In a combat command room of the Kingdom of Foundation, Orphee stood beside a table, staring at the battle report displayed on the massive monitor installed on it, his face dark and grim.
To his left stood a group of Foundation Kingdom military commanders.
One of the commanders was explaining continuously.
"…We tried our best to limit the damage caused by the attackers to within a ten-kilometer radius of Torrington Harbor."
The officer swallowed and pointed at the approximate location of the Archangel on the map. "…The enemy has now been pushed back."
Orphee paid no attention to the commanders who had retreated into the crowd. He took deep breaths to calm himself and, with a touch pen in hand, circled the Archangel's position on the map.
"What about the remaining forces…? Assemble our units and encircle this warship."
Though Orphee's tone was calm, everyone present knew it was a harbinger of a coming storm.
The people exchanged nervous glances, cold sweat forming on their foreheads.
Finally, a commander mustered the courage to speak.
"Prime Minister…"
The officer was gasping for breath, as if standing on a tightrope where a single misstep would send him plummeting into the abyss. "Our remaining forces…"
"…Our remaining forces have been decimated. They are no longer combat-capable."
Another officer, wearing an expression of self-sacrifice, continued from where the previous officer left off. "…The surviving Black Knight Shura seems to have developed some kind of mental disorder and is currently unable to fight."
After he spoke, the room fell silent, except for the faint sounds of soldiers operating equipment nearby.
Orphee lowered his gaze to the map on the display and the long list of dimmed-out soldier names on the right. His slightly trembling hand unbuttoned a collar button as he took deep breaths.
"MS unit commanders, Black Knight instructors, and defense commanders stay. Everyone else, leave."
Though his tone was calm, everyone could feel the overwhelming fury behind Orphee's words.
The officers not called upon, and the soldiers operating instruments, hurriedly left the room, fearing that Orphee's wrath might fall upon them the next second.
Finally, with the last soldier closing the door behind them, the room fell silent again, leaving only Orphee and the three officers.
"How did you command your units?!"
As if his pressure had reached its peak and then exploded, Orphee lost all composure, relentlessly questioning the three before him.
"After merging so many MS with Blue Cosmos, you couldn't even take down two MS and one warship?!"
Orphee's angry voice echoed through the room, at times drowning out the white noise of the machinery, faintly reaching the hallway outside.
"What were the defense forces doing during the entire battle?! And the fleet—where is our fleet? I ask you, where is our fleet?!"
Orphee's tirade continued, leaving those in the corridor with mixed emotions.
"And the Black Knight units! We invested so much money, gave them so many resources, yet they achieved nothing at all?!"
Orphee slammed the table hard. Forgetting the losses of ordinary units, the fact that the heavily funded Black Knight units were slaughtered by Unicorn as if they were chickens was something he simply could not accept.
"Prime Minister, the enemy mobile suits encountered by our Black Knights were quite advanced…"
The Black Knight instructor, braving Orphee's wrath, attempted an explanation.
"What about the assault ship that attacked Torrington Harbor just now?! That outdated unit! Why couldn't you defeat it?!"
Orphee's fury reached its peak, and hearing the instructor's words gave him a target for his anger.
"Prime Minister, our Black Knight pilots' training was incomplete. They lacked real combat experience…"
The instructor attempted to explain the Black Knights' failure.
But Orphee's anger had already reached its limit; he had no interest in listening.
"Twelve Black Knights killed by a single individual is a fact! And the survivors are mentally ill!"
Orphee forcefully threw the touch pen onto the table.
"A bunch of useless idiots!"
He slammed both hands on the table, producing a loud crash, cracking the hard screen in several places.
"I trusted you so much, and this is how you repay me?!"
After saying this, as if most of the emotion had been released, Orphee gasped for air, his tone slightly calmer.
"The command of units, the allocation of development projects for mobile suits… I have always handled these myself!"
Orphee slammed the table again, ignoring the cuts on his left hand from the cracked glass as blood flowed. "Two years ago, when I delegated command to you, how did you assure me? And now, how has the battle turned out like this?!"
Orphee breathed heavily, lowering his head to watch the Archangel's marker on the broken screen gradually drift away until it disappeared.
