I was cold, and it was dark. The sun went down fast, and I don't have a jacket. It wasn't so bad at the moment, as I heat up pretty fast when I walk. As soon as I sit still, it's going to be a slow decline into unhappy temperatures. I'll have to huddle like hamsters with the others - though I quickly kicked that thought out of my mind. Huddling like hamsters is not something I want to be thinking about when I catch up to the psychic.

It was kind of nice, in a way. The moon was out, and even in the cold it was nice to watch it through the barren branches of the trees. The view gave off a nice, enchanted forest vibe. Despite everything, I began to feel a little happy. As annoying as it might be to suddenly pop off half a world away at a regular basis, I can't exactly say that my life is boring.

It's not always possible to notice when exactly Aldaris appears in your mind when you're around him. One moment you're thinking about pretty dresses, and the next he's there, radiating his presence like a wifi network. He was right about being able to find him. Granted, there's only one destination when you climb a hill, but it's nice to know that Aldaris' head acts like a beacon. ...One can only wonder how many of my weird thoughts Aldaris has had to put up with by this point. Referring to him as a beacon isn't even all that bad compared to all the other nonsense things that bounce around my skull.

Once I knew where to look, Aldaris' glowing eyes were obvious. That's when I noticed the deer. It twitched when it saw me, but Aldaris said some protoss words to it, and it calmed down. It stood next to Charlie, allowing him to touch its big ears. Yep, that happened. Judicator Aldaris, sitting in near complete darkness, petting a wild deer. I swear, this guy's part dinosaur, part Disney princess.

"Dominance over animalian life is a form of psychic technique," Aldaris explained, even though I didn't ask. "The Earth creatures I have seen thus far are unable to resist pacification. Though this creature seems harmless. What is it called?"

"That's a deer. And it is harmless, unless you're driving." I thought for a moment. "Huh, this must be what you did to Kensley's dog."

With a gesture, Aldaris waved off the deer. It didn't immediately respond. It licked his hand for a second, then looked at me. Aldaris pointed off into the distance again, and the deer wandered off about its woodland business. D'aww.

"You have returned late," Aldaris said stiffly. "Though I cannot be surprised at this. Tardiness is not outside your normal behavior."

"Hey, be nice. I'm actually not late, most of the time. And this time, dear Charlie, I was hiding out to prevent you from being discovered. Some guys saw me on the side of the road and decided that I needed to be followed. They gave it up pretty quickly, but I was hiding out on the next hill over, and I wanted to wait until no cars were visible until I came back over here."

Looking around for a place to sit, I saw all the other humans, sitting together and huddled like hamsters. Hey, it was cold.

"Anyway, I say all that to say that, unfortunately, we're somewhere in eastern Europe. I'm glad everybody else is asleep, so they don't have to be awake to starve. Actually, I'm surprised Statkus is sleeping. He's from an earlier time zone than me, and it was morning when we left."

"All of the humans I have yet encountered found it possible to sleep at a moment's notice."

"The humans you encountered were probably all soldiers, and that's pretty normal for them." I shrugged, thinking of Raynor's Raiders. "Me? I'm wide awake."

"Had my awareness not been necessary, I too should have succumbed." Aldaris rubbed his head a bit. "I am nearer to sleep than is desirable for this situation."

"I don't know how you can say that when it's so cold. Brr." I shivered. "So are you feeling alright? It's pretty dark out here, and I know you don't always get a chance to be in the light."

Aldaris' eyes narrowed. That's the thing about talking to telepaths. You don't always have to hear words; their feelings can go back and forth just as easily. His feelings of irritation surrounded him like a force field.

"My condition is well under control, and also none of your concern," Aldaris replied. Suddenly his mood instantly changed, and with it, the subject. "Bethany, please answer my question honestly. It will save us both the trouble of investigating your mind. After last week's incident, I must know how you have explained your injuries."

I blushed, thankful it was too dark for him to see (or are Protoss eyes better than ours because they glow?). He was talking about the time he saved me from a wandering gang. No, I haven't written that down yet. I'm not ready. It was just a week ago, alright? Fortunately, I had figured out the answer to his question.

"Heh," I chuckled. "For your sake, friend, I couldn't report it. But whenever anybody asked about my face, I simply told the truth: that I was rescued by an older, bald, military guy."

