OMAKE 3:

TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE (C)

Angel and I were having a drink at Moxxxi's, one day, only a week after the death of Handsome Jack. In a way, Angel, Tim, Moxxi and myself had created an informal club: the Handsome Jack's Sloppy Seconds Club (the crude and informal name came from Tim), because the four of us had gotten screwed over by Jack somewhat more personally than most others here in Sanctuary. Moxxi somewhat more literally than the rest of us.

Moxxi, of course, had been Jack's wife (he was her fourth husband). Angel was his daughter, and his slave until recently. Tim was doomed forever to look and sound like Jack. And I? Jack took umbrage towards me because I loved his daughter.

Of course, many in Sanctuary still treated us with suspicion. Angel was well known for her role in the destruction of New Haven, and old grudges still ran deep, and Angel's new role alongside myself as Hyperion's 'ambassadors' drew yet more resentment to us. It was on that day that things came to a head.

We were nursing our drinks at Moxxxi's when it happened. A drunken patron came by, and then snarled at Moxxi. "Your bitch at the bar told me to vamoose. Said I had enough!"

"A half-blind retarded monkey could see that you've had enough, pal," Moxxi retorted. She wasn't in the mood to deal with him at the moment.

"You don' tell me when I've had enough!" the idiot snarled. "You traitorous bitch! Yer all traitors. The wife of Jack, his daughter, Jack himself, and the mad scientist…yer all traitorous Hyperion fucks! Especially you, you painted trashy whore!" With that, he snatched up Tim's mostly-full glass, and dashed it viciously in Moxxi's face. "Let's see how many wrinkles and liver spots you have under that makeup, you inbred slut!" he screamed.

I thought Moxxi would get angry, that she would pull out one of her guns, and begin aerating this fuckhead. Instead, she began to wail and cry. Tim glared at the idiot. "What the fuck is wrong with you, man?!"

"Yer what's wrong," the idiot snarled, ripping Tim from his chair, and cocking back a fist. Only to be blasted back by a bolt of lightning that sent him juddering and convulsing into one of the slot machines.

"Bastard," Angel spat, before helping Moxxi up. Moxxi, however, shoved Angel away, and fled.

Angel and I exchanged looks. "What was that all about?" I asked.

"Ah, I think I know. Come on," Tim said, getting us to follow him. As we got out the back, he said, "Moxxi doesn't like being seen out of character, as it were. That's why she almost never takes off the makeup." For a moment, he had the air of someone about to divulge a secret, before admitting, "Back on Elpis, we had to find her, and we surprised her in a secret workshop, dressed in coveralls and without her makeup, singing and speaking with, well, you know how Scooter and Ellie speak normally."

We had reached a room, Moxxi's private dressing room, and Tim knocked on the door. "Moxxi, it's us. It's okay, we're here for you."

"Just leave me be," Moxxi said miserably. I realised her voice had lost some of its sultry sophistication, and not just because she sounded sad.

"Moxxi…please. Remember…shallow grave?"

Angel and I shared a look. What was that about?

The door opened, and Moxxi was there, in the doorway, sans hat. And sans makeup. Angel and I couldn't help but stare at the true face of Moxxi, revealed.

"Oh my God," I murmured.

"Moxxi…" Angel said quietly.

"What?" Moxxi demanded, irritated, and her accent slipping. Yep, she certainly sounded a bit more like her children. "Tim, I told you before I don't like people seeing me out of character."

"Why not?" I said. "You actually look much better without the makeup."

Which was true. Okay, her eyes were bloodshot and tears were making tracks down her face. She had wiped the makeup off her face completely.

But her skin was virtually flawless, save for the beauty spot just above her lips, and the faintest hint of character lines. Her brown hair framed a face that would definitely have launched a thousand ships. Her light green eyes stared into my own, searching for any hint that what I had said was a lie. If they weren't bloodshot, they'd be jewels.

With a vicious gesture, she indicated for us to get inside.

"You know I'm not proud of my origins," Moxxi said, quietly. We were sitting or standing around the relatively small confines of her dressing room. I saw all sorts of variations of her fetishized Mad Hatter outfit, along with a set of coveralls that looked well-used. And there were posters advertising her Underdome. "I've worked hard to distance myself from the Hodunks. My first husband was Jimbo Hodunk. I'm still not sure what relation he is to me, only that it was too close. He was the father of both Scooter and Ellie. A dirtbag and a cheat. And then, he had the gall to want to make Ellie the clan wife, the brood mare of the entire clan. That's why I left them, with the help of my next husband."

"Mr Shank," Angel said. "I remember watching as the Vault Hunters rescued Athena from him."

Moxxi nodded. "He was a nasty bastard, but when the Vault Hunters killed him, I realised what he had done for me. He helped me escape from the Hodunks, and I actually wept for him. And then, I married Marcus. It was he who helped me raise Scooter and Ellie. We parted ways civilly, more or less."

I resisted trying to think of a 'No Refunds!' joke. This was a serious, intimate, and personal moment. And Marcus, though he was an amoral profiteering scumbag, was nonetheless decent enough to those who he got used to.

