It was likely due to his obsession with defeating Gundams. Even after the Over Flag had been enhanced with a Solar Furnace, and despite it being a lightweight model, Graham used his sheer technical skill to handle it like a dedicated close-quarters combat machine.
He was like sticky candy; every time Roz tried to create a bit of maneuvering space, Graham would manipulate the custom Over Flag to stick right back onto him.
Roz, piloting the Penelope, stowed the Beam Magnum. In such close-range combat, the Beam Magnum was useless.
Roz intended to deal with this Over Flag first. Besides, as the remaining MS units gradually deployed, the battle had shifted into a one-sided slaughter.
Two Jestas equipped with High-Mobility Packs, having cleared the catapult deck, skillfully manipulated their sub-arms to fire a rocket toward a GN-X.
Faced with the incoming rocket, the GN-X naturally performed an evasive maneuver. However, in the next second, the rocket detonated nearby, releasing a dense rain of tiny beam fragments that peppered the GN-X's hull.
"Ugh..."
The GN-X pilot, seeing the Jesta's attack, instinctively raised the machine's left arm to shield the cockpit. The armor, though reinforced by GN particles, began to spark and smoke under the bombardment of beam fragments, with armor shards flying everywhere.
The GN-X pilot watched as several areas on his status monitor instantly turned red. Multiple functions went offline, and cold sweat broke out on his forehead.
The moment he lowered his left arm from the front of the cockpit, a pair of glowing red visors suddenly loomed large on his monitor.
For an instant, he felt a chilling sensation wash over his entire body, as if he were staring at the most terrifying thing in existence.
But in the next second, he could no longer feel the cold. A searing beam saber breached the GN-X's armor, cleaving the battered machine clean in half at the waist.
"Since when was it this strong after a component swap?!"
Patrick swallowed hard as he watched the familiar-looking machine take out a GN-X the moment it deployed.
The Jesta using the Cannon components last time had left an impression of "strong firepower but mediocre mobility." Now, after being fitted with the Stark Jegan's High-Mobility Pack, its aerial combat performance was not inferior to a GN-X.
"Why is someone dazing off in the middle of a battlefield...?"
Looking at the GN-X that seemed paralyzed with fear, Bridget, who had just taken off from the deck in her High-Mobility Jesta, curled her lip and locked onto Patrick's GN-X.
"How should I know? Phew... that last hit felt amazing!"
Veronica, who had just sliced the GN-X in two, let out a wild cry over the comms.
Although that close-range strike hadn't been followed by a kick, the sense of surprise transmitted through the GN-X's movements had left her feeling highly exhilarated.
"Forget it. Wipe out all the units here, then reinforce the ReZEL squad and destroy that Astray."
Bridget sighed, maneuvering her Jesta toward Patrick's GN-X.
"Eh? Is it my turn?!"
Seeing the Jesta charging toward him, Patrick was stunned for a moment, but his hands instinctively operated the machine.
He dodged the purple beams from the Jesta's beam carbine; the GN-X circled in the air, raising its beam rifle to return fire continuously at the Jesta.
It was clear that although Patrick wasn't particularly famous, his piloting skills were levels above the other GN-X pilots; he was, at the very least, the first one to successfully counterattack while remaining unscathed under the focused fire of three anti-air turrets.
Red particle beams struck the Jesta's shield, which was held firmly by its sub-arms.
The Jesta changed its forward direction at an almost perfect right angle, beginning to circle Patrick's GN-X while steadily closing the distance.
The red beams that had been precisely hitting the Jesta's shield were now left trailing behind as the Jesta accelerated, leaving a blue wake in its path.
A right-angle turn was a fairly basic maneuver for the Nahel Argama's mass-production squad.
After all, they were just dodging a few beams; back during the Gryps Conflict in the SEED world, when they wove through the Earth Alliance and ZAFT forces, they had to worry about dense nets of beam fire and swarms of missiles chasing them at the same time.
Bridget glanced at the GN-X that was firing at her incessantly. She casually raised the Jesta's beam carbine and switched it to burst-fire mode. The purple beams no longer moved in straight lines but blanketed the GN-X like a downpour.
"Not good!"
Unable to react in time, Patrick watched as his GN-X's beam rifle was struck by the purple Mega Particle beams. Both the GN-X's armor and the rifle began to show signs of melting.
Patrick had no choice but to discard the beam rifle and draw his beam saber.
The discarded GN-X beam rifle inevitably exploded, its flames and thick smoke mixing with red particles to form a gray cloud.
In the next second, a blue-white beam saber clashed against the GN-X's red beam saber blade, sending a spray of particles flying from the impact.
