[ It's not about pride to her. She isn't out to prove anything to anyone out there. She's Andromache of fucking Scythia — the once-queen of her people, heir to her mother's throne, a goddess of war, blood-thirsty and wrathful, slayer of a thousand men —

And she is completely and utterly lost. Untethered from everything she was before. Violence is, like the sex and booze, comforting in its familiarity — a superficial thread of her own identity, tenuous as that concept is to her these days. It's what she knows. And a rebellion, maybe. Against her own mortality. Her own human frailty.

Or maybe it's all just a big fucking tantrum. She may be seven thousand years old, but she's never filled the stereotype of a wise old hermit — just a raging bitch, for all time and eternity. And as it stands, the raging bitch has no intention to correct course. She wouldn't know where to correct to, even if she wanted to. So it's not unlikely that this won't be the last time Kim looks up to see her stumbling in bloody during the night shift. ]

The fight. [ She echoes dryly. ] Wasn't all that fucking —

[ The sting of antiseptic cuts her words off, earning a hiss of breath and a reproachful little look in Kim's direction. ]

...Wasn't all that fucking exciting. [ She probably deserved that. ] Just a couple of stupid oni drunk on cheap swill, thinking they could get handsy because I'm half their size. Didn't expect me to fight back. So I grabbed one by the balls and —

[ Putting one hand out, she demonstrates, twisting a pair of imaginary oni testicles with a sharp jerk of her wrist. ]