To Butterfly: There are a lot of heroes! This chapter focuses in on just a small number of them.

The Suez Canal

Sk8r Girl stopped in front of a stack of wooden pallets that workmen must have left out earlier in the day. She put out one hand to lean against the second shipping container in from the end of the lane and tightened the strap on her helmet with the other. Beside her, Sent-Bee fiddled with one of her yo-yos, her head turning back and forth to look up and down the lane. A pack of wild dogs that Sk8r Girl had recruited just outside the canal transfer facility was racing around them wildly, spread out from one end of the lane to the other. Bee-atrice perched proudly on the back of the largest dog, yipping at the others excitedly. Pegasus had given them a list of four containers waiting for transfer at the Suez Canal that needed their markings removed and replaced, of which they had already taken care of the two closest to the shipping yard entrance. The last two were at the far end of this lane, on the ground level on opposite sides of the pathway. Theoretically, it would be a simple matter of a few shots with the spray paint in Sk8r Girl's bag and they would be on their way back to Cairo.

Theoretically.

"I smell something in this container!" yapped one of the dogs near the middle of the lane. The dog jumped up and down in excitement in front of a container that appeared to have a door cut into the side facing the lane. He wagged his tail excitedly before his hackles raised and his ears lay down flat against his skull. "It smells like… people!"

Sk8r Girl frowned. "We might have a problem here," she muttered to Sent-Bee.

"What are you afraid of?" demanded Bee-atrice, glaring at the dog and letting out a high-pitched growl. "Was your mother a poodle!?"

Sk8r Girl gave the puppy an unimpressed look. "You do realize he could eat you in one bite, right, squirt?"

"I'm not afraid of a stupid shipping container!" Bee announced, puffing her chest out.

"She had better not be planning anything stupid!" Sent-Bee warned her, giving Bee a look.

"Just her usual," Sk8r Girl commented, snorting.

Over the communicators Harba announced, "You're still clear – all the guards are on the far side of the loading area."

"So if the guards are there… who's here?" Sk8r Girl wondered.

"There's only one way to find out," replied Sent-Bee, striding forward and splitting the distance to the container in question. "Time to stir up the beehive!" She threw her yo-yo at the side of the container. It ricocheted off the metal with a loud clang.

The makeshift door hatch flew open and a group of men burst out. One raised a rifle and fired, just as Sk8r-Girl dove for cover behind the stack of pallets. The spray of bullets smashed into the pallets, sending splinters in all directions. With a grunt, Sent-Bee landed next to Sk8r Girland pressed her back against the shipping container, leaning over to peer through the space between two pallets. The wild dogs scattered, racing down the lane past them and barking in agitation.

Bee-atrice jumped off the dog she'd been riding and landed on the ground in front of Sent-Bee. She hopped up and down agitatedly, glaring after the other dogs. "Get back here, you cowards!" she yipped, her voice barely audible over the sound of the rifles firing.

"What the hell are these guys doing here!?" demanded Sent-Bee, raising and arm to cover her head and hold her ponytail down below the level of the pallets.

"What's happening?" asked Impératrice Pourpre quickly over their communicators.

"Oh, you know, the usual," replied Sent-Bee wryly. "Guys with guns between us and the last two containers we need to hit."

"Lynchpin's guys? Do they have energy weapons?"

"No, they just have the regular kind," Sent-Bee reported, shouting to be heard over the cacophony of gunfire. "Probably just local muscle."

"Do you need backup?"

"No, we've got it handled."

Sk8r Girl raised her head slightly to look over the top of the stack before immediately ducking back down to avoid the hail of bullets sent in her direction. Wooden splinters flew over their heads, dinging off their helmets. But that single glance had shown her enough. The first man out of the container had been joined by another eight or nine, all of whom had fanned out in a line across the lane, standing between them and the two containers they needed to reach. "You consider this handled?" she shouted at Sent-Bee, glaring at her angrily.

Sent-Bee smirked. "Don't tell me you're afraid of a few bullets."

"You can 'take one for the team,'" Sk8r Girl retorted, turning back toward the pallets, "but personally I'd rather avoid 'acute lead poisoning' today, Chlo! 'Cuz last I checked, these suits aren't bulletproof!"

A shadow appeared in front of Sk8r Girl, lessened, and disappeared seconds later as a light source flew over her head. Her visor automatically adjusted to compensate for the bright light that materialized in front of her, separating her and Sent-Bee from the men with guns. When her eyesight had adjusted, she recognized it as a white hash-tag. The object, no larger than a book when it spun past them, stopped moving and aligned itself perpendicular to the ground. It expanded rapidly until the ends touched the walls of the containers on either side of them before the lines widened to form a single textured white wall of light. The bullets still being fired at the light construct melted on impact, evaporating into the air. Several of the gunmen dropped their arms, pointing their rifles at the ground in front of their feet, and stared in shock at something behind the two heroes.

"Did someone call for backup?"

