The hivemind is conquering for me?

The two took each other in for what felt like forever before Sigfried finally spoke. ”Man, you grew ugly. What did all your looks go to your height or something? The last time I saw you, you were smaller than me, the fuck happened to you?”

The duo once again looked between each other before a thunderous laughter erupted between them. The two then embraced dearly, Francesca couldn’t hold it in either and ran up for a hug. ”Hugo I can’t believe it’s you! You are so mature looking! Oh, what happened to your eye? Do you want me to take a look at it?”

Hugo chuckled and brushed Francesca’s head familiarly. ”I appreciate that Fran, but some of the best doctors in Spartari can’t fix this, not even my nanites and they have come a long way since we, I, was a kid...” There was a slight uncomfortable pause as he said that before he asked. ”So, can I come in, or should I continue to lumber in the door like a tree?”

Hugo’s hand was then taken by Francesca and he was pulled inside. ”Of course you can! When have you ever had to ask!” Hugo smiled awkwardly at that comment, pulling together a guess at what had happened to his friends.

Hugo then turned horizontally to fit through the door and walked into the small dorm room. One half was pristine and clean, the other half... ”I see you are still taking care of the roach king here? Honestly man, I still remember the smell of your room from when we were kids and it’s been nearly fifty years.”

Francesca and Sigfried looked between each other as Hugo said that they were smiling at Hugo’s accurate statement, but concern grew about what he just said, prompting Sigfried to turn serious.

”So, judging from your uniform, I assume this wasn’t a happy coincidence that you are here?”

Hugo then shut the door behind him. ”No, I have been sent to investigate what has happened. I... I thought you died long ago. Finding out you live, and are still exactly the same as the last time I saw you all is quite something. Because of this, the king has asked me to come and get a briefing, considering you all technically don’t exist anymore.”

Sigfried then scoffed. ”Fucking Sigismund... Who in their right mind would elect that lunatic to be king?”

Hugo frowned hearing that, but let the treasonous words slide, bros did that for one another.

Francesca then got the actual ball rolling. ”Honestly, Hugo. Nothing happened. Literally.”

Hugo crossed his arms and furrowed his brows. ”What do you mean nothing happened? You have been missing for forty years and haven’t aged biologically. So something clearly happened. Look, I need to report something back so can you just tell me something?”

Another silence loomed between the trio for a moment before Sigfried turned to Francesca. ”Sis, can you go and dry your hair now? You are going to catch a cold.”

Francesca then turned to Sigfried. ”What are you talking about? I’m not doing that, we have a guest.”

”Woman, can you just?” Sigfried raised his voice, a mistake.

”Oh fuck no. You did not just ’Woman’ me. I should beat your ass... But considering an old friend is here, I will let it slide and go dry my hair... You little shit.” Francesca then flinched realising what she said and frantically turned to Hugo. ”I didn’t mean ’old’ old. I meant like, you know, time passing old, friend. For you I mean time has passed. Not that you look old or anything with the time passing, you look good- I’m just going to go and dry my hair before I catch a cold, be right back.”

The two of them watched as Francesca got up and left the room, Hugo felt his eye leering for a moment, as she still had it, but quickly shook that thought aside, she was younger than his daughter at this point.

Sigfried waited a few moments to make sure Francesca was truly gone, when he was sure he turned to his friend and explained. ”Franny and Tamara don’t know anything. To them we entered the gap and came back out seconds later. That’s it and to be honest that is pretty much the same thing that happened to me, only I spoke with someone while in the gap.”

Hugo felt a cluster headache coming on. The gap... He totally forgot about that. How did he forget about that? He knew Sigfried, Tamara and Francesca alongside his squad were to enter and investigate it and...

”Who did you speak to?” He asked, prompting Sigfried to frown.

”I don’t recall myself to be honest, they were shrouded in a black veil the entire time. No discernible figures, but they were human, I just knew. They said they belonged to an order called the jailers, but those outside might know them as just ’them.’”

Hugo’s eyebrows raised. Of course he knew of them, but Sigfried was still too young to know of them. This was interesting. ”What did they talk to you about? From what I know about ’them’ this is highly unusual.”

Sigfried looked to the bathroom door and shouted. ”Francesca! Your ass looks fat!”

...

...

...

”Ok, just checking.” Sigfried said before leaning in, grabbing his friends and with a solemn look on his face. ”Hugo, something has or is going to seriously fuck up the galaxy’s fate. They are trying to fix whatever has caused this, but they say they are blinded by this ’great force’ that is to come or has come. The only thing they do know is that I am at some point going to interact with this force and I am supposed to be weary of it. The next thing I know, my Mindspace is artificially expanded by some strange power and then they Psionically bound two women to it and told me they were fate weavers, without telling me what that means and sent us all out back through the gap with a warning not to tell the others about what happened.”

Sigfried then took a deep breath. ”Then the next thing I know Only the five of us make it back out, my squad is gone. I then returned back to base after finding out our comms were offline. The base was deserted for a long time so we moved onto the next planet and got updated. King Lysander was dead. Sigismund of all people is now the war king and decades have gone past in seconds.”

Hugo reached out and patted his friend on the shoulder. ”That must have been tough to go through. The death of King Lysander hit us all hard. But Sigismund avenged his death brutally and has been doing a phenomenal job as war king, so don’t let your biases dictate your thoughts on him. A long time has passed after all, for us at least.”

Sigfried sighed. ”It was tough, is tough. And I’ll think about it. Anyways after getting updated, we suddenly realised our little group was alone. No one knew of our mission except King Lysander and his war room. We were scrubbed clean after all. So we went to Ecumenopolis four to get some fake identities, we had lots of money after raiding the base for resources. We kept our names the same, hoping someone high up would recognise us and decided to enrol at the college as soon as we could so we could get back out there and do good for the empire.

But then, things took a turn for the worse... Your ugly mug turns up looking like that and now I am going to have nightmares for the rest of my life. I mean come on guy, at least wear an eyepatch if you are going to remain that ugly.”

The two then let out a thunderous laugh at the sudden switch in tone, Sigfried was always like that, the two of them always bantered. It was how they used to be.

Francesca a moment later then dipped her head through the door and asked. ”Is mystery talk over? I heard laughing.”

”Yeah, Franny we are done. In fact, Hugo here was about to tell us about his life, weren’t you bro? What have you been up to?”

Hugo smiled as his two friends looked on eagerly, he didn’t want to disappoint, but also could not tell them everything. ”Oh you know, I grieved the passing of my dear friends. Worked in the military, worked in the military, fell in love, worked in the military, got married, worked in the military, had a daughter, worked in the military, wife died in combat, worked in the military, became a therapist after overcoming that grief, worked in the military, led my own taskforce, while working in the military, got my head blown up by a brain burster, miraculously recovered and continued to work for the military, deal with all the headaches that come with managing the people under me, work for the military, continue to work for the military and track down my old friends that have magically reappeared. That pretty much sums up my life. I am happy to dive deeper into any of those topics at greater depth if you so choose.”

”Wow.” Sigfried commented before asking an important question.

”So tell me, did you end up staying in the military after we disappeared?”