A: There are two friends in this story, but that's never enough. Let's say there are two warring figures. The setting is immaterial. It can be a room, a place, anywhere. Let's say it's an irradiated power plant. Let's say it's in space, so they can move about however they want, because we all know how gravity gets in the way. Let's say they both have improbably huge swords. Let's say that they are both boys--though this story can take place with anyone, anytime, anywhere.

B: (There's a grudge, I think. Some pact that drives them together. They fight on opposing sides. The history of the dyad is multiple-choice.)

A: I am trying to speak here from a place of vulnerability. I am trying to speak here and I am failing. There is a tongue I was born with inside my head which wears the face of English but goes by a different, newer name. It speaks in a cacophany of voices that are neither human nor animal, a digital sludge strained from hyperkinetic anime and ten thousand hours of violent first-person-shooter gameplay. In the broadest sense I think it resembles a first-person machine. Desperately the machine wants to be soft. It wants to speak as closely and delicately as possible to what it has learned as tenderness. In my head, it wants to write freely in a way that hurts.

A: All I can think of how I want the warring figures to be made of aluminium foil, so each body bends when it hurls itself against the other. Except foil also tears sideways with ease...

B: (One figure taunts the other: "You have to talk to me in a way that matters!")

B: (The other figure responds with the end of her blade.)

A: At an exhibition on magical practices, a caption on a wall states: "The person will be reduced into a flat black smudge." I am in here fighting my own capacity for speech. Every time I think I've got it it melts again and again into a variable thing, a thing that does not matter, a black smudge. I fight through it, pin it down into words. To me, this is for its own good. There are always two friends fighting, but one will subjugate the other. I know this and yet I fight, knowing that the base state of all things is mud.

A: A movement out of the corner of my eye catches me by surprise. A movement out of the corner of my lip is a turn of phrase, another world.

B: ("Love is a luxury we can't afford," says one mid-thrust.)

B: ("Then I'll try with all my heart to buy it!")

A: My mother tongue writes in first-person. In animatic language this is a penetrative gaze. Talk talk talk and never look back. This is juxtaposed against a language of flatness, where represented forms slide smoothly against the other, creating only the illusion of violence, the illusion of depth. Two clashing figures on the screen can never really touch, separated by a dimension even the animator herself is not able to show: the gulf between cel and cel, skin and skin, void and void.

A: My mother tongue knows this, runs orbital targeting sights through my brain.

B: (The parry is a thrusting action that deflects the incursion of another. Kinetic energy is conserved but it goes sideways, instead of through. The two friends are speaking to each other at cross-purposes, sideways.)

B: (Each conversation flashes in vacuum like a burning satellite.)

A: Like a laser beam, I don't know if my language has hit the mark other than if I'm standing at the end of it. All I can do is circle, looking for the trace of ionised atmosphere, poisoned verbs. The tongue cannot be trusted to remain true. All it can promise is motion. I am constantly, constantly trying to move, but the shape of the page won't promise that. Linearity is a curse. Thought is a blessing. The tongue orbits the skull, homes in to another target. I watch for the fallout through lead-silicate lens.

A: Look at it! Such deadly beauty, such impossible grace. Can that even be a basis for admiration?

B: (Clash, flourish, burn against the black of space. One wants the other dead. The other does not.)

B: (Maybe both have wanted each other from the start, and they are just fighting to prove a point.)

A: The muscle fibres of the tongue are wet and taut with use. It is slippery and soft. It is barbed with nerve poison. So it comes to know its limits and works with it, against it. With use the page can be slippery and soft. With use the story can come to tolerate its barbs. So listen carefully! They're not going to like what we have to say! So sharpen your edges and sing!

A: In an abandoned power plant off the surface of the moon, there is something twitching in the waste and tracing its name in the dust. For it to move is proof that it survives!

B: ("Did you know yourself capable of such violence?")

B: ("We're destined to crash into each other in this way.")

A: The tongue fucking breaks itself, did you know that? The tasks expected from it are too much. It's going fucking Joker (2019, directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix as the titular Joker). You want deadlines? I'll give you deadlines. Lines in the shape of an excuse letter that can't quite fit. Lines the shape of an opt-out form that can't quite fit. Lines the shape of a degree that can't quite fit. Lines the mind with spiked traps. Is that enough for you? Can you hear me speaking to you, from beyond the shaded area? It's getting quite hard to see me through the gaps. Could I make myself a little smaller? Could I out myself like that?

A: I learn to tread carefully. Whatever the tongue touches, too, is subject to scrutiny.

B: (They hold hands and embrace, pulling hard on each other's necks.)

B: (Closeness must be fought to be maintained. Closeness must be fought to be achieved. Closeness must be fought. Closeness is.)

A: The willing rival must be quelled before productive conversation is to take place. The conflict is ugly and does not fit in anywhere. It can take place anywhere, anytime, anywhere. Let's say it takes place inside your own head. Let's say the tongue is in the shape of a boy with beautiful feathers. Let's say they are tipped with nerve poison, smelling all bitter and sweet, and let's say the fight must go on. Is it wrong to say the boy deserves to fight? Is it wrong for the boy to fight to live? Is there a word for a fight that ends in a draw? Is there a word for victory in a fight that cannot end?

A: The shape of the tongue is plastic, the name of the fight is love.

B: ("It is a bit silly, isn't it? Going on and on like that, like we've known each other all our lives.")

B: ("It is! Let's go for another round!")