When you punch a person in the face the right way, you are aware of him breaking.
If your mind is fast enough, you can feel his face rearranging itself, fluid, around your knuckles and hear the instinctive gasp of his throat closing. I've never bought into all that psychic crap, but as your hand remodels his attic a connection is formed, deeper than anything else I've felt. For a moment, joined by disaster, you are sharing each other's bodies. Both victims are intimately and painfully concious of the damage being done, and are powerless to stop it. Landing a hit like that is not a victory. As the contact breaks, so does the ball of energy inside your chest and suddenly you don't want to fight anymore. This would give your opponent a perfect opportunity to kill you, except that no one gets up from a hit like that.
I didn't even get blood on my hand. His head jerked away too quickly and it flew out in a spray to the left, away from me.
I'm not exactly sure when or how the line between defending myself and seeking out fights blurred. It doesn't matter, really. What did matter was that now I understood what I was doing in an effort to avoid my own thoughts.
During a fight, a real fight, there is no time for thinking. Adrenalin, fear, and a perverse exhilaration drive out everything else. For me, whose head has always been a noisy place, this was a release. I wasn't looking for pain, however, nor was I seeking to cause it (strange as that may seem). I was seeking that release which danger gave me.
But the exhilaration was no longer there. I could not believe what my hand had told me. I looked at my new brother lying there and threw up on his shoes.