Just as Patrick breathed a small sigh of relief and prepared to counterattack, he saw the two shields controlled by sub-arms on the Jesta's High-Mobility Pack suddenly pivot. The rockets nested within the shields made Patrick's eyes widen in shock.
Bridget pulled the trigger without hesitation. Two high-explosive rockets streaked from the shields, accurately striking the GN-X's head and upper chest.
The violent explosion, carrying internal beam-shrapnel warheads, shattered the GN-particle-reinforced armor and tore apart the machine's entire upper torso.
"Ugh... damn it, I'm the one who won all 2,000 simulations..."
Inside the GN-X cockpit, Patrick shouted like a classic sore loser as he was dragged down into the sea by the remains of the GN-X's lower half.
-----------------------------------
"Raven, it seems your teammates are also quite formidable..."
Graham's Over Flag held its beam saber high, clashing and locking blades with the Penelope.
But while it looked like a stalemate, the reality was that even with Graham pushing his throttle to the limit, the Over Flag was still being forced backward at a slow, grinding pace by the Penelope's sheer mass.
Roz manipulated the Penelope to raise its left leg, delivering a sharp side-kick into the Over Flag's waist. The shriek of groaning metal rang clearly in the ears of both Roz and Graham.
"Ugh..."
Graham let out a muffled groan, enduring the massive impact while struggling to raise his GN beam rifle to fire point-blank at the Penelope.
Roz didn't even bother to raise his shield. Instead, he used the momentum of the kick to spin the Penelope around.
The beams grazed past the machine as it rotated, and the blade-like tail stabilizer—acting like a literal tail—lashed out and struck the Over Flag.
The custom machine, already flying backward from the kick, was sent tumbling even further away.
Faced with Graham currently reeling from the impact, Roz didn't idle. The two beam sabers on his shoulders swiveled upward.
Roz didn't even use the fire-control radar; he simply glanced at the swirling GN-X units, pre-aimed based on raw intuition, and pulled the trigger.
Two thick, pinkish-purple beams erupted from the shoulder cannons. Two GN-X units flew directly into the path of the beams and disintegrated in mid-air explosions.
Once the shoulder cannons finished their discharge, Roz reached out with the Penelope's left hand and snatched one of the shoulder-mounted large beam sabers.
A high-output green blade extended from the massive hilt, its intensity so great that even the saber's own I-field struggled to contain the beam's shape.
The Penelope spun again, bringing the beam saber down in a vertical cleave upon the target behind it.
The massive light-green blade pressed down on a red blade; the immense output of the saber's hilt nearly forced the Over Flag to lose its grip on its own weapon.
"Urgh..."
Graham gritted his teeth. Even though he could taste the metallic tang of blood in his throat from the two previous heavy blows, he couldn't afford to care.
He stared fixedly at the Penelope before him, searching for a way to break the deadlock.
What he failed to notice, however, was a GN-X not far away, raising its beam rifle toward the Over Flag's back.
Just as Graham was about to maneuver the Over Flag around the Penelope for another surprise assault, a violent explosion erupted across the back of his machine.
"Ugh—ah!"
The massive shockwave was followed by the sound of the cockpit rupturing. He had been so careful—had he really let his guard down just enough because he was focused on fighting the "Raven"?
With his helmet visor shattered and overcome by pain and mental exhaustion, Graham made a futile attempt to control the machine.
Ultimately, the unit spiraled downward and crashed unevenly onto the Nahel Argama's catapult deck. The machine broke apart into a heap of components; after enduring so many high-output, close-range attacks, the custom Over Flag had finally reached its limit.
As the final jarring impact hit, Graham lost consciousness.
Roz had seen it clearly. A red beam had accurately struck the approximate location of the Over Flag's rear cockpit, blooming into a cloud of red smoke and surging particles.
"Sniping from behind? Against your own ally?"
Seeing this, Roz frowned slightly and looked toward the source of the shot.
Such a precise shot, hitting the Over Flag in a single burst and specifically destroying its thrusters—no matter how you looked at it, something was wrong.
He spotted a GN-X hurriedly ducking behind another ally, clearly using the other machine as a meat shield. That style of fighting...
"...Lunamaria, it's your turn to show what you can do."
Roz placed a priority target marker on the GN-X that had just committed the backstab.
"Exterminate these rats."
"...Understood. Requesting the Sword Silhouette!"
Sensing the fury in Roz's voice, Lunamaria, who hadn't piloted a Mobile Suit in combat for a long time, turned dead serious.
As she suspected, compared to the Blast or Force packs, the Sword pack suited her best.
......................