The Sandsea was busy as ever, but Tomaj took special care to serve Miranda himself. He poured her liquor into a mug that appeared to only be partially dirty and took her money without question. It had become a ritual over the last three years or so: she would get drunk at his bar, bed him, then find something to hunt the next morning. There was no formal agreement. Neither party even remembered how it had started, just that there were no strings attached.
Miranda never took on a serious lover, and the owner of the tavern was about as long term as she cared to get.
She raised her mug in a toast to him, then threw it back. The familiar burn in her throat greeted her. Her eyes closed and she revelled in the experience as long as she could. When she opened her eyes, she noticed that the world had stopped.
"Hello, Miranda," a small child spoke to her, stepping out from behind one of the frozen patrons of the Sandsea. The only sound was her footsteps on the stone floor. Nobody else seemed able to move but them. They didn't even move their eyes.
The mug in Miranda's hand shattered when she slammed it onto the bar. Tomaj was stuck mid-sentence, bottle of spirits still in his hand. She stole it from him and took another swig before speaking.
"Are you one of them?" she asked the little girl hatefully. It had been five years since she had accepted her lot in life. She'd finally made a life for herself, and this little bitch was not going to ruin it.
"One of what?" the child asked innocently. Miranda removed the bo staff from her back with her free hand and used it to steady herself as she rose to her feet.
She held the weapon at the child's throat, but neither blinked. "Don't think that just because he left me here for seven years I forgot. I'm an Earthling and you are a console. What model? PS2? PSP? Gamecube?"
Laughter filled the silent tavern, and it took everything Miranda had not to react. She knew that even if she did attack, it would be like a mosquito bite at best.
"You have been here awhile. My apologies for laughing, it is quite rude, but we forgot this simulation was still running," the child told Miranda, ignoring her question. "And my predecessor made the mistake of leaving your time synced to your home world. So those nine years? They passed on Earth as well. It's 2015 on Earth."
After retracting her staff, Miranda took another drink. She wasn't getting drunk fast enough and she wondered if the child was responsible for that. She had frozen time: it only made sense that she could freeze Miranda's ability to become intoxicated
"What the hell do you want? I haven't seen Anderson for nine years." Miranda fingered at her eye-patch. The last time she had seen her console, she still had both eyes and was accepting his proposal to come to Ivalice. He promised an adventure of a lifetime. She had been fourteen and naive. But when she arrived in the desert, he was gone.
"Anderson is dead," the child answered simply, shrugging. "It was a freak occurrence. He simply burnt out after bringing you here. Poor boy didn't even have the time to file the paperwork. We only found you because I was doing maintenance on the old servers."
Miranda sat back down, her eye cold. When this conversation was over, she would probably be properly freaked out. At the moment, all she had was the desire to kill the thing pretending to be a person.
"You aren't answering my questions. I know you aren't a hume, so what the hell are you if you aren't a console?" Miranda found the bottle empty and threw it as well. There wasn't even a moment of relief following the destruction.
"I am a console," the child smiled and did a little spin, but Miranda didn't care for the attempt to be cute. "And you seem to forget that you aren't a hume, either. You're a human."
"For nine years, over one third of my life, I've been a hume. I think I can pretty much claim whatever the hell I want. And that's almost one question answered. I'm getting sick of this game."
"These last nine years have been the game," the child taunted. Miranda squatted so that they were at eye level. Then she spat in the child's face. The look of amusement never left the being's face. "That was rude."
"So is leaving a child alone and unarmed in the middle of a desert." Miranda stood and tightened her grip on her staff. Some nights she still woke up screaming, her nightmares filled with the snarling of wolves. The scars on her face and back no longer hurt, but she still resented their existence. "If you want me to feel bad about Anderson, you can forget it. I have too many years of hating him under my belt to stop now."
"I wouldn't even dream of asking." The child didn't even wipe her face clean: the spit on her face vanished on its own. "What I have done is come here to offer you an apology and a deal."
"I don't do deals with people, or machines, that don't give me their names." Miranda sat back on her stool and secured her staff in place. Tomaj would be happy later in the night. He loved when Miranda was aggressive, and this whole conversation was building that up.
The child bowed. Miranda did not return the gesture.
"You may call me Cynthia," she told Miranda, still bowed but head upturned so their eyes met. "I am a Playstation 4. Latest model. And I've come to take you home."
Memories that had been held at bay flooded Miranda's memory. Her parents, her siblings, friends, pets: they were all things she had missed once. She would have given anything to go back to Earth. Except now she didn't.
"No thank you," Miranda told Cynthia, crossing her arms over her chest. "I've come to like it here. Ivalice isn't perfect. It's broken and violent, but so am I. Thanks to Anderson and the others like you, that is. So you can go back to HQ or whatever and leave me here. I'm doing quite nicely. Even survived the Archadian takeover of Dalmasca."
"This is a one time offer." Cynthia twirled her hair and offered the most fake smile that Miranda had even seen. "You can go home now. The lost time cannot be given back, but only your avatar was damaged. We can make your body whole."
"You can go to hell is what you can do," Miranda replied viciously. "You do not get to screw me over and then be condescending about it. And why is it only a one time deal? Care to fill me in on that, at least?"
Cynthia did another little spin. It took all of Miranda's restraint not to strike out at her.
"Because Anderson, incompetent as he was, brought you into the game too early. Nine years too early, actually. Because it starts tomorrow, and then the auto processes take over. Surely you remember."
"Lady, there are too many things that I remember. It's why I'm in a bar trying to forget."
"So is no your final answer?"
Miranda snorted. "Kill yourself is my final answer."
With a nod, Cynthia accepted Miranda's declination of her offer. "Very well then. I do hope you enjoy Vayne Solidor's speech. I'll still be able to talk to you, but I can't terminate the program once it initiates. The game was released before that feature had become standard."
Then Cynthia disappeared and within the blink of an eye the Sandsea had burst back to life. Tomaj stared at his empty hand, then the broken mug on the bar. Miranda handed him a wad of bills and told him to keep the drinks coming.
A/N: This fic started back in 2008 as a massive crossover self-insert on a now defunct forum. While many contributed to the overarching plot and contributed their own characters, it never made it past the prologue I'd hastily thrown together. This is the prologue after a massive reworking to remove characters and concepts belonging to other creators. I hope you enjoy it, because I've sat on it for way too long.