That got a chuckle out of Charlie. "In truth, my position is not military in nature. It is the folly of any nation to allow military might overbearance. Civillian leadership keeps warrior aggression in its proper channels."

"Oh, my bad then," I shrugged. "It's not a lie if I didn't know."

"You may have guessed. This principle is not unknown to humans. Nonetheless, you must not expect I shall always serve as your guardian, ready to forsake my concealment at any moment for your sake." Aldaris' eyes went past me, over toward the others. "Even now Cheonha proves troublesome in what she expects of me, insisting on aid in personal matters where I have little right to interfere. It may have perhaps have proven ideal had I returned her to her place of origin, the day I appeared here. I did not consider it at the time, distracted as I was with other matters."

"No," I growled. "It's much less trouble that you sent her to Seoul. If you had sent her back to North Korea, not only would I have immediately ratted you out, but I would find some way to hurt you."

Taken aback, Aldaris stared at me. This is the first time he's ever pissed me off, so he must have been surprised. He only stumbled over his words a second, no longer than that, and lit his eyes a surly orange-yellow. "And what do you presume you could have done against me?"

"Not much, probably, but that wouldn't have stopped me from trying." The tone I took was unnecessarily violent, so I forced myself to calm down with a smile. "Then again, if you'dve thought that way about Cheonha, you probably would have dealt with me one way or another before I had the chance to do anything."

"...If I return Cheonha now, you still would resort to violence?"

"Let me explain. If you somehow find it necessary to kill Cheonha I won't get mad, or at least not that mad." I considered sitting down for a moment. Nah, too dirty, too dark. I leaned against a tree instead. "Even if you kill all of us, I won't care, provided you did so because it somehow protects Protoss interests. In your position, that's only logical. But if you send Cheonha back to North Korea, I won't forgive you. I expect better from someone of your position."

"I see. So you forget your duty to Earth for my sake, and remember it only as it concerns Cheonha?"

I shut my mouth. Holy crap, Charlie had a good point. Here I was going on about protecting one girl, and yet I'm the one letting a potentially hostile extraterrestrial hang out on our planet. Well, I never said I wasn't a hypocrite...

"You then know why Korea is divided? Cheonha was unable to effectively communicate this."

Huh? What was Cheonha talking to Aldaris about that for? "Not in perfect detail, but yes."

"Then explain it, if you would."

"It's kind of a long story."

"Are we pressed for time?"

"Uh, well, okay. The primary reason for North Korea's downfall is communism, though today it's sort of developed away from that to a plain tyranny. It's the only communist nation where a tyrant was succeeded by his son, and later grandson."

"And what is communism? I have heard this word before, and know it only as a form of perjorative."

"Communism is an old idea, one that can be traced to French philosophy." I found a place where a bunch of tree roots rose above the dirt, and sat there. "Several variations existed of it over time, but the only one that ever really stuck in a meaningful way is Marxism, because a guy called Karl Marx developed it. It's more complicated than just a simple summary, but basically communism is the utopian idea that workers can and should be in charge of a nation, and that everyone should work according to their ability, and be provided for according to their needs. Like commie philosopher Leon Trotsky said, there would be no abusers of power, because everyone would be in power."

"That system contradicts itself. It cannot give power to workers, as those that control a nation will surely be those who determine what 'need' is, and also those that distribute. Such a system would quickly degenerate into rewarding loyalists."

I silently applauded Aldaris. "Wow. It took you two seconds to figure out what some people don't get their whole lifetimes. Other people would figure it out if they read about it, because Trotsky outright states the idea that all power should be given to a socialist government, which would then fade away so that workers would allegedly be in power. But let's be real, governments don't willingly give up power. So communism also severs the link between work and reward, where since you only get what the government decides to get you, working hard doesn't get you anything more than praise from your boss. It's a stereotype of communist countries where workers fulfill their quotas and then slack off, provided they aren't in prison camps."

"Then how did North Korea become communist?"

I stopped there a minute. Facts swirled about in my head. There are so many people responsible for what happened to Korea. Stalin, Kim Il Sung, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman...where was I to begin in all of that? It's a convoluted story.

"Well, the first communist nation was Russia. It became the Soviet Union, which, while being called a 'union', was really just Russia grabbing any nearby nations and declaring that these were part of it. Josef Stalin became its leader not long after its inception by various forms of trickery and murder, and it was him who picked Mao Tse Tung to rule what would become communist China, and Kim Il Sung to rule Korea. Korea at that point, the whole penninsula, was occupied by Imperialist Japan. Japan was one of the losers of World War II, and when the war ended, the Allied powers - us nations that won the war - wanted to give Korea its independence again."

