I suppose even antagonists can be empathized with when one of their arms is being shattered...That's just scary stuff right there. Can't even blame paper girl for losing her head. It did blow up in their faces. And yet I'm not sure there were a lot of winning options there. I suppose they could have sought out the safest level of damage to free the arm...while their leader's eyeballs were being ripped out
. So yeah, I'm with extreme efforts in that case.
They did pick this fight, but I could still empathize a bit. Less so with the fairly extreme testing options they chose to make sure the scientist wasn't the robot. I respect being thorough in a job, but I'd say the superhuman feats shown by said robot more than confirmed her identity anyways. Even they thought the same otherwise they'd be sending their friend off to potentially fight a robot by herself which is a questionable strategy.
Not that there's too much sympathy at present for the Doppelganger. That sympathy kind of goes out when reaching the whole "time to kill the original" plan. If not for the Scavenger crew she's definitely dead before Mikoto can show up to save the day.
Still, this isn't looking good for the Scavenger crew anyways. They can't handle this situation now. Just avoiding death is pushing the limits of their capabilities. And if they have to run away from this...well their future isn't bright. Not that it's Mikoto's problem. She's got to find a way to handle this without it getting any more crazy. Or at least not getting crazy to the level that the whole city gets absorbed/controlled.