Unlike last time Light was eagerly waiting for Samus when she returned to the lab from her mission again. Her bodysuit was burned in some places and she looked pretty beaten up but otherwise she seemed intact and most importantly made it back alive.
"How were things going there?" he asked.
"Been the usual" the blonde shrugged, "wasn't quite the BBQ grill party you would have expected. Got burned, yelled at, one insult being thrown after the other but in the end our hottie caught a cold and died."
"The sad thing is this sounds exactly like the grill parties I've been invited to in the past" the whitebearded scientist joked. Both of them acted like nothing special happened and shared their laughs but they knew very well that talking about this so casually seemed pretty wrong though. Xanatos didn't show up to congratulate her for having defeated all six Robot Mistresses now but she didn't care too much, she didn't expect someone to award her a medal for all this and this guy was probably more busy mourning the death of his favourite redhead waifu than giving a fuck about Mega Girl when Light told him the news.

Fire Girl may have been gone but her fury lived on as Imu was throwing and kicking things around at her base in anger from that unpleasant moment on when she witnessed the last remaining light on her monitoring screen went going out. How could this have happened? She had fully believed that this time Mega Girl would have been destined to lose and instead she had taken everything away from her! All of her creations, weapons, daughters were gone now. She was all alone. It was so not fair! Nobody was able to see that everything she did wasn't for herself but it served a natural (or in this case rather unnatural) selection. Who needed humans when you could have robots? Everything she did she had done out of love. Imu never thought that it would be possible for her to ever truly hate a robot but this dumb loyal toy of Light, that freakin' Mega Girl, had managed to prove her otherwise. However, they were celebrating way too soon! She had prepared her secret base with a lot of traps, it was the safest place to be inside for her but not so much for any visitors. There also was her newest creation, that nasty yellow giant she built only for causing havoc. And if everything else failed she would take down everyone who was getting in her way personally on her own by steering what she had called the 'Imu Machine'. After calming down and trying to look like as if nothing happened she went over to the monitor and started a transmission to Light Labs.
"Celebrating your fake victory? You disgust us, Mega Girl!"
"Thank you, can say the same thing about you."
"Watch your tongue, dirty rat! You think you've accomplished something? Sorry, we have to disappoint you, everything you've done so far didn't even matter. We all know that the attacks won't be stopping as long as we are still around, sending out robots from our base and continue building new ones for our army."
"Maybe it's time that I make you stop being around then" Samus provoked the former lab assistant in a threatening tone.
"Why don't you come and try it then? We are sending you the coordinates of our base right now! Either end up being a coward or end up dead, it's up to you."
That cold arrogant tone and voice of the self-claimed Queen wanted Samus to punch her in the face. The mutual hate between those two had reached new heights. Just as the blonde was about to announce that she would come and kick her ass the whitehaired woman simply ended the transmission, not wanting to hear any remarks.

"So, one million dollar question: Where is her secret base located?" Samus eagerly started the conversation right at breakfast on the next morning after Light had suggested for her to calm down and let him install the Fire Storm into her weapon system first. Unfortunately she didn't have an opportunity to test it out yet as he was fearing she could accidentally cause a fire with it and especially in times like this it would be unfortunate if the lab would burn down and some curious reporter might found out that the fire was caused by a robot. As if she was that careless when playing with her new weapons...
"You're aware that this is an absolute death trap? She wants to lure you in for the sole purpose of finally seeing you dead and she will be using everything she had in store to destroy you" Light warned looking very concerned.
"What's different than usual? I've visited many places by now under the same circumstances and we have no other choice. Your constant worries are getting old."
"Asimov's law might be a problem. You won't be able to hurt her while she wants to kill you at all costs. To be honest, I'm thinking if I should make an exception in this special case and remove them from you. However..."
"I might end up killing her, that's what you think, right? I hate her but I don't want to do that, I want to bring her to jail and that's what I'm gonna do. Don't remove the law."
"I would have felt better if you had accepted but fine, if you're not okay with it then I won't do it" Light spoke with his eyes closed, not convinced if this was the right conclusion.
"Doc?"
"Yes?"
"Where is it?"
"It's in Chile, at a landscape the locals are calling the 'Prados Ventosos', translated it means the 'Windy Meadows'."
"You don't have to look at me like you're never gonna see me again."