Sk8r Girl glanced back to see Amun-Vatar hovering around the level of the middle tier of shipping containers. He was supported from below by a small tornado and encircled by a pair of white hash-tags that spun rapidly around him. He held one hand out, palm up, an intricate white geometric design emanating from his fingertips. His face glowed brilliant gold, his eyes flaring bright white, though Sk8r Girl let out a quiet breath when she recognized his normal facial features through the golden coloration. So distracted was she by the dazzling brilliance of his appearance, she almost missed the burgundy figure that had just turned down the lane and charged past beneath him.

Her suit was far thicker than that used by any of the other miraculous heroes Sk8r Girl had worked with except perhaps Carapace, the suit covering her entire body from her chin to her toes and to the tips of her fingers, every centimeter of it covered with extra padding a centimeter thick. She wore a helmet on her head with a single curved white horn protruding from the forehead. Buq Hayij let out a bellow as she barreled past Amun-Vatar. In her headlong charge she narrowly missed the pallets behind which Sk8r Girl and Sent-Bee hid, lowered her head, planted her fists on the ground, and with a roar launched herself forward nearly parallel to the ground. Amun-Vatar spread his fingers to create a narrow opening in the light-wall before sweeping with his other hand. A gust of wind swept down the lane and picked up around Buq Hayij, lifting her from the ground and hurtling her headlong through the gap and into the line of gunmen beyond.

Sk8r Girl's jaw dropped open as Buq Hayij slammed head-first into the first thug she met, planting her fist on him as he fell to the ground and twisting in midair, kicking the man next to him in the head before spinning completely around to land on her feet in a crouch, facing the rest of the crowd of men between her and the light-wall. A third man had fallen to her fists before the remaining men finally reacted to her sudden appearance. With her in the middle of their group, the remaining seven men raised their rifles. "We have watched from the sidelines for far too long!" Buq Hayij declared, eyes flashing with anger. She flexed her fists and raised them in a defensive posture.

Sk8r Girl met Sent-Bee's eye and they both nodded. With a shout they raced around the pallets behind which they had been hiding and charged the light-wall. Sk8r Girl reached it first and slid through on her knees before springing up and head-butting the first man she saw, driving her helmet into his chin. He dropped his rifle to the ground, and Sk8r Girl flicked her field hockey stick to send it hurtling into the man next to him. Sent-Bee looped her yo-yo around the legs of a man on Sk8r Girl's other side, jerked the yo-yo sharply, and pulled him to the ground before shooting all the men already on the ground with her synth-Venom gun.

"Attack!" With a howl, Bee-atrice charged through the gap, a trio of the wild dogs followed in her wake. The first of the wild dogs through the opening leapt on the closest gunman, digging his claws into the man's chest and sending him crashing to the ground. The second dog pounced, biting the man's wrist and breaking his hold on his rifle. Bee-atrice barked and jumped up and down excitedly at Sent-Bee's feet. "Take them down!"

Buq Hayij kicked the man next to her in the gut, launching him backward into the container behind him and denting the side. "I have rather missed this," she observed, glancing over at Sent-Bee. "My thanks for the reminder of who we should be!"

Sent-Bee sidestepped another man, wrenched the rifle out of his hands, jabbed the butt into his gut, and tossed it under a container. "We are always glad to crack a few skulls for a good cause!"

A clattering from inside the container where the gunmen had hidden was all the warning the heroes received that their enemies had reinforcements so close. Sent-Bee threw her yo-yo and tangled it around the lower part of the doorjamb. She pulled the string tight, and three men stumbled over each other as the first one out tripped on the string. The yo-yo was wrenched from her hands, however, and she pulled her second yo-yo from its holster and flicked it out to wrap around another thug's gun, pulling off his aim where he was trying to shoot Buq Hayij in the back.

There were a couple thugs still standing. Sk8r Girl swung her field hockey stick around and tripped up the man in front of her. In the same motion she separated the two parts of the stick and slammed the handle side into the man's back, activating the taser. He flinched and collapsed to the ground, letting out a shaky breath.

"Leave them and finish the mission!" Sent-Bee shouted at her, ducking a punch from another man and elbowing him in the side. Bee-atrice bit the man's ankle, and he fell to the ground with a whimper. Another dog leapt on his chest, teeth bared.

Sk8r Girl sighed, clapped her shoes together to deploy her skates, and shot down the lane to the two containers they were targeting. She leaned and skidded to a halt at the end of the lane, directly in front of the first one, pulling the stencil and spray paint from her bag as she did so. With a swipe from the first color, the existing marking had been removed. She pulled out the second color, but froze when she heard the sound of a pistol cocking next to her head from just outside the lane.

"Any last words, Hero?" the man sneered, pressing the gun to the side of her helmet.

She smirked behind her full-face shield. "'Duck'."

The man let out a confused scoff. "Wha–"

A duck dove into the man's face.

AN: "Buq Hayij" is Arabic for "Raging Horn." Buq Hayij is Amina (Yousef's wife), who has the Rhinoceros Miraculous. This is one of 2 chapters I added to the story late in the game. I realized I needed to show a little more explicitly how their involvement with the Heroes of Paris motivated the African Miraculous Team, and this seemed like the ideal way to do it. That and there's a moment in "Subjecting a God" that someone pointed out might be relevant…