3 – Pulse
Why not turn me on?
(Timeline: Set during the events of the Pre-Sequel. I'm placing this nine months to a year after chapter one, so between fifteen and eighteen months after the opening of the Vault. This had to be long enough after chapter one for Moxxi and Jack's relationship to actually take place, break up, and cool off enough for Moxxi to agree to help Jack, but still prior to the two-year anniversary of the Vault's opening, which we know is approximately when the fall of New Haven occurred (which obviously has to be after all this).)
If there was one thing Moxxi prided herself on (other than commentating, robotics and looking sexy), it was her ability to know a good business opportunity when she saw one. The second she'd set foot in Concordia, she knew she was onto a good thing. The town was as decently hospitable as could be expected, but it was boring. Quiet. Dingy. It needed somewhere lively. Fun. And that was where she came in.
Of course, all that was six months ago. It was Jack who had brought her up to Concordia, introduced her to the local mayor – or "meriff", as he called himself – and helped her set up the bar. Now they'd broken up, but the Up Over was doing better trade than ever.
A few days ago, Moxxi had gotten a small but pleasant surprise – Roland and Lilith had arrived unexpectedly in the bar. They had explained to her that they were pretending to be on a romantic trip together (which was not completely false, according to Lilith) but were in fact here to keep an eye on Hyperion, who they didn't trust. They'd been spending much of their time in the bar since they arrived, typically on the dance floor, where Lilith would exhibit her skills in dancing and Roland would exhibit his skills in standing quietly by the wall making people forget he was there.
Today was a fairly busy day, with quite a few people other than Roland and Lilith drifting around, drinking and snacking. It was days like this that had led Moxxi to try and hire some cheap help – nobody seemed interested, so she made the help herself, buying some robot components and an old CL4P-TP chassis from a local junk dealer. She must have made a mistake while wiring its motherboard up, however, because far from the eager-to-help personality shared by most Hyperion standard CL4P-TPs, this one would do everything it could to avoid working, including poorly disguising itself as a regular customer. This typically meant that when Moxxi went for a break, her customers got steadily more and more irritated as the service was delayed longer and longer.
Just past midday, Moxxi finished soldering some wires back into a second prototype bar service robot, stretched her back and removed her overalls. Hurriedly fixing her makeup, she grabbed the discarded tray from the sideboard and strode back into the bar.
At the door, she paused. There was an unusual group standing on the dance floor, talking to Roland and Lilith. Moxxi spotted a tall, muscular woman with short dark hair, who she recognised immediately as Athena, who she had helped escape from General Knoxx. The other three were not familiar to her – there was a slender woman with a broad-brimmed hat pulled low over her eyes, a skull-motif shirt and ragged skin-tight jeans; there was a well-built man with a small beard and one cybernetic eye; and there was the most unusual CL4P-TP unit she'd ever seen. They turned to face her as she strolled over to stand behind the bar, and walked down to meet her.
"Hello, Moxxi," said Athena, in her low, calm voice.
"Hey Athena," replied Moxxi. "Haven't seen you since all that business with Knoxx. Been keeping busy?"
"Trying," replied Athena. "We need your help."
"Oh? Introduce me, why don't you?"
Athena sighed almost imperceptibly, then gestured to the tall woman. "This is Nisha…"
The woman called Nisha nodded curtly, clearly sizing Moxxi up.
Athena gestured to the muscular man. "Wilhelm…"
"Enforcer from Hera, right?" said Moxxi, who knew the name. "Charmed." She offered her hand. Wilhelm grunted and clasped her hand briefly.
"And…" Athena sighed again, before gesturing to the CL4P-TP unit. "Fragtrap."
"Hello, Moxxi!" said Fragtrap, raising one arm enthusiastically. "I am an experimental prototype known as FR4G-"
"Cool," interrupted Moxxi, turning back to Athena. "So what's up?"
"We work for Jack," said Athena. "He sent us to find you… thinks you might be able to help us out."
Moxxi smiled widely. "Ah… Jack sent you, huh? Oh, that must have bothered the poor dear something awful."
"Yes…" said Nisha, not taking her eyes off Moxxi. "He must be desperate."
Moxxi raised her eyebrows at Nisha. Nisha made no comment, but a mocking smile tweaked at her lips very slightly.
"No worries," said Moxxi to Athena, though she continued to keep one eye on Nisha, "it's all in the past. So what do you need?"
"Dahl soldiers took over Helios," replied Athena. "There's a jamming signal somewhere around here messing with its defences. Can you help us pinpoint it?"
"Sure. Easy enough. You'll need to put transmitters on the ECHO towers around town. Little bit of simple triangulation. Head down to the black market and pick up some transmitters I ordered a while ago."
Jack's Vault Hunters left by the back door, heading in the direction of the black market. Moxxi caught Roland's eye and jerked her head. Roland, getting the message, caught Lilith's arm and they came down to the bar.
"Did they want you to help them find this signal as well?"
