SPOILERS

Expiry Dates

Before I leave this world I, want to see it spin from out there,

Watch the colours swirl before we blow it into shades of black and gray

No wings and no gates, just skill testing questions and expiry dates

.:Date II:.

The ride through the miserably gray city was long. The contraption the two rode was called a motorbike, as the newly introduced, Eve, mentioned. She seemed to take pride in the two-wheeled vehicle. Her partner, Dolsolus, rode a somewhat similar motorbike, only the front and rear wheels were small and the body of the bike rested on strange legs that connected to the wheels. At times the bike seemed to take on a hovering type mode. Eve had explained that her model was made a few centuries ago but her love of Gaia's past was to great to simply allow it to die.

Continuing on through the vastly deserted city, Kratos inquired about the strange leave of absence of other life forms such as themselves.

"The Brine is a race of humans who only exist for themselves, and enjoy solitude. We're not a very happy people."

"You refer to the Brine as we. You're considered Brine? You don't seem to only care for yourself, or very much enjoy solitude. You seem more adventurous and happy." A slight giggle escaped the latter.

"Well, when you grew up with grand parents who knew of what Gaia lost and still could somehow regain, you don't really turn out to be all depressed. I'm one of the luckier ones." At this final comment from Eve, they pulled up along side a tall building, roughly two stories. It appeared just as bleak and dismal as every other building in the dreary city let off. Technologically advanced as the city appeared, the dark mechanical, heartless outlook didn't leave much for the imagination.

Parking the vehicles along side the building, they all got off and headed for the entrance. Eve walked up first to the building and rolling up the sleeve on her right arm she revealed a strange socket right in the joint of her arm. Suddenly out of nowhere a long wire with some strange spike at the end of it flew from above the door and before Kratos could question what was going on, the wire plugged itself into Eve's arm. With a slight wince from her it quickly flew out once again, blood trailing it as it returned to the top of the door.

"Brine #02723041700, Eve Merlos, confirmed. Access Granted."

The door before them quickly broke, as if glass, and flew about behind them, reforming themselves into it's original form. What had originally been the barren street behind them, quickly disappeared as a strange wavy view of the interior of the building suddenly surrounded the small group. The view soon cleared as a strange veil of liquid air rose up off of them and out of thin air they were surrounded by a small group of people.

"Bought time you arrived. We had begun to worry." Stated the closest male as he walked up to Eve and gave her a hug.

"You worried about me?"

"Well, more or less about Dolsolus but take it however you want. This whole thing is completely new to us, how were we suppose to know." She smiled at the mans reply and before she could say anything more a tall man with a strange flashing gizmo on his head came running out to join the group.

"Search! What's up?"

"You have to see it! The computers are going nuts. The information we're receiving is completely foreign." He said trying to regain his composure. He turned and ran down the hall he had original came from. With a worried look Eve followed suite, in close tow was the remainder of the group of five who they had yet to meet.

"This could be bad."

"What's wrong?"

"Search is our computer genius. And can decipher anything and everything. But if he's run into something he's not blatantly familiar with, then there could be trouble." With that, Dolsolus ran after the crew.

With a shake of his head, Kratos quietly followed after the disappearing group. "What have I gotten myself into?"

Upon reaching the inner room, Kratos winced and stepped back from the strange light. The room was basked in a strange red florescent light. As his eyes adjusted he was able to take in his surroundings. Wires hung throughout the air, flashing monitors of strange images and words could be seen flying diagonally across the screens. The room was cluttered with boxes of different sizes and a large assortment of bottles. Kratos guessed they contained some sort of alcoholic beverage as the smell clung to the thick air.

Moving forward into the room, Kratos joined the group as they hovered around Search. This particular screen had nothing on it at all. Closer inspection of everyone around him showed they were all wearing some strange device. A contraption of metal and wires that clung to one side of there heads, with an arm that reached out over there right eye with a tiny screen that seemed to be projecting some sort of beams into each ones eyes.

"I can't read any of it. And it's flying left to right rather than our diagonal script. I can't decipher it. I've tried everything." Search said heatedly.

Kratos cleared his throat. "I'm sorry to bother you all, but what is it you're all looking at?" He questioned the group. They all looked around at him which caught him off guard as there eyes were all strangely dilated almost to the point of there being no iris at all. And then on each ones right eye the pupil had gone completely white as the beams from the strange screen in front of there eyes dashed in and out.

"Oh. Didn't even realize you had brought someone in along with you, Eve. Here." Search stood up with another strange headset and some sort of rod thing with an oval shaped socket at the top, which contained a strange red dot on the inside of it.