Aldaris concentrated intently on my words. "This Soviet Union was part of the Allied powers?"

I cringed. "Sort of. In the beginning, they signed a non-aggression pack with the Axis powers - the losers - and remained out of the war in exchange for territory in eastern Europe that Germany believed it had the right to grant. Then Germany lost its head and attacked them, causing Russia to switch sides. The important thing is that the Soviet Union was able to manipulate fighting against Axis powers as an excuse to keep its European territories, as well as gain concessions in the Far East. It participated in the war against Japan for a mere two weeks, after we had already used nuclear power to convince Japan that surrender was a better option."

"That is a vast amount of detail, and very little concerning Korea."

"I'm getting there. The president of my country at that time, Franklin Roosevelt, was trash. He was willing to give away other peoples' nations for the sake of his version of peace. In Europe, the Soviets had a ton of ground troops there, so there wasn't a lot he could do there. However, the Soviets hadn't done much at all in the Far East, and Roosevelt promised them a chunk of China for the promise of helping with Japan. All without China's agreement."

"You are again straying from the point."

"I'm getting there. So, the intent was for the Allied powers to administrate Korea until they could form a government of their own. Roosevelt died in office, but I guess Harry Truman, the next president, decided to keep Roosevelt's promises. The Soviet Union was allowed to administrate the north, and the other allies took the south. Again, everyone wanted it to be one nation again, but each side expected it to be under their own principles, and not the other's."

"I take it compromise was never reached."

"No, compromise wasn't possible. They even initiated the Korean war, in the effort to take the whole penninsula for themselves. Though they'll claim that us Amerians started it."

Aldaris narrowed his eyes. "Did you?"

"No! Just the opposite. We apparently at that time wanted as little as possible to do with Korea. I don't fully understand our position, but the government had set up a defensive strategy in the Far East, one that conspicuously did not include Korea, for whatever reason. This lack of concern helped provoke North Korean communists into thinking we'd let them have Korea.

"Stalin's dictator of choice, Kim Il Sung, was the one mostly pushing for invasion - naturally because he'd turn out to be the leader. Stalin encouraged China to get involved, mainly so he could get them to send their armies without him having to be directly involved. As it turned out, we Americans and the UN weren't just going to allow them to invade, so the war lasted way longer than they liked, and armistice didn't happen until shortly after Stalin's death. Things ended much as they began, with the border in the exact same place as it was before the war, only now it's a heavily armed border where no one ever crosses. Technically speaking, the war itself never ended, and is currently ongoing now, even though there's no actual fighting at this point."

"I do not understand. Why did your government go through the expense of a war if they cared nothing for Korea? If the border remained unchanged, clearly they did not succeed in any form of gain."

"If you find out, let me know." I sighed. "Probably it was because it didn't look good if we just let people up and invade another nation. Heck, we were always scatterbrained about South Korea for years after that, half supporting, half hoping they'd be strong enough on their own. President Jimmy Carter was especially bad. He wanted to remove our stationed American troops from Korea entirely, even though if he did, that would only be the same kind of mistake Truman made with the defense perimeter. Thankfully, Carter's plans were stymied by being mentioned to the public, and relations normalized after President Reagan came into office. Not that Reagan was focused much on Korea. His efforts did contribute significantly to the fall of the Soviet Union, though. It collapsed in 1991."

"May I remind you, I am not well familiar with human chronology."

"Oh, um, so...okay, Starcraft came out in 1998. So, seven years after the Soviet Union fell." I held up seven fingers. And then I told Aldaris how old I was at that point, but I'm not going to write it here. A lady does not tell her age. Not to people who understand human chronology, anyway.

"You have mentioned this Jimmy Carter before," Aldaris said with some amusement. "As I recall, you claimed he kept your father from going into space."

"Yeah. Well, not specifically Dad. It was budget cuts, same as always. Dad says that NASA isn't good at playing politics, so they can never make people support them. I'm not mad about that, though. If Dad went to space, I might not exist. Existing is pretty nice." I yawned. "So why bring all this up? What's your interest in Korea?"

"Cheonha wishes for me to save her mother."

"Oh? Are you going to?"