"Yeah," replied Roland. "But we told them we're not Vault Hunting any more."
"I don't like this at all," said Lilith. "What's going on up there?"
"Nothing good, I'm sure," muttered Moxxi.
About an hour later, Moxxi was in her workshop continuing to solder her prototype together, when there was a small cough behind her.
"Um… Moxxi?"
Moxxi very nearly dropped the soldering iron on her foot as she spun around to see Athena in the doorway, flanked by Nisha, Wilhelm and Fragtrap.
"Hey! What're you -" Moxxi cleared her throat and summoned her sophisticated accent to mask the Hodunk drawl of which she was eternally ashamed. "What are you doing in here?"
"Wow!" exclaimed Fragtrap. "You look different – and you're covered in robot blood!"
Moxxi looked down at her overalls, which were indeed stained with oil.
"Dammit," she snarled, and Fragtrap recoiled slightly, "I really don't like people seeing me out of character. What the hell do you want?"
"Meriff locked down the town," growled Wilhelm, who didn't seem even remotely interested in Moxxi's transformed appearance. "We need to get out."
Moxxi glared at the Vault Hunters. "I know a way out. But I won't show it to you unless you promise not to tell anyone what you saw here."
Nisha raised her right hand. "We hereby promise not to tell anyone that the slutty clown is also a slutty mechanic," she said dryly, unable (or perhaps unwilling) to conceal her smirk. "Are we good?"
Moxxi summoned a smile. "Great," she said casually. "Cause if you spilled, my son would have to bury you alive in a shallow grave."
Moxxi turned to the stairs leading down into her basement. She distinctly heard Nisha snicker, followed by Athena hissing "Shut up!" under her breath.
After showing Jack's Vault Hunters out of the city, Moxxi returned to her workshop and straightened out her thoughts and nerves. She also made a mental note to adjust the B4R-BOT's memory – it could only have been him who told them how to get into the back room.
Moxxi fixed her makeup and clothing, let her hair down and returned to the bar. There was a reasonably large queue of customers, as she had expected, and the B4R-BOT was drifting around on the dance floor. Roland and Lilith were on the dance floor as well. Moxxi pulled more glasses out from under the bar and quickly started to pour drinks for the thirsty Concordians.
Several minutes later, the crowd had thinned, returning to their tables to nurse their drinks again. Moxxi was wiping down the bar when her ECHO communicator crackled into life.
"I'm sorry, people of Elpis," said an unknown woman over the communicator. "But this is the only way."
Moxxi frowned, and surveyed the room. Similar expressions on the faces of Roland, Lilith and the other customers told her that they had received the same message. Moxxi came out from behind the bar and met Roland and Lilith at the base of the stairs leading up to the dance floor.
"What's going on?"
"I don't -" Moxxi was cut off almost immediately as a dull crackling roar split the air and the ground shook violently. Screams sounded through the bar, and everyone who was standing up was thrown to the floor, including Moxxi, Roland and Lilith. The commotion persisted for several seconds before the quaking stopped and the roar died.
Moxxi scrambled back to her feet and helped Roland and Lilith up. Around them, the customers were picking themselves up off the floor as well – one woman appeared to have been taking a drink when the quake struck, causing the glass to empty itself over her head.
"What the hell was that?" exclaimed Lilith.
"I don't know," said Moxxi grimly, "but I think I can find out." She pulled her communicator from her belt and pressed on a name some way down her contact list.
"Jack?" she said into the communicator. "It's Moxxi. What's going on up there? The whole moon just shook!"
There was silence on the other end for several seconds before Jack's voice crackled through the line. "Yeah – not good – the Lost Legion've taken control of the Eye of Helios. It's a massive laser in the heart of the station. Looks like Zarpedon's targeting the moon's core."
"Which means?"
"Well, try not to panic… but I think she's trying to blow up Elpis."
Several hours later, Moxxi was alone in her workshop, examining the blueprints that Jack had sent her, when her ECHO sprung to life again.
"Okay, Mox," said Jack through the radio, "Zarpedon's dead and we're heading to the laser core now. I'll let you know once we're ready."
"Gorgeous," replied Moxxi, not taking her eyes off the blueprints. She wasn't going to deny it, this was a risky plan. But it was the best plan they had. She called Roland and Lilith again.
"You guys all done up there?"
"Yeah, it's all sorted," replied Lilith. "What now?"
"You'd better head back to the central terminal," said Moxxi. "Probably a good idea to be ready to make a quick getaway – if something goes wrong, you won't want to be up there."
"Understood," replied Roland. The line went dead again, and Moxxi sighed deeply. There was several seconds of silence before Jack's voice came through the line again.
"All right, Mox, we're here."
"Great. Can you get the laser core open, please?"
Moxxi heard a series of beeps coming through the line, and a hiss of air as the core opened. Moxxi, having seen the blueprints, knew exactly what was in there, but she was the only one other than Jack, and she heard the startled gasps of the Vault Hunters as the core opened.
