Ruby and the rest of the people of Atlas kept wandering around the desert. A couple days had passed ever since they saw the news.

Who are the people invading Mistral? Why are they in Mistral? Where were they currently? Had they gotten past Argus? Past Lake Matsu? Had the invaders already begun crossing the channel into Sanus?

All these doubts were floating around Ruby's head, and she had no way to solve them. Most scrolls were out of battery. They were out of Dust of most kinds excepting 2 crucial ones. Ice and Fire

They had been using Ice Crystals to trap air in a jar to later freeze into ice, then use the Fire Crystals to boil said ice and make it into drinkable water

Blake was checking a compass while they kept walking

"It doesn't work, the north always changes directions in this thing" said Blake

"That means there may be something generating a magnetic field nearby. We don't have Gravity Dust left for the compass to be behaving this way..." said Ruby, mouth dry

"How many Ice crystals do we have left..." asked Ruby

"I think only 4 of them..."

Ruby did some math. 4 of them. They had for up to 4 more days in the desert before the countdown to demise began. 72 hours without water and they were as good as dead

Team JNR and Oscar weren't handling any well either. Oscar had passed out, and with him, their contact with Ozpin. The glass shower from the previous days and the merciless sun had taken their toll on him, leaving him heavily bruised, with some serious cuts, and on top of it all, dehydrated.

Jaune, Ren and Nora weren't handling it very well. They had prioritized Oscar above most things, but now that he was knocked out, all their Ice crystals had been used for nothing. Nora finally collapsed on the floor

Ren went to assist her

"Nora...Nora, wake up. We have to continue"

"Ren..."

"Nora...please talk to me"

"Ren! She's out..."

Ren lifted Nora up. It was his fault. In just the matter of days, Nora had endured serious injuries from her Semblance, gone through one hell of a fight to get most civilians through the portal to Vacuo and then the whole glass shower. It was impressive how much she endured. But in the end, it was all for nothing

Jaune kept going, his armor packed inside a pouch along with his hoodie. He was fortunate enough to not suffer many bruises from the glass shower thanks to the armor he had along with his shield, but once the sandstorm cleared, he felt as if he was getting boiled alive.

Penny was flying above the group, providing overwatch for Ruby and Jaune, as they were the team leaders in the absence of Qrow and Winter

"Ruby...I have bad news" she said in an intercom to Ruby

"What is it, Penny?" she answered. Jaune limited himself to just listen

"I can see 2 people at the top of a dune 3 kilometers ahead of us. They don't seem to be friendly"

Ruby looked ahead. It was a person riding a camel. Said person began riding towards them. Then, from the sand, lots of other figures emerged

"Penny, direct the people of Atlas behind of us"

Jaune and Ren left Oscar in charge of a woman amongst the crowd then went Ruby and her team

"Woah..."

Said Ruby, seeing Jaune without his hoodie

"What?"

"Nothing. I'm just not used to see you without your armor?"

"Yeah. Lets just leave it at "I didn't want to become Jaune soup" "

Ruby giggled a bit

"Jaune soup..."

Ruby prepared Crescent Rose for a fight...then saw that probably 7 people against an Army wasn't ending good for them. Until they saw a ship. A Vacuo Airship

They lowered their weapons, but still had questions. Why was Vacuo coming for them?