"Wait!" Eve quickly jumped from her original seat next to Search and ran over to Search before he reached Kratos.

"What is it?"

"Let me handle it, Search. You get back to work on trying to figure out what it says. By stepping away, you're simply allowing more time to be wasted." She said with a grin to her friend as she took the headset and rod away from him.

"Ahh, yeah sure." He stated strangely and returned to his seat in front of the screen. Eve took up Kratos's arm and led him away into the room directly across from the computer lab.

"What are you doing?" He stated as he rested his arm away from her grip.

"Sorry, it's just, your eyes. If you hadn't picked up on it earlier, no one in our group has any sort of colour to their iris. They're all different shades of gray. If Search had gone and administered the UIV to you, and saw your brown eyes, well… there would be a lot of questions flying around. And I'm not sure how Search or any of the others would react to seeing someone with coloured eyes. Odds are they would experiment on you. First they'd find that trans-bug I placed on you first and it would just go downhill from there." She said as she placed the headset down on the nightstand next to the bed.

"I could have taken care of myself had it come to that."

"Heh, well, I can give you that that I don't know what you're capable of. But I can assure you if you're still out of shape like you were back on your moon, then our technology would have arrested your movements pretty easily and you wouldn't be able to do much from there. It's best that you keep your true self well hidden so we can get out of here and try to find out what is going to happen." She explained as she fiddled with the strange rod. With a final click a beam shot from the inner circle and with another click it went away.

"Alright. We're use to this but since you've never had a UIV administered to you, it may hurt."

"Wait, what exactly is a UIV?" Kratos questioned as she slowly approached him.

"Oh, it's a Universal Iye Vector system. It dilates your pupils and sends a red laser beam back onto your cornea and it inscribes a set of lines along your cornea so this," She picked up the headset from the stand, "your standard Iye Receptor or IR, can then send in it's own white beams which pick up special wave lights from the UIR, or the Universal Iye Rail. The UIR is Gaia's information highway. Everything goes through it, and every Brine on this planet can read it by use of a UIV. We're specialists in the field of UIV technology though. Or more like hackers. The Leads put the system together and ran its channels through out the core of Gaia which allows its reach to stretch to every city and town on Gaia."

"And what is it that Search is unable to read in there?"

"Well, it seems with Derris-Kharlan's disruption of the eastern boarder, the moon's own frequency waves traveled into the UIR and we're now seeing whatever it is your moons waves are. Although you may be able to help us in this, once you can read it." She walked up closer to him, he stepped back.

"You should probably take a seat on the bed. We're all use to it, as we've done it on ourselves for years now, but for you since it's your first time, it may hurt."

"What good is this going to do if I can read it or not? It could be meaningless."

"So it's meaningless to try to do anything and everything we can to save the universe?"

"What did you say! Since when is this whole thing suddenly revolving around the universe?"

"You're forgetting that your moon-"

"Stop calling it my moon for gods sake!"

Eve stepped back shocked at the man's sudden outburst.

"I'm sorry. It's just. I was ready to die back there and then all of a sudden I run into the fact that I have to save… ugh. Nevermind. Just do what you have to do and get it over with." He said as he finally cooperated and took a seat on the bed.

With a quiet nod she walked up to him. Taking the rod she placed the cup of it over his right eye. "Don't close your eye. Just stare at the red dot on the inside." She instructed. He did as he was told, and shutting his left eye he starred at the blinding red dot that faced the other. "Ready?" She questioned.

"Go ahead." And at Kratos's word there was a click of the rod and the red dot shot forth through his pupil quickly widening it and escaping to the inside of his eye. Kratos winced at the alien intrusion. The pain was excruciating but he refused to show it vocally. But his motions proved otherwise. Eve had been ready for the familiar reaction she had seen go through anyone who went through their first stages of the UIV scripter. She had already positioned herself behind Kratos on the bed, and allowed him to fall into her on the first entrance. Kratos had no idea she had been propping him up during the whole procedure. His thoughts were to focused on the pain in his eye. It felt as if someone had just taken a long, thick, sharp needle and plunged it through his eye and to the back of his skull.

The red dot soon disappeared and it was replaced by a black light. This seemed cooler, and it slowly ebbed the pain away and as it slowly retracted, Eve pulled away the rod from his eye and he was sent into a pitch-black room.

"Are you alright?" She asked him. His hand had gone straight to his eye to check for damage. Your usual human instinct. He nodded slightly.

