Notice: All characters unless stated otherwise are 18+, on top of that, there won't be any horny shit written in this book.

    Tanya and the others continued down the street. As they continued, the environment  began to shift more towards the sterilized. Buildings were covered in an odd dark blue flesh, blue painted the streets, and slugs crawl on the walls of cars. Ustala informed the group that the sterile ink was aged enough to walk on and the odd dark blue was also safe.

    Walking is all they had been doing for the last hour.  Their legs were sore, but they had no choice but to keep on moving. Tanya enjoyed this peace, however. The dread she felt of having to fight in a war she didn't even know was happening below Inkopolis. She wanted nothing but to go back to her lonely apartment and curl up under the sheets and forget what's happening. She wanted to be back in the square, playing turf war with her friends.

    While loathing in how bad her situation is, she runs into an oddly squishy wall and falls backward, earning a chuckle from the Octos in her squad. "Looking cool joker!" Johnson got out, earning more laughter from the rest. The inkling blushed in embarrassment and got up, dusting herself off.

    "Well, we're here." Cherep sighs, "Lets finish this and get home, okay?" Cherep raises her octoshot and looks back at the squad, filled with confidence. Tanya could tell at a glance that it was all fake, that Cherep was scared underneath that thin veil of courage. It worked however, as the rest of the squad raised their hands and began to move up. Ustala walked up to the fleshy wall and pulled out a circular device. She placed it on the wall and stood back.

    After a moment, the wall bursts open with red ink, creating a hole big enough for everyone to fit through. Tanya wished she didn't have to fight a battle where one pellet could mean death, but she had no choice. She stepped forward and began follow Cherep through the hole with the rest of the squad behind them.

    The inside of the hive was oddly cold and damp. Despite its monstrous and fleshy exterior, the inside was cool. Water began to precipitate on Tanya's rifle and skin. She mentally sighs and continues on. The interior was a mix of broken houses and blue ink flesh with an odd liquid dripping from the ceiling. The air inside was warm and humid with no difference in smell to the outside. A disgusting wet noise followed each footstep, and the ground had an odd sticky feeling to it.

    The atmosphere of the Hive was filled with dread. Tanya didn't know what to think. The sterilized they had taken down before were somewhat of a challenge, but Tanya didn't know what to expect. Would the Sterilized be smarter around the Hive? Would there be swarms of their soldiers chasing after them? Tanya had little faith in the success of the mission now that she was at the end. With hardly any other resources, and lack of communications or even more soldiers, It was very unlikely that they would get out of this alive.

    It had been as if they were sent to die...

    Tanya continued walking with the rest and pushed her thoughts to the back of her head. She knew that those thoughts would be what led to the missions failure, and failure wouldn't be tolerated. Not because she would be executed, but because the lives of her team would be lost as well. Sweat was beading down her forehead, both due to the humid air and with all the pressure from the mission.

    A hand was firmly planted on her shoulder, "Hey, you good?" Idiot questioned, uncertainty filling his voice. Tanya was shocked by the usually hostile octoling's question.

    "I'm good." Tanya says, hiding her distress so that she can focus on the mission. She didn't want the teams unsteady morale to plummet any further. Idiot nods with a questioning look in his eyes before turning away to walk forward. Tanya looked around the hives walls. Odd tubes ran across where the wall and roof connected. For what's supposed to be a massive sterile ink behemoth it was oddly neat, almost as if she was walking down the hallways of a massive lab.

    Cherep raises her arm in a fist, telling everyone to stop. The sounds of gurgling, splashing, and mechanical whirring erupted from up ahead. She motioned for everyone to move forward. They all got to the end of the hall and arrived at a wall that separated them from the room ahead. A split formed in the middle of the wall and opened like a door from a sci-fi movie, allowing them access to the room ahead.

    What was ahead wasn't a room, but more of a balcony to look down into one. The squad moved in and peered over the balcony. They saw a massive pool of bright cyan ink that glowed with a bright blue light. In the pool were humanoid figures that were emerging from the ink, they had cyan colored skin with bright green tentacles. Their eyes were a sky blue, illuminated by the glowing ink.

    Idiot spoke in a whisper, "What the hells going on here..."

    "First time?" Cherep asked, "This is their spawning chamber, they drop from the spores in the roof in their octoling form, emerge as their humanoid, then walk off and get their gear to be assigned to whatever they do."

    Tanya turned to Cherep, "So, is this our goal?"

    Cherep replies, "Nope, blowing these up will do no good. We gotta destroy the heart of this hive. Then all of this will die off."

    "Well uh..." Tanya looked around, "Where do we go?"

    Cherep turns down the hallway, "The hive room is usually in the center. It's not that hard to find, but it's easy to miss. The doors won't open if you get close."

    Cherep walked down the hall to one of fleshy doors. It split down the middle like the last one and opened. Everyone followed after her. "This shouldn't take too long, this is only a D2 class hive."

    "What decimal?" Idiot replies.

    "The commander didn't say. Higher ups didn't tell him, and they said that we could handle it. Bullshit if you ask me."

    Idiot sighs in frustration. Tanya could hardly believe what she was hearing. Either their command was entirely incompetent, or they just wanted them dead. The inkling wished that this was a bad dream, and that she would wake up. She didn't care where, whether it be her own bed or at the cabin where she would meet with the others in the Squidbeak Splatoon... Wait, who were those others again?

    Tanya shook her head, now's not the time to get distracted. Losing the focus this deep into the enemy base was a sure way to get her killed. She tightened her hold on the grip of her rifle and stared ahead, coming back to reality. A faint thumping noise came from the room ahead.

    The group walk through one more doorway and enter another room, this time lit up by an bright green from the center. In the center is a network of fleshy tubes connected to spherical tanks, pumping and hissing from the transfer of ink to one another. From left to right, one tank was filled up with the bright cyan of sterile ink. From that tank, a tube connects it to a pair of lung shaped tanks. The left "lung" is cyan, with the other being green. The green colored tank then tubes out into a hallway.

    Cherep raises her voice so everyone can hear her over the pumps, "Alright team, down that hall is the heart of this thing and the end of our mission." She makes her way over with everyone tagging alongside her. A dull beating noise comes from the room ahead, leaving everyone with a feeling of anxiousness in their stomachs.

     Tanya breathed in and calmed down, telling herself that it was gonna be an in and out mission. Idiot would plant the bomb, destroy the heart, and they would get out before any of the troops returned or reacted. She couldn't help but feel as if something would go wrong. Would one of her squadmates get killed, would she herself get killed or go through the pain of being shot with sterile ink?

    The inkling knew that she was going to get out of here and go home, whether home be within these caverns or back at Inkopolis.

(Authors note: hey its me from schoolb.B))