Aldaris eyed me. "You declare no threats this time?"

"Of course not. Cheonha became your problem when she teleported onto your ship. You're not responsible for anything else about North Korea."

"Well met, you have come to the correct realization. That I should have to deal with you so soon after saving your life, would be quite the pity."

That's our Charlie. Always a creeper. I giggled.

"In any case, I am undecided on the matter," Aldaris continued. "I must determine if the risk of her mother's sudden presense is greater than the risk of Cheonha actions if her wish is denied."

"Did she say she will tell people about you?"

"No, though she is fragile by her nature. I cannot rely on her goodwill in all circumstances." Aldaris rubbed his eyes. "Should I grant this, what stops her from desiring another favor? That is the trouble with you four, that you may at any time insist on the use of my superior technology, or else expose me to your governments in retaliation. Be aware that I am not receptive to such manipulations. Nor can you expect my benevolence at all times. Do not grow accustomed to it."

"At the risk of sounding ungrateful, you didn't have to save me. Technically speaking." I grinned. "Face it, Charlie, you're a nice person."

"I am a principled person, not one kind-hearted enough to risk my technology every time you make foolish decisions," he retorted.

There goes asking him to give me a ride to visit out of state family. "Well, I wasn't planning on blackmailing you or anything like that. But you're right. Out of all of us, Cheonha is the wild card. Not least because we can't communicate effectively with her."

"Do you believe she would behave irrationally if I refused her request?"

"I don't know. She's pretty shy, but I'm not sure I know her well enough to say. And don't ask me to try and convince her to leave you alone about her mother. Not only do I not know how to do that, if she were willing to give up on her mom, she wouldn't have bothered asking you about it. Sorry, Charlie, you're going to have to figure this one out on your own."

Aldaris eyed me with as much suspicion as his tired gaze could muster. "Do not deny it. In your heart you wish I would save her mother, despite the risk."

I nodded. "It's what I would do. But I'm not going to tell you to do anything. We here on Earth have to figure out our own problems. We can't depend on a randomly appearing ET with advanced technology all the time, even assuming that my advice was worth taking."

"That is the correct response. Do remember it, when you are tempted otherwise." Aldaris' words came out almost like a threat. He relaxed almost immediately afterwards and slumped back against the tree. "I can bear no more. In your estimation, how likely is it that we shall encounter another?"

"To my knowledge, not likely at all. We're pretty much out in the middle of a bunch of country roads. Are you sure you're not cold?"

"It is quite comfortable, in my estimate."

"Aish. No wonder it's so cold on your ship."

Aldaris touched the thing on his shoulder, and I politely looked away. I don't think I need have bothered, as he kept the thing carefully tucked away underneath the top part of his robe. Still, manners. And not getting myself into trouble for spying on his Protoss tech. A moment later he dropped his hand.

"My vessel has regained enough energy for the recall of myself and one other," he said. "Reluctant as I am to leave the rest of you behind, in an emergency, I must do so. You must find a way to deal with your own kind."

"That so? I hope it goes better than it did in China." I shook my head. "Well, you'll take Cheonha if something goes wrong, I guess."

"No, I shall not. John shall first return with me." Aldaris' eyes opened a little more, and they flashed yellow at me. "In the event that I must recall out, John shall go, that he might not reveal my presence. I know from what you saw on the road below that these eastern Europeans know enough of your language. If I am able, Toby will go next, then Cheonha. You shall go last of all, for I fear your betrayal the least."

I stared at him, agape. "You're serious?"

"Have I not your item, and Cheonha's as well? More than this, you do not remember the previous incident? You spoke as a fool rather than divulge my secret. Indeed, you have admitted to me openly that you are excited to have encountered, as you say, an 'extraterrestrial'. You are all too happy to discover what circumstances may befall me."

"That's just not fair. You know me too well."

"I am avenged then, for your advantage in Starcraft when we first met," Aldaris said, quietly as his heavy eyes started to shut. "For what little Starcraft is able to accurately portray of me, that is. Go on a little ways. Your thoughts shall not be so loud at such a distance. Keep watch as best you are able. It is a foolish risk for so little a benefit as open air, yet I shall indulge. Wake me in any unusual circumstance."

"Algessimneedah."