"I needed to make a name for myself. I created a character, a persona for myself, to distance myself from my origins. At the time, I worked as a bounty hunter and assassin. For one job, I had to go undercover in a house of ill repute, where they were staging a burlesque version of Alice in Wonderland. As it happened, I was chosen to play the role of the Mad Hatter. I felt that I was more like the Red Queen, mad in the sense of being furious with the world, and the Hodunks in particular. I got the Underdome by killing my old employer. And, well, you know the rest. Someone once called me facetiously 'Mad Maxima', because he was an old movie buff. I just decided to call myself Mad Moxxi."

"Well, you've done really well for yourself," Angel said. "The Underdome, the Red Light, the Up Over Club, this establishment…not only that, but you have Scooter and Ellie. They may have their quirks, but who on Pandora isn't glad of a Catch-A-Ride when they need one?"

"And you helped save our lives on more than one occasion," I pointed out. "Remember when that mob went all Clockwork Orange on my arse? And you helped us during our trip to Oasis. That dickhead doesn't know the real Moxxi. He doesn't want to, either. But we do. We care. You don't have to be in character around us. If need be, we just do our little drinking sessions in private."

Moxxi looked at us, before nodding. "Okay. I'm…sorry you had to see that. I'm not usually like that. But I've been having nightmares about Jack lately. I'm a little frayed at the edges."

"You sure don't look it," Angel said with a smile. "If I'm like that when I'm your age, I'll be happy."

Moxxi smiled back, making her face look even more radiant than before. "It takes a lot of hard work, believe me."

"By the way, what did Tim mean by shallow grave?" I asked.

"Ah, yeah," Tim said, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. "Remember how I said we caught her working at a robot? She threatened us to not say a word of it to anyone, or Scooter'd bury us alive in a shallow grave, like Lucky Zaford."

"Should I get Scooter to fetch the shovel, sweetie?" Moxxi asked, with a devilish glint in her eyes.

We weren't laughing a quarter of an hour later, when we learned that Scooter had found out about the man who had assaulted his mother. Roland spotted Scooter throwing the hogtied drunk man off the edge of Sanctuary near his garage, braying "Catch a Riiiide!" as he did so. Scooter was thoroughly unrepentant.

I guess we learned a few things that day. Firstly, that Moxxi is beautiful even without makeup. A bit shallow, but hey. Secondly, and more importantly, that we had seen a side of her that we didn't often see, and I for one felt privileged. Finally, and certainly important from a self-preservation standpoint, don't piss off Scooter, especially by doing anything to hurt his mother, because he WILL end you.

Even so, when we joined Moxxi and Tim to discuss our losses, sometimes with Tiny Tina in tow (although she didn't drink, obviously), she did so out of character, speaking sometimes in her more looser, Hodunk-like tones. And the thing is, it wasn't because she was more beautiful as Moxxi rather than her Mad Moxxi persona that I liked these gatherings. It was because I felt I was seeing the true Moxxi, the woman who would sacrifice anything for her children and her friends.

Slut. Whore. Those who threw those appellations at her like so much shit knew nothing. I doubt they ever would. They'd think I was having it off with her, when all I'd be satisfied with would be a hug. They only saw one side of Moxxi, and that's the only side they would ever want to see. They'd denounce her as a loose woman, even as they wanked themselves silly over pictures of her.

But I saw her as a good friend. And I hoped, by letting me and Angel in, she saw me as a good one too.

OMAKE 3 ANNOTATIONS:

Originally, the third omake was going to be about Claptrap's birthday (which is a sidequest in the game, and will probably be the next omake story), but this idea occurred to me. I wanted to know, how did Snyder know what Moxxi looked like without makeup? He mentions this fact in the files he wrote. It took time to find the right reason.

Now, I'm a little worried that Moxxi seems somewhat OOC here. But I'm hoping it's not too bad. Moxxi may enjoy battle and slaughter, but she's also very much a human being, and the drunk idiot's words caught her at a bad time. And given how much she hates being seen out of character in canon, I thought that if someone deliberately tried to remove her makeup in public, she might react badly. Normally, she'd be angry, but the drunk's words hurt her deeply.

I also decided to fill in something of Moxxi's past. She's one of those characters who seems made for fanfic writers to write about. We know she's had four hubbies (Jimbo Hodunk, Mr Shank, Marcus, and Jack), multiple lovers…but what about her time prior to owning the Underdome? I decided to extrapolate from the facts and hints given in-game. Having Mr Shank help her escape from the Hodunks is a stretch, true, but she actually mourns his death in The Secret Armoury of General Knoxx, and I thought this might be a good reason why.

I also decided to give a brief bit about why she first dressed up as a fetishized Mad Hatter. Hey, it had to come from somewhere.

My point is, I want to give a bit more depth to the Borderlands characters. True, they're interesting in the game, but I also want to see the human beings behind the characters. Moxxi is particularly fascinating. She's a very sexualised character, but there's more fascinating about her than her cleavage. I hope that I did the human being behind the character some justice. I hope I do all the human beings behind the characters justice.