"What the -" said Athena. "Is that…"
"The Eye of Helios, yeah," replied Jack. "I mean, it's actually the eye of the Destroyer creature who came out of the Vault… but I attached it to my laser to increase its power like tenfold. Cause I'm awesome."
"Wh – you used the Destroyer's eye as a weapon?" said Lilith, clearly shocked.
"It was a weapon already, just like all the Eridian remnants," said Jack. "I just figured out how to use it. So… how do we shut this thing down?"
"Carefully," said Moxxi slowly. "Even without the weird-ass eye, this is a highly volatile reactor. You're feeding it something to amplify its power?"
"Oh, yeah. Runoff from the Eridium refinement process. The scientists call it 'slag'."
"Okay. Now do exactly as I say… go down to the three injector panels and set them to the maximum."
Moxxi heard the Vault Hunters injecting the first and second doses of slag, then she heard a dull rumbling start up.
"Um, Mox, I only juice the eye with a little bit of slag at a time…"
"It won't hurt the eyeball, sugar."
"Yeah, but it is freaking it the hell out."
"Look, in order to safely shut this thing down and bypass any traps Zarpedon's put on the core, we have to trigger the safe mode. Forcing a whole lot of slag into the eye at once will overload it and trip a failsafe. Then we can shut it down."
The Vault Hunters injected the third dose of slag. The rumbling intensified, then died off.
"Warning," said the cool female voice of Hyperion, "power overload. Space-time instability detected. Entering protective mode."
"There you go," said Moxxi. "Now all you've gotta do is reboot normally and the laser'll be all yours."
There was a short silence. Moxxi was basically on the edge of her seat. Based on the schematics of the room, it wouldn't take them long to get up to the console, and then -
"Wait!" shouted Jack suddenly, and Moxxi jumped. "Don't press that button!"
Moxxi clenched her fist on the edge of the bench. "What's wrong?"
"If the eye starts acting up during the reboot, I'd rather not be anywhere near it."
Moxxi bit her tongue. "Thanks to the failsafes, it couldn't possibly do anything other than shut down."
"Well, better safe than sorry. Anyway, with Zarpedon dead and protective mode active, we can reboot from the command centre. Come on."
Moxxi shut off her communicator and jumped to her feet, cursing. This was not the plan – things were about to turn very bad. She started grabbing all of her most important possessions from the bar and throwing them into her case – she was going to need to make a very quick getaway very shortly.
She opened her communicator again, listening to the events up on Helios while still hastily packing. She could easily come back in a month or so to get anything else, anyway.
"Reboot sequence initiated," said the voice of Hyperion. "Command control reset. Rebooting in: five. Four. Three. Two."
An alert sounded, beeping steadily in the background.
"Shutdown aborted. Invalid energy configuration."
"Oh great," said Jack, "now what?"
The ground shook violently. Moxxi had been prepared for this, and steadied herself against the bar. Grabbing her case, she darted for the door. Once outside, she looked up towards Helios. The station was still visible, but only partially. A large part of the station was obscured from view by a swirling purple vortex, with a tiny point of no colour at all in the very centre.
"Whoa!" shouted Jack. "What's the – Moxxi? What's going on?"
"I'm betraying you. Trying to kill you," replied Moxxi lightly. "Something I should have done a long time ago, you power-hungry psychopath."
"What do you -"
"I've been watching you, Jack," said Moxxi, a touch of menace in her voice. "Behind that smile, and that hero complex… there's something wrong about you. And if you come down from Helios alive… a lot of decent people are going to live to regret it."
There was a muffled crash from the vicinity of the Eye of Helios. Jack shouted, enraged, and Moxxi knew that her plan had worked – at least, partially worked. A high-pitched whining filled the air, and the singularity at the centre of the vortex turned white.
"Dammit, Moxxi," shouted Jack, "I trusted you! And now you've just killed us all!"
The whining intensified, and the pinpoint of white in the vortex seemed to expand, before the singularity collapsed with a dull boom. A flash of blinding light enveloped everything, before everything faded. Debris had spewed from the collapsed singularity in all directions, and what looked like a piece of one of the Lost Legion's fighter ships had collided with the headless statue of the Meriff, which had split into several pieces and fallen to the ground. Several splintering crashes from her communicator told Moxxi that the laser command centre had also been struck, and by the sounds of it, the shockwave had taken out most of the glass. She also heard a dull coughing, telling her that Jack was still very much alive. She closed her communicator before Jack launched into a predictable tirade, grabbed her case and sprinted for the fast travel station.
At the stairs leading down to the fast travel, she met Roland and Lilith, who had apparently left Helios in a hurry in the commotion.
"That went well," said Lilith.
"Could have gone better," replied Moxxi. "He'll be after our heads now. I'd get out of here if I was you."
"We're going after the Vault," replied Roland. "Zarpedon must have had a reason for not wanting Jack to get at it."
"Suit yourselves, but I'm getting out of here. You know where to find me – and thanks for the help."