I made sure to walk away several yards before wondering how much korean Aldaris had managed to learn at this point. Well, whatever the case was, I kept my mind quiet. Why not be nice and let Aldaris have some sleep? I shivered again. I wanted to march around to keep warm, but noise on a night like that felt like blasphemy. Once I felt I was distant enough from the top of the hill, maybe fifty or so yards, I sat down. If it hadn't been so dark, I might have climbed a tree for a better viewpoint.

I don't know how much time passed. Maybe one hour, maybe two. It's weird how little control time has over your life when you don't have any kind of watch. Frankly I could have counted the seconds with the cold keeping me alert. The good news was, Charlie almost certainly got in a nice enough nap. And then the bad news happened.

A light broke in, down below the hill. Cars had been passing in the distance every so often, but in the cold night the sounds of the engines were more exaggerated. Which is why I knew that the quickly disappearing beam of light was definitely a headlight on a car. Granted, both the light and the noise were faint from the distance I saw them, but not long after they were followed by a voice or two, calling to each other. I was up in an instant.

Charlie! I screamed in my head. We need to get out of here now! There's no time to waste! I don't know who is here, but we can't wait and find out!

I got up the hill just in time to see my best good reptile buddy vanish in a blue light. I blinked as much as I could, waving my hands in front of my face as though that would help me see better after the teleporter ruined my nightvision. Ah, the teleporter must have charged up just enough to get another person; Toby was gone too. All I saw once my vision kicked back into gear was a scared Cheonha, sitting there alone in the leaves.

"Bethany-" she said, scared.

"Kago piryo isso!" I said, with probably atrocious grammar. "Bhallie, bhallie!"

The two of us ran down the other side of the hill, opposite of where the voices had come from. The voices did get louder, and I'm sure they must have seen the bright blue glow of the teleportation, but neither Cheonha or I looked back. We ran down that hill with all our might, and Cheonha heroically powered through despite wearing those cheap flats for shoes. Thankfully it was all downhill, but not until we spotted the old shed again did I realize that we could have been surrounded. We charged on forward anyway, climbing over the little railing that separated road from side of road.

"Hey, hey!" someone called.

A lot more words of some language or another followed, but Cheoha and I didn't wait for a translation. We sprinted across that road and practically flew over the railing on the other side. I'm not a fast runner, and in those shoes Cheonha was even worse, so we plunged stupidly along the bottom of another hill on the other side of the road. Stones rolled under our feet, and the grass gave way to soft sounds and inky black water. Just great.

"My shoe!" Cheonha exclaimed. "No!"

Given the way the muck was pulling at my own footwear, it was easy enough to guess what was going on with Cheonha. I looked back just in time to see whoever it was yelling at us get in his car and drive off. I understood what we had to do in that instant. As much as some random girl who watches videos about tracking people in Rhodesia could ever figure out.

"We've got to go uphill!" I pointed up, explaining way too much and too fast to an english noobie. "That guy probably knows where to turn on the road to get in front of us! We need to not be where he can predict!"

"My shoe!" Cheonha repeated.

It was neither the time nor the place for her to be mucking about a silly shoe, but thankfully she managed to grab it before she made me push her up the hill. She spent several seconds forcing her probably more than muddy shoe back on her foot once we got away from the softer ground. I was so impatient that I wanted to scream, but of course that wasn't any good. I grabbed Cheonha and pushed her faster up the hill. Her hand was muddy, therefore so was mine. Great. I hope wherever we were didn't have that kind of red clay mud that gets all everywhere and doesn't wash out.

That type of worry is for someone writing a journal entry, not for someone living it out. At that point all I knew was that we were cold, wet, and climbing a hill in near absolute dark. This particular hill had a sort of long dip near the top, and the trees seemed to gather more closely here. I crouched down near the bottom of some of them, motioning for Cheonha to follow suit. The poor thing. I couldn't see her well in the dark, but she was breathing heavily, and since she's from the opposite side of the planet as me, this would probably normally be a time when she would be asleep. The poor dear.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"No," she whispered back, crabbily. "No okay."

"I'm sorry. Let's wait here."

I probably should have answered her in korean, but all the korean textbooks I've ever owned taught in formal or polite style, leaving the casual banmal completely ignored. That's the version of korean you speak between friends, and I like to think of Cheonha as my friend. Banmal is probably way easier than I think it is, but I'll never know because the dang books never teach it.

