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| Second Battle of Chinatown | |||||||||||||||||
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2014 | ||||||||||||||||
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Chinatown | ||||||||||||||||
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Pyrrhic human victory
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The Second Battle of Chinatown was a battle between the 2nd Mass and the creatures spawned by an Espheni Farm.
Prelude[]
About a day after Tom and Lexi take off in a Beamer to destroy the Espheni power core, Dingaan Botha and his recon team come upon an apparently abandoned militia camp. However, they find that it is filled with a strange fog and creatures that are mutating the people. The recon team come under attack by the creatures and only Dingaan escapes to warn the 2nd Mass. Everyone recognizes that these humans were being Skitterized and it has now grown very advanced since the Espheni no longer need to drag people to factories for Skitterization. As the Espheni know the location of their base, the 2nd Mass decide to prepare for a possible attack.
Battle[]
As they patrol, Dingaan and Pope spot the arrival of a Beamer. Pope rushes towards the Beamer while Dingaan tries to stop him. Instead of launching an attack, the Beamer drops an Espheni Farm into Chinatown to Skitterize the humans there. Realizing they are under attack, Matt and Weaver flee into an abandoned building and Hal, Ben and Maggie flee into a garage where Maggie manages to get up on top of a bus while Hal and Ben are trapped on the floor by the glue-like substance that comes with the fog with Hal halfway to the door. At the same time, Elise approaches the farm and is trapped in the fog. She is eventually overtaken by a creature which starts to Skitterize her. Witnessing this, Pope and Dingaan quickly flee for their lives.
Fleeing the fog and creatures, Pope and Dingaan climb on a stack of pallets but quickly fall and get trapped in the fog. Pope calls out to Anne for help and eventually calls to her to stay out of the fog. Pope explains to Dingaan that as Anne was a sentry at the outer edge of their camp, he hopes she managed to escape the fog and the creatures. As the two argue about Pope's recklessness, a creature latches onto Dingaan and drags him away. Eventually, as resistance fighters nearby fall to the creatures, Dingaan is dragged next to Pope who spots the tentacle connecting it to the farm. As the transforming fluid makes its way through the tentacle towards Dingaan, Pope bites it in half, keeping Dingaan from being transformed, albeit with a creature still stuck to his chest. As more creatures come towards them, Pope believes it to be the end until one that crawls over him is suddenly shot by Sara who was able to use a four-wheel drive truck she hotwired to safely make it through the fog and save them. Sara manages to shoot the creature off of Dingaan's chest and kills another one that tries to attack Pope.
Matt and Weaver barricade themselves in the room they made it into, but the fog enters through pipes on the walls and traps Matt in a crouch on the floor and Weaver up against the wall. A creature eventually makes it inside and goes for Matt, but he kills it with the knife-throwing skills Weaver had recently taught him. The two work to keep from panicking by chanting "its not over till its over" and draw the attention of Anne who discovers that fire burns away the fog and thus grabs a flamethrower to rush to their rescue. She gets there in time to kill the creatures in the room with them and free Matt and Weaver from the fog, but another creatures comes through an open window and latches on to Weaver. Anne tries to save him with her flamethrower, but ran out of fuel before she could burn the creature. Anne gets stuck on the floor in the fog while Weaver shuts the window on the creature's tentacle and holds it shut, keeping the transforming fluid from reaching him. However, Weaver quickly tires and expresses his admiration for what Anne has gone through. Though Matt rallies him a bit, Weaver is left too exhausted to be able to hold on for long.
In the garage, Hal and Ben try to hold off the creatures which is hampered by the fact that Hal is only armed with a pistol, having earlier dropped his machine gun. Using her new spike abilities, Maggie is able to pull Ben to safety and they work on a plan to save Hal though they only have limited time as a massive swarm of the creatures makes its way through the garage door towards him. Maggie and Ben make a harness and pull Hal to safety on the bus as he's reduced to pistol-whipping the creatures. Later, the creatures start to climb the sides of the bus to their horror.
After the power core is destroyed by Lexi, the Espheni Farm and all of the creatures connected to it die, ending the battle. By the next morning, Chinatown is fog free and all of the creatures are withered husks.
Aftermath[]
The morning after the battle, Anne wakes up to find the creatures dead and the fog gone. Weaver turns out to have held on for long enough that he wasn't Skitterized. Many other members of the 2nd Mass also managed to avoid being Skitterized and Anthony and his team, who had been believed dead, return though Anthony states that not everyone made it. The 2nd Mass realize that the death of the creatures and a massive glowing green spot on the Moon means that Tom managed to destroy the Espheni power core and prepare to strike back against the Espheni.