"I will revoke all the authority in your hands. You may go back and resign in shame."
Seemingly accepting this result, Orphee's voice was low. "Now, get out of this room."
"I want to be alone for a while."
No matter how angry Orphee was at that moment, the destruction of Torrington Harbor had become a reality. Blue Cosmos' investment in the Kingdom of Foundation would decrease. The Blue Cosmos faction close to Foundation had been decimated in this battle. Moreover, the prototype giant MS they developed had been destroyed, seemingly powerless before Unicorn.
Though Orphee wanted to execute those fools on the spot, he had to stabilize domestic morale and maintain the situation with ZAFT.
After all, Chairman Zala's support for Foundation was meant to plant a key stake on Earth. If he felt the kingdom's combat strength was too weak and withdrew funding, many future operations would be in jeopardy.
With the three officers, freshly scolded, slinking out of the command room, calm returned.
Only the instruments continued tirelessly operating, emitting a low white noise.
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In a military hospital of the Kingdom of Foundation, medical staff were sprinting down the corridors as heavily injured Blue Cosmos members and Foundation soldiers were being brought in.
Apparently aware of Foundation's crushing defeat at Torrington Harbor, the sentries patrolling near the hospital appeared dejected, lacking their usual pride.
In the emergency room and operating theaters, doctors finished one surgery and immediately received the next patient. In the crowded hallway, the painful moans of the severely wounded echoed everywhere.
After all, Torrington Harbor was a fairly large area. Blue Cosmos and the Kingdom of Foundation had invested considerable effort and manpower in its construction and operation.
But the grim reality was that, if it weren't for the overwhelming power of Unicorn's beam magnum, even more severely injured would have been sent to this hospital. One could say Unicorn had actually reduced the workload for these medical staff.
On the hospital's top floor, several doctors were gathered around a white-haired young man wrapped in bandages, seemingly conducting some kind of test.
Outside a one-way mirror, Foundation's queen Aura frowned as she observed the scene inside.
"Do you still feel anger now?"
At Aura's signal, the doctors began speaking to Shura on the hospital bed.
"Can you still feel that intense fear?"
"No… that feeling is gone now."
Shura's expression was calm, as if the man who had raged helplessly in the cockpit was someone else entirely.
"Next, I will show you some images."
The doctor presented a tablet to Shura. "If anything makes you uncomfortable, you can say so directly."
Images of battlefields, destroyed buildings, fallen soldiers, and Black Knight wreckage appeared. Shura, however, remained composed, as if his mental state were perfectly fine.
Until the last image appeared—a pure white mobile suit. Shura's expression changed instantly.
His eyes filled with hatred as they locked on the suit. His face twisted with bitter rage, as if he wanted to tear the mobile suit apart with his bare hands.
The scene from that moment replayed vividly in Shura's mind.
His prideful combat skills were shattered in an instant, his teammates' desperate screams before Unicorn, and… that familiar terror. An inexplicable fury rose in Shura's heart—he still did not understand the origin of this anger.
"How do you feel now?"
The doctor paused the tablet slides and asked Shura.
"Very angry… furious enough to want to rip it apart."
Shura gritted his teeth. "That intense fear I felt from others… has returned…"
The doctor patiently asked Shura for details, but outside the one-way mirror, Aura furrowed her brow.
Even with his arm immobilized in plaster, Shura's hand clenched tightly into a fist, his nails piercing his palm, drawing blood.
"Your Majesty, it seems Shura has a strong stress response to this image—or rather, to this white Unicorn mobile suit."
A doctor handed the tablet to Aura.
"But without seeing this suit, Shura's behavior is normal, and he barely reacts even to gunfire."
"Can you diagnose the condition?"
Aura frowned at the image on the tablet.
Though highly skilled in genetics and able to create and enhance Shura, Aura was completely inexperienced in mental sciences and had to rely on the doctors for a diagnosis.
"We don't know. This is the first time we've seen such a condition."
Seeing Shura's face once again contort into the bitter expression he had in the cockpit, the doctor sighed.
"Shura is the first case. For now, this condition's temporary codename is…"
"Torrington Syndrome."
...............