A key strategy not followed enough in hide and seek is remaining motionless. Movement attracts the eye, and hiding quietly in one space is often a good strategy. Unless the strangers had dogs, but let's hope they didn't.

Nothing happened for what felt like the longest time. I didn't move at all, but warily stared in all directions. Cheonha was picking up on my tension, as I could see as soon as my eyes readjusted to the dark. We crouched there in the shrubbery, listening for anything that would indicate what was going on. For a bit we heard nothing, but a couple of minutes later some voices made their way up the hill. It was a lot of consonant-ridden slavic talk, which would have been pleasant enough if it wasn't accompanied by two flashlights sweeping over the hillside. Suddenly Rhodesia videos and hide and seek experience didn't seem so valuable anymore.

Cheonha tensed as though to begin moving. I moved my arm in front of her to stop her. Running now would only get us spotted, and in my doofusness I had let us end up facing up the hill - if we were going to run, we needed to go downhill to pick up any speed we could.

The flashlights came closer, and we both waited in horror as the light moved here and there. I rose up on my toes to get ready to run. Thankfully, it didn't come to that. The Europeans searched around a bit, called out some, and then kept walking along. They barely even noticed the bushes we were hiding behind. To judge from the unconvinced tones they spoke in, I think they must have thought that we got away.

It was several minutes after these guys left that we dared speak to one another. Cheonha breathed hard, and she said something tense. I didn't quite pick it up, but there was a "nuga" in there, so probably she was wondering who those people were. An excellent question, frankly. We must have stumbled into something. Were these guys tracking a criminal or something? Did I look like some kind of suspect, and that's why those guys in the car were acting so weird earlier?

"Kulsso," I said, hoping desperately that that was correct banmal. "Ama tarun sarami chajaso."

"Aldaris sonsaengnim..." she whispered, terrified. "Odi kyesumneedah?"

Oh boy. Well, even if I was fluent in korean, I'm not going to be the one to tell her that we got dumped here because we're the least likely to betray our local Protoss. Only then did I begin to wonder if Cheonha's reluctance came more from desire to keep Aldaris secret, or more from the fact she simply didn't speak english. I wonder how many eastern Europeans know korean.

"I don't know," I whispered back.

"Yogi...here we wait?"

"Yes." I looked around. "Uh, I guess."

We didn't get caught. Statkus and Toby apparently got to spend the rest of the night on Aldaris' ship, while us girls got to freeze out there in the cold. Aldaris comes across as a traditional guy. Surely he knows the ol' "women and children first" thing. I could tolerate it for myself, but poor Cheonha was ready to drop. I would have just let her sleep on my shoulder, but the strangers didn't go away. Periodically throughout the night we could hear them talk, and every so often a light or something would show up from the other hill we had been on that night. If Aldaris left a footprint or something behind...

Those were worries for another time. As the sun rose over us poor foreigners, Aldaris did manage to find us and teleport us home. When I got back to my house, it was already nearly dark. So not only did I lose my only day off before a long weekend of work, I got to spend it mostly devoid of light.

Seriously, Charlie needs to get his ship fixed already.

\\\\\

Author's Notes:

- I've come up with a system in my head about the Protoss caste system and what each can do. While all three castes (and DTs) have specific skills that their caste specializes in, as their members get older, they tend to look for non-caste specializations. The High Templar are well practiced in Judicator specialities, blending them with Templar techniques and "overclocking" them to create physical substance from psychic form. Other Templar cross train in the psi-tech of the Khalai caste. While cross training in other castes tends to depend more on individual preferences, Templar choice is tied tightly to career path.

Judicator focus almost purely on the workings on the mind. They are, ironically enough, the closest in psychic study type to the Dark Templar, simply with different means. But, absent of dark archons, the Judicator is closer to overpowering other minds. They know most intimately the workings of the brain, and are best at interrogations, memory recollection, and chemical manipulation. Any form of Judicator manipulation is chemical based. They can't actually control someone's mind like a dark archon, but only emotions and impulses. Therapists are most often Judicator. While there are fighting Judicator and ones not unlike High Templar, the caste tends to prefer Khalai cross-specialization because it happens to be more useful in their daily lives.

Khalai have many specialists in non-psychic areas (like architecture). Their core psychic study tends to be the development of psycho-mechanical works, resulting in psychic controlled and powered technology. Khalai cross-training is usually in Judicator methods, which the Khalai alter for the purpose of animal husbandry. Khalai are very good with animals, studying both their minds and bodies for design purposes. As a result, Aiur tech tends to operate similarly to nervous systems (note that no animal cruelty is involved). The Khalai also have a high number of powerful medical professionals.