"I'll survive. Why is it so dark?"

"I turned off the light right before I put the scripter on. Otherwise the bright light would simply erase what the scripter just did. Now, can you stand?" He nodded again as he made a movement to stand when he suddenly realized Eve had been sitting behind him the whole time. He finally got up, a little shaky on his feet but no worry of losing his balance. His hand then went to his wrist that for some reason had begun to hurt slightly as his brain began to peel away from the one shot of pain to the next.

"Oh, sorry about that. I sort of had to hold you still. Normally we do this in this special chair we had set up in the computer lab, but since everyone was there, they would have found it rather strange if you had reacted as you did."

"What do you mean? I think everyone would act that way if they felt like they were having a needle being jammed into their eye."

"Well you see… every Brine on Gaia is put through the scripter, but it's administered while they're children, about the age of three. If they had seen you act as you did, they would again think something was wrong with you, as no one, especially at your age, would react like that. To us now, it simply feels like a small prick of the finger."

"A small prick of the finger, huh." He said not believing a word she said, as the pain had been so much, he couldn't possibly think of doing it more than once.

"Okay, well, I think we're ready. Here." She got up off the bed and walked over to him. Taking the headset she placed it on his head and pushing a button the arm came out of the side and rested in front of his right eye. Three white beams suddenly entered his eye and started flying in and out and in different directions through his pupil. This didn't hurt though. It simply felt like cold water rushing into his eye and relaxing the muscles.

"Now you're all set to see what we see. Come on." She then led the way out of the room and back into the computer lab.

"Hey, welcome back. What the hell were you doing in there? All we could hear was the bed squeaking." Search initiated. The group around him was sent into whispered giggles.

"Oh grow up. How old are we all, ten? Jeez." She said agitatedly. She then moved through the crowd, and took a seat next to Search once again. "Figure anything out from it?" She questioned. Search then went into a spiel on what he thought the strange glyphs meant. Kratos on the other hand studied the familiar writing with a smile. He knew that writing anywhere. It was the angelic writing he had come to know very well, although some of, he guessed the Brine's language had mixed into it slightly, disrupting parts of the message. Kratos remained silent throughout the whole process.

After much heated discussion on what it all meant, the group slowly began to take off to there own private quarters in the building.

"Well, I think it's about time we called it a night. Even my eyes need time to recharge." He said with a grin to Eve as she let out a yawn.

"Yeah, I'll see you in the morning. Good night." She gave him a hug goodnight and he left down the hall.

"Well, I'd say it is a good time to retire for the night. I'll show you your room. Are you hungry at all? I can bring something up for you." She questioned as the two got up to head to the bedrooms.

"No, I should be fine, thank you. I appreciate your hospitality." He said.

"Oh, it's not a problem. I appreciate you coming here. Of course it might mean the end of the universe, but at least I was able to see a being of colour like yourself." She said with a grin as she flicked a strange switch on the wall which shutdown everything in the room and sent it into darkness.

The two walked along the hall with a quaint awkward silence mixing around between them. Finally, upon reaching the end of the hall she came to two rooms on either side of them.

"This is my room. You'll be sleeping in this one here." She gestured to the opposing room from her own. "The bathroom is down here and to the right, opposite the staircase." She pointed out in turn. "If you grow hungry, the kitchen is adjacent to the hall with the bathroom."

"You mean to tell me, I can walk around here freely. Aren't you afraid I might escape?"

A smile graced her lips at his reply. "I trust you won't leave. You don't really have anywhere to go. And you don't know how to remove the trans-bug. So you won't be able to access your specials, if you have any. And if you're remotely interested in returning to the chain of Symphonia, then odds are you'll stay with us without much protest."

"Heh, you're quiet sure of yourself aren't you. What if there was a ship back on Derris-Kharlan I knew of and used that to escape?"

"You wouldn't."

"How do you know I wouldn't?"

"The Regas are built to find the most hidden of secrets in anything, that's how the Brine, even with their skills of hiding in the shadow, can not out hide the Regas abilities. So if there were anything on Derris-Kharlan, they would have found it by now. Not only that, but how do you intend on getting back to the site. You don't know how to operate any of our vehicles, and your wings are suspended. It seems you're stuck with us." She said with a grin. "But you've fallen into good hands. Right now the Leads are simply studying everything they can from your strange purple moon. They haven't even realized what is happening to the mirror even as we speak." She shook her head in disgust.

"There is a mirror that surrounds the sun?" Kratos questioned. Eve nodded in reply.