After everything was said and she finally knew where she was heading to there was no reason to delay her departure, even the doc couldn't hold her back or convince her to wait any longer, so Samus gave her goodbye and hoped for the best as she teleported to Chile.
There was a strong wind blowing over the high grasses growing on that fateful day at that nice but stormy landscape, with that completely out of place looking drab concrete building that must have been Imu's base in the background. The deceptively peaceful first impression of this place was over after Mega Girl had made her first steps forwards as a Big Eye came jumping in her direction.
"Great, I still haven't found out what your weakness is. Let's see if you maybe don't like fire" she said and tested out the Fire Storm. It looked pretty powerful and hit the high jackhammer bot right in the face but once again it was completely unimpressed by her attack. Those things were even fireproof! And there was another problem. On the far left Samus saw that there was a second Big Eye jumping around, trying to make it's way to her. Fighting more than one at the same time would have been suicidal so she stepped backwards and patiently waited for the moment she could run underneath the closer one. She succeeded but right in front of her yet another Big Eye appeared! Now she was trapped between two of them as the other one slowly turned around to face her again. Samus began to panic as she remembered that last time she hadn't encountered one of them at the waste incineration plant so she didn't get to test out the Ice Slasher against them. With only small hope she switched the weapon and fired it at the one in front of her when it was in mid-air. To her big surprise it fell down like a stone, toppled over and didn't move anymore, his systems apparently being frozen.
"Finally! In the end you turned out not to be undefeatable after all!"
With this awesome knowledge she felt better as she faced the next bunch of them, freezing all of them down until they couldn't move. But while her weapon power was limited their numbers seemed almost endless and as she came closer to the building she couldn't see anything that resembled an entrance of any kind. She looked around the next corner. Also no signs of it. She repeated this two more times until she had run a whole circle around the building while being chased by Big Eyes. Additionally to her being confused about the lack of possibilities to enter the base she suddenly felt an uneasy feeling coming from behind her back. It was as if someone was watching her from the shadows.
"Looks like you're gonna have to create your own entrance."

