, glasses, bottles and rifle magazines in various stages of depletion littered the tables and the liquor-marinated floor. Mordecai's boots squelched when he lifted them from the sticky wooden planks.

"Looks like you people had quite the party in here", the scraggy sharpshooter remarked while studying disarrayed scene.

"Nothing I can't handle." She dismissed it with a nonchalant gesture of the hand. "I'll just find myself some kind of servant to clean this mess up tomorrow." She winked.

Mordecai cocked his head, but Moxxi had already turned and was already making her way behind the counter.

"So what'll be your poison then?" She shuffled through the bottles behind the bar. "A Lemon, Lime and Bullets? Gargle Blaster? What about a Fanalian Teddy?"

The hunter grimaced. "That's cough syrup." He leaned closer, "Actually you can make me perfectly happy with some good old fashioned Rakk-ale."

"That's all it takes?" She cocked her head. "Come on, leave the simple tastes for the to the simple minds."

"It's what I always drink!" Mordecai shoved himself away from the bar and raised his hands in defense.

"Exactly!" She winked. "Just change it up a little. Tell you what, let me mix you a cocktail. Just one."

The hunters expression softened. "Fine. But it better be a good one!"

"Oh it sure will, Sugar, don't you worry." There was a strange, cryptic hum in her reply that made him wonder what he had gotten himself into.

The Moxxi immediately started rummaging through the shelves, picking out bottles, checking labels or smelling contents before parking them on the counter. "And you're sure you've never tried one of my famous cocktails?", she asked while holding an unmarked bottle up to the light. Its contents twinkling in a royal blue

"I never said that." Mordecai was casually leaning on the bar, watching the alluring barkeeper work her magic.

"But if you had, you'd know how good they are."

"You sound quite confident of you skills."

"Do I really?" She sassily met his gaze and placed the bottle on the bar with pointed deliberation. "Maybe that's because I am", she whispered.

"Modesty really isn't one of your virtues, is it?"

Moxxi had already whirled around again, rustling up more ingredients. Her voice replied from somewhere below the bar, together with clunks and clattering. "Virtue? Modesty is not a virtue." Her hands climbed into view, holding two shiny metal jars. "And if it was," The rest of the buxom lady rose from behind the counter. She put down the jars next to the arsenal of bottles and adjusted her coat. "It really wouldn't fit me." It seemed to Mordecai that her neckline came to rest a little lower than before, revealing even more of her bulging cleavage. After she was satisfied with the situation, she looked back at him with a wink. "Don't you think?"

"I'm sorry, what? I was... distracted there for a moment."

She giggled and turned towards her bottles again. "Forget it, you just proved my point anyway."

With all her ingredients present the bartender placed two slender tumblers on the bar and went to mixing cocktails. She poured liquors known and unknown to the hunter into the glasses, strained layers of exotic liquids into beakers.

She wasn't making a cocktail, Modecai eventually decided. What she was doing there on the counter reminded him more of an occult Athenian ritual or one of Dr. Zed's questionable experiments, although she handled her alchemical constituents with a whole lot more manual dexterity. Moxxi's fingers whizzed about in an indiscernible pattern and Mordecai eventually had to stop trying to follow her hands when she started twirling the cocktail shaker about. Watching her lithe body rock and shimmy to the rhythm of the shaker was just too hypnotising.

Just wanted to say thank you all for your support, my friends! It has been a real blast so far.