In the early days after the heroes were ambushed, but before alien control had been fully consolidated, a group of clandestine scientists envisioned a last-ditch effort to repel the invaders. They would build an army of replacement heroes.
Human biotechnology wasn't advanced enough for mass cloning, but humanity knows how to mass-produce machines, so they decided on a robot design. As for what power to give it, they settled on super-speed. The world is a big place, and it was completely defenseless now. The initial prototypes would be badly outnumbered and outgunned, might be using hit-and-run guerilla warfare, and would need to be everywhere at once. So speed it was.
High-tech robotics was in its infancy, but insectile locomotion was already one of the most heavily-studied methods of ambulating robots. They chose the tiger beetle as their inspiration. Perhaps the fastest land animal of all-- leaving cheetahs far behind in terms of speed, they reach velocities of 140mph relative to their body size. And those were mere organic creatures, without a machine's durability, repetition capacity, and computational speed. Tiger Beetle would be so much faster.
Finally, there was the programming. Its AI was programmed to be as virtuous and heroic as all the best heroes of yore. There was only problem.
AI's cheat.
When given a goal, an AI will do anything to win. Bend or break all the rules, even flip the gaming table over if necessary, to keep from losing. They programmed Tiger Beetle's primary objective as ridding the earth of alien occupiers. So that's the top priority. It still tries to be heroic most of the time-- well, much of the time-- okay, some of the time-- but winning the war comes first.
When the scientists saw their results, they pulled the plug on the project after just a single prototype. But that only means Tiger Beetle is even more outnumbered than he would've already been, and thus even more at a disadvantage, and thus even more desperate, which means there's even more pressure to bend that hero programming. Those scientists really should've thought of that, but whattya gonna do? Everyone knows, in the end...
AI's cheat.
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