Aldaris stopped the program. He'd had enough. First of all, the converter program that enabled him to see human data recorded on the compact disc was in english, and he hated not being able to comprehend the letters. Moreover, the compact discs of Earth seemed to be a bit different than those in the Korprullu Sector, so little black stripes appeared across his computer screen. Earth was more advanced in data storage than the K Sector - while cds were nearing obsoletion here, on Korhal or Moria they still often used "floppy discs". As it was, Aldaris could see Starcraft 2 well enough for his own purposes. Unfortunately.

Wings of Liberty had barely started, and already Aldaris could see that Starcraft 2 was every bit as terrible as Bethany had claimed, and worse. Then again, he hadn't been terribly happy with the first game, and no human entertainment had thus far truly captured his interest, so perhaps it was a hopeless endeavor to get him to enjoy any of it. Thus far in watching the recording of Starcraft 2, there had been not even so much as a mention of Protoss outside of the Tal'darim, so it was useless for his main goal as well.

Aldaris tapped the controls, and the human data disc ejected. Holding the disc briefly and examining its shiny exterior, Aldaris considered breaking it. Destroying the thing would in no way erase the images from his head, and what he had seen. Sure, most of it was just the tedious conflict between Raynor and Mengsk, which Aldaris cared very little about. He attempted to read Bethany's summary of the plot, but if he couldn't handle the brief english of a video program, then even her failed attempt at brevity was surely indecipherable.

Still, Aldaris put the disc back in the plastic cover...and threw it on the floor with the other trash. Most of those random Earth items that had been accidentally recalled up on his first day had long since been cleaned out (left to burn in Earth's atmosphere). This time the floor of his engine control room was now covered in piles of Protoss technology. Nearest to the far window, and the padded seating where a timid Cheonha had sat that first day, was the pile of things that had to go back into the ship. The pile in the middle of the floor, and the bigger of the two, was the trash pile; the conglomeration of things that had been shorted out, used up, or were just plain unnecessary. It was too big of a risk to leave them to burn in the atmosphere of a human world, but he would find other ways to store or destroy them. A second pile, not quite as large as the others, lay at the foot of Aldaris' chair. It was the stack of things he didn't understand the purpose of, and therefore couldn't trash. About half of it he was almost certain was useless in his present position, but without complete certainty he was stuck. No sense in getting rid of anything potentially useful when the nearest replacement was a universe away.

Aldaris was tired. Tired of the mess in his engine room, tired of cleaning it up, and most certainly tired of Starcraft. He didn't understand it at all, and what little he could understand was extremely offensive. Worse still, there were those "Protoss renegades" in the secret mission of Brood War that had somehow given Protoss technology to Duran. As much as he hoped that Brood War was wrong about it, given the game's odd accuracies in certain places he could not immediately rule out the renegades as false. It was bad enough some Protoss were Nerazim. Yet not even they would sell out the rest of the Protoss to Duran.

After a moment of thought, Aldaris rolled his eyes. Brood War aside, he couldn't possibly take Wings of Liberty seriously. Not only had the game changed Raynor's motivations from the first game - motivations which Aldaris knew for a fact were accurate - it made him some kind of rebel leader.

Raynor is no rebel. Aldaris glowered as though the human were in front of him. He flees his own kind because he does not believe he can change them. His frailty produces within him cowardice.

It was an unfair accusation to make of a soldier who fought for Aiur, but at that point Aldaris didn't care. If Raynor really had kidnapped Mengsk and allied with Kerrigan just to defeat the United Earth Directorate as the games said, then the faith Raynor had earned from Aldaris was gone. Whatever the Directorate was, Aldaris refused to believe it was worse than Kerrigan or Mengsk.

Of course, I am relying too much on THIS. Aldaris rose from his chair and stood above the trash pile. There was the disc, lying right on top. And however cowardly Raynor is, attacking the Protoss simply for the sake of artifacts and money has no part in his nature.

There were so many things about Wings of Liberty that confused Aldaris. For one thing, why did Kerrigan hide away for so many years? If those artifacts were so important, why didn't she come and get them right away? Why didn't Raynor get immediately suspicious when a group of Protoss wanted to defend them? Aldaris had never heard of these artifacts, and was certain he would have done so unless they were specifically Dark Templar in origin, which the game did not indicate.

For a moment, the Judicator was uncertain. Here he was, in a world where apparently the history of the K Sector was written out with surprising accuracy. Bethany seemed to know a lot about Starcraft, and Toby was probably finished with the Zerg part of Starcraft 2 already. John knew something about Starcraft as well. Simply put, there was no reason why Aldaris couldn't find out anything he wanted to know.

Aldaris, no longer in doubt, retrieved the disc from the pile and took it out of the plastic case. The case fell back into the pile, and after a snap, so did both halves of the disc.

If the humans that made this have no concern for it, then neither shall I.

\\\\\

Author's Notes:

- This is just a quick update. A proper chapter will be up soon.

Author's Notes New:

- Oh goodness, I miss a week due to being out and seeing family, and it happens to be on a day with a shorter chapter. Ah well. I had a good time with the fam, I just didn't have enough time to edit and post a chapter while I was playing with the nieces and nephews.

In any case, I plan on updating this every Sunday per usual. I'm thinking about posting two chapters a week of part 2, but that hinges on how well I edit that. I was roughly happy with the structure of part one, but part two needed severe re-working to be more interesting. I wasn't in a good place when I first wrote it, so I need to take some time and just hammer it all out. Which may not happen soon, as I do want to post every so often on my blog, as well as make progress on some original fiction to post. Hm, yeah, I think I better stick to one update a week for part 2 as well, so I can build up a big buffer for parts 3 and 4.

It's gonna be a long one, y'all.

- I'm still irritated about how they treated my boy Raynor. Why would he just kill the Tal'darim for money? Upon encountering them, his first reaction would be to ask Tychus why the Mobius Foundation wants a Protoss artifact. He should have contacted the Protoss directly to ask what the deal with it was. Once it was established how much these Protoss were obsessed with the artifacts, Raynor should have immediately questioned if what he was doing could have a major impact on the Sector.

Yes, I know the Tal'darim turned out to be evil, but Raynor didn't know that at first. He literally just shoots them and steals their stuff to sell it. Yuck.