Testing out her new weapon which Light had named the 'Super Arm' Samus was carrying around tables and cupboards from one point in the lab to another.
"Couldn't you have built all of us so strong to begin with? Would have made things a lot easier even back when I was just a housekeeping robot."
"I don't think that would have been such a good idea. Humans always naturally feared robots, so I only gave this ability to Guts Girl because she needed it to fulfill her job, also programming special stuff like this is not as easy as you may think. There's always the chance of a sudden malfunction and it can only be used for a certain time until you run out of weapon energy."
"Oh, I suddenly feel it, getting weaker! Malfunction, malfunction!" Samus screamed theatrically.
"Now you're just trying to fool me" Light answered, rolling his eyes.
"Hehe, yeah, caught me. But seriously, I didn't know that running out of weapon energy was a thing, so it would have been a possibility becoming unable to throw bombs during my fight against Guts Girl?"
"Yes, it could have happened" confessed the scientist in defense.
"Why could you not have told me beforehand?!" the blonde shouted back and out of shock about those news she let go of that display cabinet she was currently carrying, making it fall to the floor where the glass shattered into pieces. Oops. Seemed like she had a tendency to accidentally destroy things.
"I think I should be able to install a display that shows you how much weapon energy you have left" Light suggested as he watched Samus cleaning up the muss she just caused.
As Samus and Light were still wondering why there had not been an angry call from Imu despite the second Robot Mistress having been defeated one afternoon it became pretty obvious that the former junior assistant held a big grudge against them.
"We've received a call from the Australian Light Labs facility, it had been under attack and it seems like Imu has been taking control over it" Light informed Samus.
"Damn, now it seems to be getting personal. Australia? Isn't this where the Suzys are getting manufactured?"
"I still prefer to call them Octopus Batteries."
"But Suzy is shorter and easier to remember" the blonde insisted.
Light sighed. It was Xanatos who had come up with the name Suzy first and he had no clue how his sponsor even got to the idea to call them like that but he had made the same arguments as her, saying it was for better selling strategies. This felt so wrong in the old man's opinion as those simple machines were not even close to be advanced robots with own personalities like the Robot Mistresses but somehow most of the workers also started calling them Suzys and so they had inofficially being renamed without their creator's approval.
"What's bothering me is not that Imu seems to be out for personal revenge now, it's more that she could use this facility for mass production of hostile Octopus Batteries."
"Better be stopping her sooner than later then."
"Wait a minute before you go. After your last mission you've reported that you have a feeling she's sending the girls to the places you think are fitting best for them" he started but Samus already knew what he was aiming for.
"You mean that by process of elimination this time it should be obvious from the start which one will be my next opponent, right? Don't worry, I've figured it out already that it has to be Cut Girl, as she's the only one who'd be left fitting for that facility."
"It's also her weapon, the Rolling Cutter may work like a pair of very sharp scissors but it was actually based on a boomerang. So be extra careful when you encounter her, never forget it's designed to always return back to her and it's able to cut through solid metal!"
"Don't worry, I won't let her give me a new haircut" Mega Girl assured.
"I admit, it's been a long time since I've been at the factory, it was once a peaceful place but I'm pretty sure Imu has remodeled it by now" Light warned her, feeling a bit guilty as it was years ago since he visited the facility last time.
"Oh dear, someone needs some serious anger management" was Mega Girl's first statement when she arrived at the outside of the factory, seeing that it was in pretty bad shape, some walls being collapsed or having big gaps in it and all kind of stuff lying around on the floor, blocking some ladders which were now seemingly leading nowhere anyway.
"Not you guys again."
After she had made her way over some rocks Samus realized that another whole swarm of Bunby Helibots were coming at her, most likely being the ones responsible for that chaos. Despite being warned about the limited usage for her special weapons the opportunity was too nice to resist, so the blonde used the Super Arm to pick up a big rock and throw them right at her attackers. It was satisfying to watch those flying annoyances crashing down and getting buried under some rubble but at the same time looking at her display she realized that her weapon energy had indeed gone down by a bit. It was not too dramatic but she'd better have to learn saving up the usages of her weapons besides her trusty arm cannon.