"Yes, but now's not the time to explain about that. If you can't wait to find out what Gaia is all about then feel free to pick up some literature in your room. It'll explain everything about Gaia's past and it's current state. There are some books that do mention what could possibly happen if one or all of Gaia's moons, the chain of Symphonia, were to collide with Gaia. That's what we believe will happen after this cataclysm. Hopefully our theories are false." She said with a sigh. "Well goodnight." She said with a grin and turned to her room and closed and locked the door behind her.

Kratos stood in the dark hall for a few seconds contemplating what Eve had just told him. Then turning to enter his own room he came across what looked to be there storage room. Although it was a bedroom, containing a dresser, bed, and nightstand, it also seemed to be holding an assortment of boxes, all packed with numerous electronic parts. Most of it looked like scrap metal. Kratos skipped over all of this, as his knowledge of their technology was far different from what he was familiar with. He then moved along to a bookshelf, which was found behind a heap of old blankets. Skimming over the bindings, surprised to find they were all written in the common language, he came across a book simply titled Gaia's Past, Present, and Future.

He sat down on the bed and began reading. In summary of it all it seemed over two centuries ago the planet known as Gaia use to be known as Earth. It was a beautiful planet, full of life, vegetation, oceans, and most importantly (as mentioned in the book) colours. Life went along as much as life could go on. Sure battles were fought, some were won, and some were lost. Devastation racked the planet but life continued to live on even in it's trials. As the humans slowly begun to realize what they were doing was destroying their precious planet, nothing could have prepared them for what was to become the true destruction of there world and every other planet in there solar system.

The original sun which was simply a huge burning ball of gaseous fumes from the atmosphere finally had reached it's life expectancy, and simply blew up completely destroying all life through out the Milky way galaxy. The universe was sent into a period of ice and forever freezing winter. Without the suns gravity pulls the planets orbits were completely thrown askew. The meteorite belt lost its continuous rotation and the larger stones flew in around the original planets forming new moons. But with Earth's original stasis compared to the other planets was rich and fertile. The strange atmosphere that surrounded the Earth that the other planets lacked began to form like ice. A giant ice like barrier that soon became a giant absorption of light and heat from the stars hundreds of million light years away from the galaxy, swelled up around the planet at the same height as the original atmosphere had rested and became like a wall keeping everything out, and everything else in. As the planet absorbed more and more, and the glass ice became thick and solid, and mixing with the chemicals from the surface of the planet and the hydrogen filled atmosphere above it created a solid sheet of reflexive glass, which the Brine now call the Mirror.

The mirror allowed some of the stars heat to escape and travel down to the surface of the planet. It soon warmed it up enough to help bring back life to the desolate world. Humans started over once again from their level one life forms and evolved to what they refer to themselves today as the Brine.

Unfortunately, for the life forms now living on the newly born Gaia, they would never be able to see colour in their world except for the bright multi-coloured moons and stars above them.

Brine's refer to themselves as such rather than humans due to there lack of colour and pigmentation between them all and everything in their new world. Without the suns natural light, pigmentation in this new breed of humans was left out of their genetic code allowing for them all to have either pure white skin down to black skin. There hair remaining the same. Either pure white to shades of gray to black. Eye colour was the same way. This colour scheme went for every life form on the planet as well as the ground, sky, rock, and mineral. Their world was set in a world of spiraling shades of gray.

The book continued on stating what the Brine's current livings were like. And finally it reached the point of what the Brine all feared. The chain of Symphonia would continue to circle Gaia but for some reason, with it being so close to Gaia and what with the original sun never having it's own moons kept the Brine in a constant state of confusion whether the core of Gaia would be to strong and pull them towards the sun or it would remain to slack and they would have free reign of where they moved.

The theories that the Occulants came out with was that if at least one of the moons struck the mirror, it would of course break the mirror either completely shattering the entire thing across the planet, or it would simply break in the current place it entered. If the latter happened, all life would be wiped out once more what with out heat and light. Or if only the moon shattered a section of it, the mirror would continue to give off light and heat but the stars light upon hitting the surface of Gaia would quickly eat and burn away at the soft interior layer as it would be far to strong for it. Only for the latter would there be any chance on fixing anything before complete devastation occurred. How, the book couldn't state as they hadn't run into that problem yet.

Kratos rested the book down in his lap as he tried to take all of what he had just read. It was mind-boggling and at this sleep completely evaporated into the air as he stood up and walked to the door. No way was he going to sleep after reading something like that.