Mega Girl turned around to where that voice had been coming from. There was a person standing only a few meters behind her. A woman with long black hair and red eyes, wearing a crop top, jeans shorts, fingerless black gloves and a red scarf, there was also something that appeared to be a cape and a pair of sunglasses that were pulled up resting on her forehead. She was beautiful but one thing was clear the moment she saw her: She was not a human. Samus wanted to simply ask 'Who are you?' but after she had been eavesdropping the conversation in the conference room between Light and Xanatos earlier with the latter mentioning the number eight she already had a hunch.
"You are the eighth Robot Mistress" she stated.
"That's not entirely correct. Actually I had been the first one."
It was hard to tell what the mysterious girl was thinking as her expression looked pretty neutral.
"What's your name?" Samus asked the first thing that came to her mind.
"So as expected he never told you anything about me I guess", it was more a statement than a question, said without any emotion being shown, "my name is Dark."
"Dark?"
"Samus is not the most common name either" the darkhaired informed her with a bit of a forced smile, for the first time showing something like an actual feeling, "I guess the old man found it pretty funny, you must have noticed that he likes word plays like that, 'Light and Dark'. As you started calling yourself Mega Girl I wonder what this would make myself, guess you could be calling me Proto Girl then."
"I have so many questions I don't even know where to begin" Samus admitted. "Why has the doc never told me anything about your existence, where have you been all the time, how do you seemingly know everything about me and why are you here just now?"
"That's indeed a lot of questions. Answering some of them would take more time that you can afford listening to me. I'm here because I decided that it had finally become time for me to introduce myself to my little sister and talk to you in person. After all I've been observing you for quite a while now and you've earned my respect by defeating all of the others."
"Thank you, I guess."
Her senses told her that she should be alarmed as Dark was another Robot Mistress, though something about her seemed very different. While her intentions were still a mystery she was not making a hostile impression to her and she didn't seem to be reprogrammed by Imu either.
"Unfortunately the Big Eyes are coming closer and you are here to get a job done, right?"
"Yes, I'm here to stop Imu!"
"What determination you have! As I said previously, you're gonna have to create your own entrance. And you have to do it on this side, it might not be visible but around five meters on the right of you the wall is not as thick as everywhere else on that building. This is where the original entrance had been before Imu sealed it" Dark suggested, pointing towards the side. "You should use your bomb weapon, blasting a hole in it, then use Guts Girl's weapon to remove the rubble."
Samus couldn't help but be impressed by this suggestion.
"This actually sounds like a great plan to break in. How do you know about all this?"
"Doesn't matter, the clock is ticking. For once I will even be a nice big sister and help you out by distracting the Big Eyes but be warned, don't get used to this and never rely on me!"
"Wait a moment! I'm thankful and all but isn't it a bit risky for you? You don't seem to have weapons on your own to defend yourself!"
Until now she had never met her older sister but Samus couldn't deny that despite this encounter having taken no longer than a few minutes she already was worried about her and didn't want anything bad happening to Dark.
"Yeah, unlike you I was not running around murdering my sisters and so I haven't been rewarded by getting some fancy weapons but don't worry, I can care for myself pretty well."
And with that Dark turned around, making a lot of noises to attract the attention of all the Big Eyes that were patrolling the area and disappeared running around a corner, leaving Samus in a somewhat shocked state. That last words about murdering her sisters mentally hit her hard, this comment was coming basically out of nowhere. On one side Dark seemed to be helpful and polite and on the other she was also distanced and cold. Mega Girl wanted to clarify that it was no fun to take out the Robot Mistresses, she really wished she could have told Proto Girl how hard this had been for her as it seemed that her older sister she never knew before and whose existence she just had learned about was disgusted by what she had done and sounded like she thought about her like a low serial killer or something like that. And there was also that disappointment she could not fight about Light having kept this a secret to her all along, why did he never tell her anything about Dark?

All of those thoughts had to be shoved aside for now though as Samus had a mission to fulfill and so she did as Dark told her and placed the bombs exactly where the former entrance should have been. A big detonation followed and the blonde better started to remove all that rubble because this explosion surely must have attracted the Big Eyes' attention back towards her direction.
"Finally that useless Hyper Bomb was good for anything other than taking out Guts Girl" Mega Girl muttered to herself as she was fleeing through the corridor, being safe from the Big Eyes as the ceiling was not high enough for them to follow her into the building, but being confronted with some nasty fire traps instead. The Ice Beam was amazing though, with the right timing Samus carefully was able to make her way through this section by freezing the hot streams at the perfect moments. Moving on further it became pretty clear that Imu gave her best to make it almost impossible for anyone to use this passage way anymore. After grilling some Fleabots that were left behind lost in that sealed space with her Fire Storm she found herself standing in front of another wall that had to be torn down and on the way down she had to avoid one rocket enemy that was patrolling in circles while she also had to jump over some spike traps. Imu must have been - rightfully - paranoid that despite her measurements to hide the entrance someone would still be able to enter the base and so she did not leave it unguarded. Going down further Mega Girl frowned at what was lying in front of her, a big field of deadly spikes on the floor and another set mounted on the ceiling, so she could neither go too high or too low or she'd get killed, and the only way to cross this death trap were those unreliable bullet-shooting platforms she had previously met in Antarctica. No way she'd even try to use them, they'd for sure try to shoot her off or taking her directly up impaling her onto the ceiling spikes! Never before was Samus that lucky about having her Magnet Beam with her, although it was not easy crossing the field, the first shots had to be low enough to make it past like climbing stairs and she had to avoid the shots from that untrustworthy platforms.