Clearing the way with the latter one and blasting some more Bunbies with it Samus reached a great wall where the only way to get past it would be by climbing several stores up, hoping that the ladders would not suddenly end up not going anywhere. There were some suspicious looking devices placed on the walls though and as she came closer they split up like scissors, firing different shots in different directions. Similar to the Metools she had met at the construction site. Although it was four shots each time and it was pretty nasty getting surprised by one of those scissor cannons while climbing up a ladder. After she got hit and fell on her face Samus decided to not just avoid the shots any longer but to return the favour and firing back at those devices which were surprisingly easy to destroy.
"Not as tough as we look, aren't we?"
Imu seemed to have installed a whole lot of those security devices though which was kinda ironic, the intruder wanting to make sure of intruders...
At least this wall proved to be stable enough to make it upwards, sometimes she had to switch from one ladder to another but Samus learned to make her way past that shooting scissors and finally reached the top. She didn't really pay any attention at the tower in the background while she was passing it as suddenly there was something coming out of the window and falling down on her, barely missing her head.
"What the hell was that now?"
She stopped and looked at that thing lying behind her on the ground. This thing clearly resembled the Rolling Cutter weapon from Cut Girl. Was she hiding somewhere close by?
"Come out from where you're hiding, you've lost something!" Mega Girl shouted while slowly moving forwards but there was no answer. Instead there were more of those things coming out of that window, there were scissors raining down on her!
"Okay, no idea what this bullshit is good for but sometimes you don't even wanna know" she mumbled to herself as she ran past that tower which for some reason was spitting out scissors when anyone came close to it. Some fleabots that came jumping towards Samus but miscalculated ended up getting themselves into perfect cutting range and falling victims to the Rolling Cutters instead.
And then there was another wall to climb and there were some of the Suzys waiting at certain locations. While those robots were only able to move either horizontally or vertically in a rather limited pattern until they hit a wall the placement of them made it harder to avoid a collision with them this time than it was back at the ladder which lead into the bunker of the ammunition factory. Samus carefully checked out every end of a ladder first before she went up and was forced to shoot some of the Octopus Batteries several times. There were four of them in one room and dodging them all while not being able to see every single one proved to be a bit hard. It was not like watching them all on a video game screen and so she got hit in the head and fell down to the floor as an Octopus Battery that she was unable to see previously crashed right into her face. Enough was enough! Mega Girl took that one out by throwing some pile of rubble into it's stupid closing and opening eye. It was like some of those machines were begging to get put out of their misery as they were blocking her way but turned themselves into targets you basically can't miss with your shots.
"I'm disappointed, Imu, you've put quantity over quality."
This process continued for three rooms in a row, they were filled with enemies but as soon as you've figured out how they moved they were easy to deal with. Even the Hyper Bomb got the job done without even having to be thrown with perfect accuracy.
"I know what the humans say about blondes but I feel personally insulted in my intelligence" said Mega Girl in disbelief when she faced the exact same Rolling Cutter producing tower than before. Of course she didn't fall for this a second time, what were they even thinking?
Samus had now reached the top of this high building, killed some Bunbies and prepared herself to descend down on the other side.
"From here it's going down the hill, shame though I have no cool device like a grappling hook or something they use in those spy movies" she complained, having to use those ladders and avoiding shots of occasionally appearing security robots. As she arrived at the bottom she had some deja vu as again there was a Big Eye waiting for her. However, she saw some conveniently placed rocks and immediately switched to the Super Arm.
"I'm gonna put some dirt in your eye!" Mega Girl yelled confidently as she threw one of them at her opponent but to her shock it was the rock that broke, not the robot!
"This can't be fuckin' true!" she complained as she had to retreat and return to the some stressful tactic she used on the other Big Eye by passing through under him at the very right moment. Were those things indestructable?
While fleeing from the Big Eye Samus reached a door labeled as Control Room and prepared herself for her next fight as she would bet all her money on meeting Cut Girl behind that door. She should not be proven wrong.