His intentions brought him to the computer lab. Finding the switch Eve had original shut off, ignited the room into movement as the lights all flickered on and the computers all hummed awake. Grabbing a chair and a headset he flicked on the mechanism, which allowed him to view the screen before him. The same angelic glyphs flew by with a mixture of the Brine's apparent computer language as well. Finding a notebook and a pen, he started to write down what the glyphs he could pick out said.

It felt like three hours had passed as he glared at what he had written. It looked like gibberish to his strained eyes after trying to decipher the text for so long a period that he didn't even hear the quiet footsteps advancing down the hall.

"I didn't think you'd be sleeping." Came Eve's soft voice from the doorway. Kratos turned his head to see Eve walk into the room and with a stretch took up a seat next to him. "How goes it?"

"Well, those glyphs Search couldn't read earlier. Well, they're angelic writing. I can read it but because it's mixed all up with your own language, it's hard to analyze it." He explained going back to the screen. Eve took up the sheet of paper, which he had been writing on.

"Hmm… Angel Precinct Category 5. Studies. Solar. The Race. Travel. Failure. Scyopse Systems. Outlook Pos. that's it?" Kratos nodded in respond.

"I don't know. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me."

"Well, I figure this division known as Angel Precinct Category 5 was studying either the solar system and they found other races. Either they, the Precinct, tried to travel to them but failed or the other life forms failed to travel to them. Or they might have been trying to study the sun, as solar can also reference solar energy from the sun. Meaning they might have found something dealing along your race of the Brine. I have no idea what the Scyopse systems are or what the Outlook Pos means though."

"Well, you have a good idea, at least I think you're onto something. At least you can read it. That's one big step up from where we were. By the time Search even came up with a letter the mirror would probably have completely shattered by now." She said as she rested the paper down on the table once more and got herself comfortable in the seat.

"But it's only an idea, nothing more. It's neither a question nor an answer. We've only gotten slightly farther. Maybe I can pick something else out." He said as he continued to stare at the screen. Eve nodded even though he didn't see her reply. Kratos sighed as he went back to his research. He was actually rather glad Eve had woken up and came down to check on him. He had grown slightly restless and with the comfort of someone else near by allowed him to relax slightly. His nerves had been shot ever since landing here and she was able to bring him some strange sort of comfort he hadn't felt in years. He was almost amazed at himself at the flood of emotions he felt while here. Maybe the change in atmosphere actually did something good for him; rather than destroy him as he saw was happening to these people.

It wasn't very long before the quiet sounds of sleep had fallen over Eve as she slept in the chair, close to falling off. Kratos drew his eyes away from the ever-flowing texts across the screen to rest on the sleeping form of Eve. She seemed almost child like sleeping in the chair, struggling to stay on. He hadn't found a new word or phrase since Eve had come into the room, as all the angelic writing seemed to be deteriorating from the screen, perhaps because Derris-Kharlan was dying?

Getting up from his seat he walked over to the sleeping form and lifting her up. She made a noise at the sudden movement and cuddled up against his chest and went on sleeping. Kratos a little taken aback by this sudden movement ignored it and went to the wall, flicked the light with his elbow and walked up to Eve's room. Entering the room he soon found the bed as the headset was still on and it seemed to aid in seeing in the dark. Resting the sleeping girl down on the bed he retreated out of the room quietly only before he shut the door two words escaped her lips.

"…green…grass…" Came the sleeping voice.

"You'll see green grass soon enough." He said with a gentle smile as he shut the door. The thought then dawned on him. How he and the rest of his home had taken colours for granted. The thought of living in a world of nothing but shades of gray and still knowing there is something brighter out there that your own world is giving to other life forms. It saddened Kratos and also improved his determination to return to his home. And return home with more than just himself to help save the universe. He would show these people, the true lives they should be living and could live now that their wall had been broken.

Author's Note:

Yes, again, another story that took me a long time to update. I sort of lost interest as I ran into the greatness that is Phantom of the Opera. I just recently started to play Tales of Symphonia again and I instantly wanted to write the story again. I still have all of my ideas for this story intact so I should be able to continue with it, hopefully.

In Date I the Regas names I took from the anime Ronin Warriors/Yoroiden Samurai Troopers. They're the warlord's names in the English version. I'm more familiar with the English version of the show than the Japanese version so the masho's names were left out.

In this chapter you've found out about Gaia's past and what that was all about. I'm actually rather surprised with how that whole technical thing is working out. It's all-true and could possibly happen, not really, but possibly. shrugs Anyways, please C&C and tell me your thoughts.

Ahro