The Dark Templar have little specialization, due to the unstructured nature of their society. While many DT choose to become proficient in certain things, their educational system is on the whole less disciplined. Likewise, their technology (other than long-distance spacefaring crafts) is less developed than it is on Aiur. The Dark Templar make it up through their studies of the void, and the essence that is space, with no matter and no end. Dark Templar techniques enable them to live longer periods of time without light, and on less. They also have very efficient space-mapping systems and charts. Their activities tend to be less about themselves and more about the study of the universe as a whole.

Note that in the K Sector, the only "Dark Templar" who are actually referred to this way are in fact the Neraz masters with this particular form of training (which is indeed more similar to Templar/Judicator techniques than some Khalani would like - each side developed their version of archons on their own, without the other's help). There are other Neraz masters whose training is in other areas. In fact, not all Nerazim can even turn invisible, and not all of those who can can do so for extended periods of time. Only the masters of Dark Templar power can do so indefinitely.

Note also that all this is my own personal canon, not anything Blizzard related. I just like details.

- One of the limitations of this story is that I can't explain anything about Protoss that Aldaris won't say to us or record in his journal. So for the record, I'm going to elaborate here on what the deal is with his sickness.

Aldaris has a rare genetic condition called inparsynthesis. This means he's less able than other Protoss to absorb sunlight. It's not a big deal, particularly on sunny planets like Aiur or Earth. It just means he has to be outside more often, and at times sleep with a light on if he feels weird. However, on a darker planet like Shakuras, as well as an extended period on a spaceship with only artificial light, affected Protoss suffer from pains and sudden lethargy. In extreme cases, the afflicted person can die, but that's highly unusual. This condition forces Aldaris to leave his ship and stay on Earth periodically, because artificial light is less nourishing, especially after long periods of time on it alone.

Inparsynthesis runs primarily in Judicator families, though it has been seen in Khalai and Templar families as well. It can have a negative affect on the careers of the few Templar that have it. It limits their ability to endure Templar training and duties, so the Templar that have it often try to hide it or end up accepting positions that involve less space travel. It's difficult to predict who will get it, even in Judicator families, as it routinely skips one to five generations between affected persons.

Dark Templar almost never have inparsynthesis. However, those that settled on Shakuras initially suffered from similar symptoms over time due to the immense cloud cover of the planet - the condition is, after all, exactly like light starvation. Nerazim therapies developed quickly, and as a result, most Dark Templar who do have the condition don't realize it - they've already developed through ordinary means the ability make the most of the sunlight they get, only displaying symptoms in extreme cases. These therapies are growing in popularity with the Khalani exiles. Aldaris, however, is as likely to attempt any of these therapies as he is to praise humanity for being enlightened. Khalani therapies, though less effective on a daily basis, are superior in dealing with sudden and overpowering symptoms. He thinks he'll be fine without DT stuff.

Aldaris doesn't speak much of his condition even to other Protoss. In his youth often slept at his desk or with an open book nearby, so that anyone who passed by thought he fell asleep before turning the light off. Now that he's older, he doesn't have an ego about it anymore. During the brief period he trusted the Dark Templar, he worked with both Nerazim and Khalani to sort out the sunlight problems the exiles faced in getting accustomed to a twilight world.

Author's Notes New:

- I tried to find the Polish word for "hey" online, but it turns out that this word is "hej" - which is pronounced and behaves exactly like the english equivalent. It is to lol.

- I learned something interesting not long ago. Apparently the Soviet Russians taking Chinese territory after World War II was in some ways a good thing. Mongolia had been a Chinese territory prior to this, but, in the guise of promising Mongolians independence (i.e. being under Russian instead of Chinese control), they allowed Mongolia to become a nation. Now that the Soviet Union is gone, Mongolia really is independent. If Russia hadn't controlled the nation, it would not be free from China today.

- If you're wondering about the korean conversation at the end there, I was telling Cheonha that the people were probably looking for others. She then asked where Aldaris was.

One interesting, and slightly annoying thing, about Korean is that you often use formal language when just speaking about an esteemed person, even if that person isn't present. That's why Cheonha used the -imneedah ending when asking about Aldaris.