"Welcome, welcome" greeted Cut Girl with her arms stretched out while holding her deadly Rolling Cutter like a scissor in her right hand, "you're here to get yourself some styling tips? Then let me tell you, you'd look best being cut in half!"
With that being said the white haired self-claimed fashionista threw her weapon at the blonde which ducked right under it. Luckily she remembered the doctor's words about it being based on a boomerang and so she stood up and turned around immediately, facing the Rolling Cutter as it had already changed directions and came flying back in a downwards arc. Samus jumped over it before it could cut off her legs. While robots weren't able to feel pain losing a limb still was a scary thought. Yeah, sometimes she even listened to the old man's warnings.
"Your father would be disappointed with how you turned out to be. Don't you even feel bad to attack his factory?"
Mega Girl fired her arm cannon at Cut Girl while scolding her for her betrayal but to her surprise her opponent started jumping around like a maniac, way higher and wider than she used to.
"My father never cared much for me. Deep down you know that my biggest wish had always been to create fashionable clothes for robots and for humans. But I only ended up being used to cut wood and metal, what a disappointment."
"And Imu is using you for the same purposes now, so what's even your point?" Samus asked back, avoiding another Rolling Cutter while trying to land some shots on that hopping energizer bunny.
"For now this may be the case but our mother promised us this will change once we fulfilled our mission and she had gained her victory over the humans. Then we will be free to do whatever we want."
"And you believe that because...?"
"Because why would she lie? I couldn't care either way as I have nothing to lose anyway."
"That's not it! You were respected, I was looking up to you!"
"Nice. I won't become sentimental though. Part of our mission involves destroying you."
The constant jumping made it almost impossible to get some good shots in for Samus while it became harder to avoid the Rolling Cutter. One time she didn't manage to fully dodge the attack and the scissor hit her into the shoulder, tearing through her bodysuit and into some of the mechanics. This made her left arm rendered almost useless. Good thing it hadn't hit the right arm with the cannon at least! She needed a new tactic. The Hyper Bomb was left out, Cut Girl was moving way too fast for the slow-working bombs to do any good in this fight.
"Where have you learned to jump like that? Never seen you doing that before" Samus kept talking.
"Glad you asked. See those wonderful red boots I'm wearing? Those were specially designed by myself. Well, maybe Queen Imu helped a bit by building them but I came up with the style!"
Mega Girl looked around. The equipment in this control room actually looked pretty heavy, so she changed to the Super Arm and grabbed the next best thing she could find after she waited for the Rolling Cutter to return into Cut Girl's hand. Which proved to be a big steel cabinet. Samus swung it around at the jumping Robot Mistress, making her fall to the floor, then mercilessly hammered down on her, using it like a big club or hammer weapon. For a moment she almost felt bad about beating the other girl in such a brutal manner. Only until Cut Girl used her Rolling Cutter to tear the steel cabinet in half, making it useless for attack.
"Ha! What you're gonna do now?!"
Mega Girl didn't hesitate and simply grabbed the next stuff she could find, some equally big machine which function she didn't know about and used it to finish the other girl off.
"Nice boots by the way."
"N-not fair" the badly demolished wannabe fashion diva stuttered her last words before all of her movement suddenly stopped and there was no sign of life left in her body.
There was no blood of course. And it wasn't as if she had another choice. But Samus didn't feel good about the way she finished off Cut Girl, she hated every moment of it. And what was worse was that her sister really believed in everything that Imu had told her, implying that she promised all of them to give them free will once they've succeeded. The blonde thought about all this while she took the memory chip, hoping that getting the Rolling Cutter would give her a really powerful weapon for what was about to come. Imagining a world where robots were running around with free will. Was it even possible? Was Imu really capable of keeping that promises? What would the consequences be if it was real? Wasn't it easier to have a clear purpose in life? Wouldn't you feel lost in this world if this purpose was taken away from you and you didn't know your place in a society where you'd always be a misfit? Especially when you were not a human but a robot. It wasn't like Samus hadn't asked herself such questions before but whenever she tried to talk with the doctor the scientist suddenly became rather silent and had tried to change the topic...
She shrugged it off, after all she had managed to decimate her amok running sisters by half now. Three gone, three to go...