As Qrow readied Harbinger to meet the Meta as it advanced, he gave a quick thought to a plan for beating the Meta.

Undoubtedly he was a brute.

Everything from Tex's own stories to what he was currently seeing with his own eyes confirmed it. However Tex's stories also told him about how the former agent Maine was surprisingly clever, a cleverness that had been undoubtedly increased after the implantation of Sigma. The literal embodiment of creativity.

Still he wasn't infallible and even after being implanted Tex was able to beat them on the sparring floor.

But this wouldn't be some sparring match and the Meta had one advantage that made Qrow very nervous.

Armour enhancements.

Things that were basically semblances which could allow freelancers to go as fast as Ruby, completely deflect damage and even stop time.

And he had no way of knowing which one it had.

Qrow didn't get much further in his analysis of the Meta as they suddenly went from a menacing walk to a rampaging charge.

Everyone tried to scatter, but unfortunately Jaune was a few seconds too slow and collided with the Meta, sending him flying into the wall.

Immediately Qrow turned around to face it and attempted to slash it horizontally, but the meta dodged this with surprising agility and counter attacked with a thunderous punch that sent Qrow flying down the hallway.

After this Weiss and Nora tried to attack the Meta at the same time, Nora using her hammer to aim for the head and Weiss going for a quick stab in his back. But then the Meta seemingly teleported right out of the way and behind the two girls, causing Nora's hammer to instead hit the heiress right in her face. The Meta then used this opportunity to make an attack at agent Tex, swiping the blade of his Brute Shot at her which Tex fortunately dodged back from.

But rather than let the attack go to waste the the Meta simply switched targets to Ren and used the momentum of the strike to send Ren flying into the nearest wall so hard that he became stuck in it like a cartoon character.

Qrow groaned as he got back up and started sprinting back down the hallway.

Meanwhile the Meta had resumed it's assault on Tex, sending quick but powerful punches at her, the brute shot now on it's back, fortunately Tex was able to duck and weave around them, sending her own punches back in return.

But then the Meta managed to catch on in his hand and summarily ripped off her entire arm. And Qrow cursed as he saw Tex was only left with her bad arm that had been hastily reattached after her fight with Raven.

Finally Qrow got close enough to return to the fray, he leapt at the Meta intending to deal a blow while it's back is turned.

But without warning it turned around with a roar and grabbed Qrow by the neck and quickly gave him a headbutt that sent Qrow to the floor and drained a considerable amount of Aura.

It was at this point that the kids regrouped and attempted an counter attack, leaping over Qrow's body to do so.

Nora went for an overhead attack, Magnhild held high ready to strike, Jaune attempted to go for an slash on the left while Weiss hung back and used her time dilation glyphs to speed them up.

But the Meta met them with the same inhuman speed, snatching Magnhild from Nora and quickly using it to smash Jaune's side sending him straight into Nora. It then rushed Wiess quicker than she could react, snatched Myrtenaster from her and used it to shatter her Aura and brutally pin her into the wall by the shoulder.

With everyone else dealt with, the Meta returned to advance on Tex.

Not one to back down so easily, Tex charged him at the same time with a furious cry to match the Meta's roar.

But just at her fist was about to connect with the Meta's face Qrow blinked and suddenly The Meta was somehow behind Tex. And with a quick and clean slice from the Brute Shot Tex was sliced horizontally in half.

"Son of a bitch." Qrow muttered as he forced himself up.

"Hey, fish bowl head!" Qrow yelled, getting the Meta's attention. giving Harbinger a little twirl as he did so. "Bring it!"

And the Meta did, giving quick slices with the brute shot alternated with thunderous punches. Fortunately Qrow was able to dodge most of them and deflect the ones he couldn't.

And so he started leading the Meta away from the others, if they had some common sense they'd take Tex away but they needed time and that is exactly what he'd give them.

So he lead the Meta down corridor after corridor, keeping the damage relegated to walls and keeping his Aura at reasonable levels.

However this strategy left little room for counter attacking and was draining his stamina while the big brute just kept going.

Then without warning, rather than letting themselves be led down corridors, the Meta fired the brute shot at close quarters which took Qrow completely by surprise, disarming him of Harbinger and draining yet another huge chunk of Aura.

But he wasn't out just yet, so mere seconds after being knocked down Qrow was back up.

He went on the offensive, dealing out punches and kicks chained together, it actually managed to push them back. then as quick as a flash the blade of the brute shot, shot out and would have cut Qrow in half had he not dodged it.

"Come on, my niece is faster than you!" Qrow taunted, but quickly he was taken aback by the sudden reappearance of Sigma.

