First, SPOILERS for Fire Emblem: Awakening and, to a lesser extent, Red vs. Blue. Second, I'd just like to clarify… I have NO idea how I connected these two. Seriously it just… sort of… happened.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Fire Emblem is property of Nintendo, and the geniuses of Rooster Teeth own Red vs. Blue.

He was stunned. No, amazed. It was simply un-fathomable. After all of his trials and tribulations, hurdles jumped and opponents defeated, he was eliminated. Done. Finished.

By a rag-tag bunch of un-qualified, in-experienced, idiotic, dim-witted Sim-Troopers!

With this thought and others like it, Agent Maine of Project Freelancer, A.K.A. The Meta continued to struggle and thrash in a desperate attempt to remove the tow hook attached to his chest. The pressure became greater the closer he came to the bottom of Sidewinder's frigid ocean, making it increasingly difficult to disentangle himself. And while his mind still wasn't quite right from having the presence and then absence of one or more A.I., he had the common sense to try to get out of the water before he died of hypothermia. His suit had some temperature control, but not enough to keep him from freezing to death in the sub-zero water. Not to mention his oxygen levels were already decreasing ever so slowly. With one final tug, the hook came free, and Maine twisted himself around to watch the burned and shattered shell of the Warthog continue it's decent into the black depths. He then faced what he thought was up, and began swimming.

That is, he would have, if a near blinding pain hadn't shot through his chest and right arm. He used his left arm to try and assess the damage and after feeling around a bit he came to the conclusion that his arm was broken, as were several of his ribs. These injuries, coupled with his three separate stab wounds (or maybe four, since that one turquoise/aqua/blue-green trooper's sword had two prongs), an open slash wound on his stomach, and the multiple bruises from Tex and Wash led to one realization; getting to the surface wouldn't be easy. Granted, he'd been through worse, like when that Insurgent had emptied an entire clip from a pistol into his throat, followed by slamming into the front of a truck, which sent him careening off the highway at high speed. No, this was not the worst, but it was still far from pleasant.

So The Meta began the long and painful swim upwards, nearly one-hundred and seventy feet from the top of the water. Around halfway, though, what little warmth his armor provided had abated and Maine could feel his movements slow, as his limbs seemed to turn to lead. He panicked, and began flailing his arms, as his vision grew slightly darker. The readout on his HUD said he was only eighty feet from his goal. But that did nothing to stop the blackness and feeling of despair that started to engulf him. Eventually, sixty feet from the water's surface, his fingers and toes began to feel numb. Forty feet and it had spread to his elbows and knees. Twenty feet and the numbness reached his waist and shoulders. By ten feet he could hardly feel himself blink and the blackness was all encompassing. Five feet… and he couldn't move. His arms and legs refused to respond, he couldn't see… and he slowly felt himself start to sink into the abyss.

'This is it', he thought as he began to lose consciousness. 'This is where it ends. At the bottom of the ocean on a planet made almost entirely of ice. Not what I was expecting.' The former Freelancer's thoughts became muddled and disconnected as he began to fade. Suddenly, the nothingness was pierced by a pinprick of light. It slowly grew larger and larger as it banished the darkness, and Maine felt a strange sense of warmth wash over him, as if he were lying in an open field of grass and wild-flowers and not suspended in a frozen sea. He would have been more surprised had he not felt so tired, as though he simply wanted to sleep. 'They say not to go into the light', he thought to himself, 'But I don't exactly have a choice.' The Meta felt himself being lifted upwards, as if by a higher power, before his mind went blank, and he seemed to vanish from existence.

One existence, that is…

Wow… did I really just write that? Don't know when I'll have time to update, but if enough people review, follow, favorite and so on, I'll make this a priority. FE:A characters will appear next chapter, I promise.