After the Battle

At exactly nine in the morning, the Earth Alliance's first shell fell upon the coastline of the neutral nation of Orb like a claw tearing apart the curtain of peace, opening the brutal war later known as the "Battle of Orb."

And now, as the last ZAFT mobile suit vanished beyond the distant horizon, the clock's cold electronic digits silently pointed to two thirty in the afternoon.

After roughly five and a half hours of prolonged, fierce fighting, Yunenglu Island—along with the surrounding seas and skies—had finally regained a temporary, scarred, heartbreaking peace, after being scorched into a living hell by the flames of war and paying a terrible price.

After withdrawing from the main battlefield, the retreating Earth Alliance fleet and the ZAFT Forces fleet, which had likewise chosen to retreat, did not erupt into another conflict as people had feared.

Both sides tacitly maintained the utmost restraint. Like two wounded beasts licking their wounds while remaining wary of each other, they checked and watched one another as they directed their surviving forces back to their respective military bases on Earth.

Needless to say, this battle gave the Earth Alliance, which saw itself as Earth's ruler, a new understanding of Orb. Even the ever-arrogant ZAFT Forces, who prided themselves on being elites, gained a brand-new, unforgettable impression of that tiny neutral nation that seemed so insignificant on the world map—one mingled with awe and incomprehension.

To utterly shoot down Orb's seemingly fragile flag and erase this country from the map would require the corresponding resolve—perhaps even the resolve for mutual destruction, or total annihilation.

This incomparably brutal war, which involved three factions and deployed the most advanced mobile suits of the era, lasted only five and a half hours before ending abruptly in a manner no one had anticipated,