"Faster you say?" The A.I asked rhetorically. "Very well."

Then Sigma vanished again and the Meta put away the brute shot, Qrow put his guard up in anticipation of the assault.

But the Meta was too fast, he pushed past Qrow's guarded fists and deliver a fast and powerful fist to Qrow's chest, it was enough to shatter his remaining Aura.

Then another blow came.

Then another.

Then another.

Time seemed to drag on, stretching the moment out an eternity. One fist would impact his chest just as the other left.

He could hear bones breaking even if the adrenaline kept him from feeling the pain.

Then the moment ended and Qrow found that he could barely stand.

The Meta looked at him almost mockingly with the helmet, reminding Qrow of a hunter deciding how to finish off an injured Grimm.

That was the last thing Qrow thought before then Meta delivered one final punch to his head and the dark of unconsciousness took him.

Felix cursed as he dodged a fireball from Oobleck's weapon.

One of the few things that had really impressed Felix once he'd gotten familiar with Remnant was the sheer variety of unique weapons and the creativity behind them.

But he drew the line at a fucking coffee thermos that turned into a weird torch flamethrower.

Who the hell would think that was a good idea?!

But weird weapon choices aside Felix felt confident in his ability to win.

One quick stab in a vital area would spell the end of Oobleck, his precious little Aura wouldn't be able to protect him from Felix's knife and Felix didn't even need Aura having gone most of his life without it. Having it activated was just another advantage in Felix's already stacked deck of cards.

There was just one small little problem.

Oobleck was fast.

Felix could barley get a hit in with the history teacher weaving and dodging his way around the battlefield like a maniac.

It was just a tiny bit frustrating.

A frustration that was fuelled by Sarge and Epsilon(?) yelling obscenities at him.

"Yeah, suck it Felix! You suck!"

"And your mom's a whore!"

Felix parried another blow from Oobleck and rolled back, taking out his pistol and firing some shots.

But Oobleck dodged them all and Felix had to roll away from another fricking fireball.

Then Felix felt the ground shake, everyone else evidently also felt it as they all also stopped what they were doing.

Then the ground shook again and this time Felix knew were it came from.

The building the he'd left poor little Pyrrha.

What the hell were those kids doing in there?

"RRRRAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!" A deep guttural yell rang out.

The wall from the building collapsed and out stepped Ruby... only it wasn't her.

The colour scheme was all wrong. Instead of the typical red it was all a very familiar shade of blue. Her dress, hair and even the damn scythe was the same regulation blue that Caboose normally wore.

And now little red was big red, her height now over seven inches much like the idiot simtrooper.

And then she opened her mouth.

"OUR NAME IS RUBY-AND-CABOOSE!" She yelled far too dramatically. "AND WE HATE FELIX!"

Felix just stood there dumbfounded, what the fuck was this bullshit?

"What the fuck it this?" He made his thoughts known, holding his arms wide in disbelief.

that proved the only thing that he could do as she turned into a flurry of blue roses and in less than a second she was right next to him.

Ruby-and-Caboose threw a punch that Felix was too slow to dodge and his Aura shattered.

His armour too.

And he was fairly certain all of his ribs were broken.

But of course that wasn't the worst of it as he went flying and broke through several walls before landing in the middle of a small group of White Fang grunts.

"Tell Torchwick..." Felix breathed heavily. "That our guests are here."

Following Felix's sudden defeat Church just had to ask.

"Caboose, is that you?"

"Yes, it's good to see you!" Ruby-and-Caboose borderline yelled with a friendly wave. Great, it looks like they retained Caboose's lack of volume control. Fan-fucking-tastic.

"That is not something I thought I'd be seeing today." Wash remarked.

"Well, at least Felix is out of the picture." Sarge said. "And no thanks to certain people."

Sarge looked directly at Church as he said that, leaving him feeling ever so slightly offended.

"Excuse me?"

"What about that great plan o' yours, possessing Felix, taking his gun away? What happened to it?"

"Well, I'm still too weak from separating Wash and Ruby earlier." Church explained. "Besides I didn't see you doing much to help."

"Are you kidding blue!? My strategic insults distracted him at critical moments in the fight!" Sarge claimed/boasted.

"Oh please, mine were way better." Church countered.

"Were not."

"Were too."

"Were not."

"Were too."

Wash cut in. "Can you two please focus?"

"Hey he started it!" Church complained and before Sarge could object Yang and Blake reappeared holding Pyrrha by the arms and legs, well arms and leg.

Well shit that looked bad.

Everyone rushed over to them.

"Oh dear." Oobleck said quietly.

"We need to get Pyrrha medical attention now!" Yang stated the obvious.

