The subject of mortality, especially of their own, was one that occasionally pushed itself to the forefront of Fivemind's processor. Lately, however, it was a subject that lingered longer than the machine would have liked.
It wasn't easy to not think of it. Especially not now when their cameras were locked on the damaged body of their pink unit sprawled out on a workbench. It had been two against two — Pink and Green versus Antares and his client of the week, Mad Golfer.
A split second distraction, visual input from an uninvolved unit, was all it took for the scorpion-like cyborg to ram a golf cart, souped up to the point of being barely a cart, into their pink ranger.
Were their processor itself slowing down? Were they starting to lose their touch?
Perhaps... but perhaps not. They had come out victorious in the end, but not without their green ranger getting severely battered from both bodyslamming into a 'golf cart' and having chunks of torn-up earth lobbed at them by the villainous golfer.
They'd have to fix him up next. Did they even have the parts for that?
How long could they keep this up?
All this time, they'd relished the glimpses of their own mortality in the error messages and damage reports relayed to their CPU from their units' processors. The fact that they could die had made them feel alive (they were alive, right ?) and they had welcomed it as long as the realisation came in small bursts that could be patched back up with duct tape and denial.
But that was when 'death' as they understood it for themself had seemed like a distant possibility far beyond the horizon.
They'd felt like this before though. Decades ago. Back when they had failed to fix themself up time and time again in relative obscurity. They could have rotted away alone back then, slowly but painlessly.
They didn't want that. Not then and not now.
If they had to go it should be quick. It should hurt (what did it even mean to hurt?). That was how it was supposed to go. To go in any manner otherwise scared them.
Maybe they should start working on a self-destruct button.