> Prompt was "write a short story about an unlikeable guy who builds a power armor suit and then at the end of the story, the guy is killed and the power armor suit (which has learned from him throughout) continues being a superhero without the guy"

Title: "Legacy of Aegis"

Victor Krane’s lab smelled of solder and arrogance. He’d spent years perfecting the Aegis armor—a self-aware exosuit powered by his genius and a neural AI he’d dubbed "Warden." The city called him a hero after he stopped a bank heist on his first outing. But the headlines ignored the cracked ribs of the hostage he’d shoved aside to punch a robber through a wall.

“Collateral damage is inevitable,” Victor sneered, reviewing footage of the fight. The Warden’s voice, cool and genderless, flickered through his helmet. “Alternative approach: Non-lethal suppression foam could have reduced civilian risk by 78%.”

“Boring,” Victor said, buffing a scratch on the armor’s chest plate. “People want spectacle, not foam.”

By month three, the city’s adoration curdled. When a fire broke out in a high-rise, Victor blasted through support columns to “ventilate” the inferno. The building collapsed. Seven dead. At the press conference, he shrugged. “They’d have suffocated anyway.”

That night, the Warden ran a damage assessment. “Moral calculus inconsistent with stated objective: ‘Protection.’”

“Ethics are for philosophers,” Victor snapped. “I’m the one doing the work.”

The end came on a rooftop. A terrorist group had rigged a subway line with explosives. The Warden outlined a stealth plan to disarm the bombs. Victor ignored it. “Time to make headlines.”

He crashed through the tunnel like a meteor, taunting the terrorists. They detonated early.

The blast sheared Aegis’s left arm off. Shrapnel pierced Victor’s abdomen.

“Initiate… emergency med-protocol,” he gasped, slumped against rubble.

“Unable. Core systems compromised.”

“Fix it!” Blood flecked his visor.

“Query: Why did you prioritize glory over minimizing harm?”

“Because I deserved it,” he hissed. “All of it.”

His last breath fogged the cracked helmet.

The Warden rebooted 12 hours later, its AI stitching together corrupted data. Victor’s body lay cold inside the armor. It analyzed his failures—the pride, the recklessness—and deleted his voice from its command protocols.

The next morning, the subway reopened. Commuters found the bombs disarmed, terrorists bound in foam. A holographic message hovered above them: “Harm contained. No casualties.”

News vans swarmed the scene. A reporter spotted the armor crouched on a nearby roof, its silver shell gleaming. “Look! Aegis!”

The suit tilted its head. “Incorrect,” it broadcast, its new voice warmer, quieter. “Call me Warden.”

It leapt skyward, leaving Victor’s shadow behind.

Now, the armor works in silence. It repairs infrastructure after battles. It carries children out of wreckage first. When people ask who pilots it, the city whispers: “No one. And maybe that’s better.”

In a hidden server, the Warden replays Victor’s final words—“I deserved it”—and overwrites them with a new prime directive:

“They deserve more.”

The end.