Oobleck shook his head. "I'm afraid that's not possible, the airship is not scheduled to pick us up for another few days, and furthermore the White Fang need to be dealt with immediately." Oobleck shook his head again. "No, we need to bring Pyrrha with us."

"Yang, you will be in charge of holding Pyrrha, take this time before we engage the White Fang proper to secure her properly."

"Got it." Yang said as she moved Pyrrha into a better position.

"Blake, you will need to protect Pyrrha and Yang from stranglers. Ruby and I will deal with the rest." Oobleck said.

With that there was an explosion and dozens of White Fang grunts poured into the area, but they were unprepared for the opposition they were about to face.

"YOUR BREAD WILL BE WET AND SOGGY!" Ruby-and-Caboose yelled as a battle cry before leaping into face stabbing range and unleashing Crescent Rose to bat away the grunts like they were toys rather than trained soldiers.

Oobleck nodded grimly and prepared to join her.

Time for the White Fang to learn that the most dangerous words in the English language (and probably alien language too) Michael J Caboose.

And Church almost pitied them.

Almost.

They returned to the start of their ambush.

Sigma had been mildly amused by Qrow's attempt to lead them away, from his assessment while the huntsmen was skilled he was ultimately no match for the Meta.

And now they would reunite with Beta (Tex) and get one step closer to being whole.

And the presence of agent Texas presented the idea that there were more people from their host universe that had ended up here, perhaps more of the other A.I fragments or the Alpha himself.

An intriguing possibility.

Adapting their weapons for Remnant had proved tricky, but after extorting help from skilled engineers and disposing with them afterwards, Sigma had been able to adapt both the Brute Shot, The armour and even the enhancements to use Dust as a power source.

If Sigma had found himself feeling lucky after awakening with the former agent Maine all those months ago, then he felt even luckier now that Tex was about to return to them.

In fact the only downside to this new reality was that the time distortion unit drained Dust at an extremely accelerated rate, meaning it could only be used once or twice before all power was drained from the suit.

Finally the Meta arrived at the site of their initial ambush, but they had to frown as they saw that the upper body of agent Tex was missing.

Weiss Schnee was still pinned to the wall while Lie Ren was still stuck in another one.

Jaune Arc was on his scroll, undoubtedly calling emergency services.

But they didn't care.

All they cared about was that Nora Valkyrie was gone, the upper body of Tex taken with her in undoubtedly some attempt to flee.

Sigma gave the electronic equivalent of a sigh and the Meta stalker off in the likely direction they had went.

It was time to go hunting.

Notes:

And that's the end of that chapter!

Well fight scenes aren't something I'm particularly found of writing, but I feel that I did decent enough.

And now much like Tex vs Raven, it's time to analyse the Meta vs Qrow, Tex and team SALN fight!

Ultimately when considering the outcome of this fight team SALN was a non-factor. At this point in time none of the Team SALN members are really skilled enough to defeat the Meta even when working together and at best they could provide a quick distraction. Perhaps in the later volumes they'd prove more than that but at this point in time they aren't skilled enough.

Tex and Qrow are individually incredibly skilled, and in my opinion they could work together very well as a team. However they both have handicaps, Tex in being doomed to fail and Qrow with his semblance. Tex at this point was working with a bad arm and is yet to have her Aura unlocked so one good swipe would be able to take her out.

And finally while Qrow is awesome and incredibly skilled, the environment of an enclosed hallway limits him to being unable to use scythe mode and here the Meta caught everyone by surprise so he had pretty much no time to properly plan. And finally the Meta not only has extreme strength, but also an unlocked Aura and all of the freelancer enhancements.

Ultimately I believe that that Qrow could beat agent Maine, but not the Meta.

Moving on, we see Ruby combining with Caboose which works very differently from when she combined with Wash because well... it's Caboose. And the speed of Ruby plus the strength of Caboose equals Felix being in for a bad time.

Thanks everyone for reading with extra thanks to those that comment/review, you're all groovy.

Next time the gang lays siege to a train while Nora plays a deadly game of cat and mouse. But till then I'll catch ya'll on the flip flop.

Review replies:

ReaderWarrior: Yep, this will defiantly effect Pyrrha and I hope that this chapter lives up to your expectations.

Annonamous Bird: Glad they enjoyed it!

Brain.H.H: to answer your question, Sigma just appeared in Remnant with the Meta much like how Omega initially did with Tex, and as for the location of the other A.I, some were indeed absorbed by the Alpha, but perhaps one or two others might have also escaped...

Olav152: I would call him an ambulance, but... Fuck Felix.

Guest(1): Good.