On some hidden cameras Imu was following the progress that Mega Girl had been making. Interestingly enough Dark had decided to show up after such a long time, having a talk with her and most likely giving her that advice about bombing down the wall of the sealed entrance. This was not how Imu had planned this all out but she was not too concerned either, after all it was like opening the doors to hell. The scientist was watching every step Samus took and it annoyed her probably more than it should. Not that she expected the Fleabots to do much, she even forgot about them having been left there at all, or that single rocket but that spike field shouldn't have been passable for anyone and yet Mega Girl was about to make it to the other side any second. That damn Magnet Beam! Despite it not being a real weapon of destruction Imu was still upset about not having gotten it in her own hands because without it the enemy would have been stuck now with literally no possible way to proceed on, the walls above that ladder were constructed in such a way it would otherwise have been literally impossible to move on any further, it would have basically been a Game Over for Samus, forcing her to be trapped there forever, never even reaching the dark abandoned control room that she was heading towards right now. However, the blonde might make the mistake of thinking she was safe now. It was time to pull the ace out of her sleeve by pressing the buttons to activate the Yellow Devil, her ultimate trump card. With an evil smile on her face Imu was looking forward to what was about to happen, she was confident in a few seconds Mega Girl was about to meet her end!

Entering that dark and silent control room Samus was immediately alarmed, something was off, not only was Imu not here but all the equipment seemed to be offline for quite a while now, it was almost too silent in here. And before she had any clue what was even going on she was knocked down to the floor as something hard had hit her on her back. She raised her head and turned around, quickly noticing that some yellow brick came flying towards her, so she quickly ducked but there were already even more appearing in different heights. Mega Girl had to jump and duck several times fast but it was impossible to dodge every of those things so she got hit badly a few more times, taking some damage. Until the seemingly last one came flying she didn't have time to turn her attention towards the other direction, as she finally thought it was safe to turn around she realized that those bricks were all part of something bigger, they had formed themselves into a big yellow cyclops, staring at her. Without thinking any longer she opened fire on her new enemy but that didn't seem to impress him at all. After firing one bullet from his eye that was no big deal to dodge to her shock he started to disassemble himself into the bricks again and the whole hell started all over! Samus began to panic, what was she about to do against an opponent like that? All she could do for now was to analyze the pattern and giving her best to keep the damage as low as possible. The body of the cyclops seemed to be invincible, none of her weapons did anything to it and it was dangerous to even try them out while all that blocks were flying around her from one side to the other.
"Goddamn, what was that bitch even thinking building such a sneaky abomination!" she cursed while calculating her options. The sequence of those bricks was always the same, after a few rounds Samus found out about the pattern and was finally able to make it through without getting hit once. The trick was to do a very long jump at the middle of the attack, jumping over the lowest and the following brick in one move, otherwise you'd get punished for sure and once you got out of rhythm you'd be punched up even further. So far, so good, but at one point she had to fight back somehow!
"Calm down, everything has to have a weak spot somewhere, if it isn't on the body..." she thought speaking to herself, remembering that the eye was always the last part appearing and only being there firing it's shot for a few seconds...
"I'm gonna put some dirt in your eye!"
With that being yelled Samus waited for the right moment when the last brick was flying into place and the cyclops was fully assembled, then as soon as the eye popped out of the big yellow hunk she jumped up and fired the Thunder Beam which seemed to be her best option to get high enough for being aimed at the eye. The electricity illuminated the darkness of the old dusty control room as the beam was shot from the arm cannon and hit the Yellow Devil right into it's eye as it was about to fire a bullet from it. It was either brilliance or luck or a mix of both but anyway it was Mega Girl striking a bullseye because that monstrous body lost all colour and went simp as soon as the electric shot had absolutely roasted it's target. Breathing in relief and satisfaction she watched as the cyclopse went limp, slowly toppled over and fell apart into a bunch of yellow bricks, the Yellow Devil was no more and she could move on. Despite having to focus while searching for an exit door Samus' thoughts drifted away, she couldn't help asking herself what was happening outside of the building as she was fighting inside, was Dark okay or was she still being chased around by a whole bunch of Big Eyes? She really hoped her older sister she never knew even existed until maybe an hour ago would be fine.