Gears of War 3 : That's Enough

Placeholder That's Enough
"I am an asshole." This is something that i've told myself many times. No matter the situation I always did whatever it took to gain victory. Whether I was playing sports, trying to get ahead in life, or merely playing a videogame. I did whatever I could to win. I've been playing videogames for as long as I can remember and I instantly fell in love with online multiplayer after trying it once. The XBOX was my choice for online gaming and I always played Halo and eventually the Gears of War Series on the Xbox 360. I would always did whatever it took to win a match, whether it was categorized as cheating or merely playing unsportingly, I did so to win. My "skill" and "success" in these games were identical to my real success in life. After some sweet talking and doing some unmentionable things i've landed myself with a great way of living that I would have never gotten doing things the "noble" way. A few righteous people may of gotten hurt along the way but who cares? The Gears of War series was my favorite games to play online, especially due to the glitches that were apparent in the first two installments. If you're not familar with the Gears series it tended to be very glitchy in the first two games. Glitches like this included getting out of the map, being able to shoot while running, etc. I would use these glitches to win and usually did most of the time. The power of anonymity played a huge role on my style of online gaming. I would constantly talk trash, and used the skills I had in the game alongside with the glitches to utterly decimate and embarrass my opponents online. It felt good to be able to talk so much trash and almost make people sound like they were going to break their consoles out of anger due to me mocking them so much. Gears of War 3 came out and I was really annoyed that Gears 3 didn't have any game breaking glitches. Regardless i've been playing the series enough to hold my own even without being able to technically cheat. I would go out of my way to use cheap tatics, and even let my teammates die at times if it meant that I would do better. Regardless if I won or not I would constantly talk trash and cheat my way to victory.One night while playing online I got into a match were I utterly destroyed the opposition with little effort due to their lack of skill. Once again I went out of my way to talk trash and even make one of the younger players on the other team leave the match. I sent the player messages talking trash and it lead to an argument through messages. This lasted for a while until the player just stopped replying so i'm guessing he blocked me. Good for him I guess, it just felt good to have such power. Some simple rude words was all it took to ruin someone's night and it felt good doing so. I was having a fun time talking trash, tbagging, etc until a notification popped up on my screen. It was a message from a random player and the notification stated "has sent you a message", but it didn't say the gamertag. If you're not familar with xbox live, whenever someone sends you a message the notification says their gamertag and "sent you a message". For example if the person's gamertag was "sharpshooter" it would say "sharpshooter has sent you a message", but this message didn't contain a gamertag. I opened the message it only contained the words "That's enough". I was confused to what that meant and I assumed it was from the player I was talking trash to before so I replied to the blank gamertag "yeah it's enough that I shitted on you, get owned scrub!" The blank gamertag didn't reply. I decided to leave it alone after that and continue playing. A few days later I was playing Gears 3 and I chose my "victim" like I always did and decided to constantly tbag him and talk trash to him after the match was over. He left the game and right after the match was over I got another notification, "has sent you a message". I admit it startled me to see this happen again but I opened the message instantly. It once again held the same words "that's enough", and still held no gamertag. Out of anger I instantly replied with a voice message. If you're not familiar with xbox live you can send anyone you want a message up to 15 seconds of your voice talking to the player. They can even hold onto the message and replay it over and over if they want to. In my voice message I recorded myself saying "what the fuck does that even mean? Do you want to challenge me to a 1v1 on here? I'll fucking destroy you!" I clicked the send button and only a few seconds after that the player replied again. This startled me once again, "did he already hear my message and reply?" I asked myself. Regardless I opened it to realize it held not a text message but a actual voice message for once. "YES!" I said, because I really wanted to hear this players voice.What I heard in my microphone was not a voice but eerie static and a voice that mumbled very quietly. I couldn't make out what it said so I replayed the voice message again to try to hear it better. The second time I listened to it the voice that was too hard to hear last time actually sounded louder and more clear but still in a whisper. "That's enough" I heard it say. This seemed very strange to me so I decided to listen to it one more time. This time it sounded very loud and clear and the voice almost sounded too deep to be human "that's enough!" It said loudly. This definitely freaked me out due to the fact that voice messages can't be changed. It's a recording of what someone said so it should sound exactly the same everytime you hear it, but yet it sounded louder everytime I pushed play on this message. I decided to play it off as a simple glitch even though deep down I knew that it couldn't be a glitch...something weird was going on here. I decided to send the player a text message that said "1v1 or leave me alone". I waited for a long time to get a reply. Almost an hour went by before I got another reply from the nameless player. It was a game invite and all it said was "wants you to play Gears of War 3". I clicked join right away to play against him. "Finally I can kick my stalkers ass!" I thought. When I joined in he had set it to a 1v1 execution match on raven down. He also only set it to one round, which kind of caught me off guard. "Why would he set it to only one round?" I asked myself. "Doesn't he know that a 1v1 should at least have 4 rounds?" He was on the COG team and I was on the locust team, which was okay with me because I loved playing as the locust. It almost felt like playing as a monster fit the way I played online. I was hyped up to 1v1 the bastard that would not leave me alone for the last few days. The match started up and I ran from my side of the map to the other to find him. When I reached the other side he was just standing where he had spawned. He wasn't even playing and I was going to kill him until I noticed something strange. He was definitely playing as Anthony Carmine but his character didn't look like how it normally would. The armor was a dark black and grey instead of the standard mostly blue armor. Not to mention his character's helmet was extremely dark black and instead of having the normal blue eyes it had dark purple eyes. "This couldn't be right" I said to myself. "Gears of War 3 has set characters and I know this dark carmine isn't real. He must be a modder or something like that". This didn't make sense to me though seeing as you can't mod textures of a character and use them online, at least as far as I know. Regardless he was clearly using a character that shouldn't be in the game. I was curious to why he wasn't even playing so I stood there to watch him to see if he would play. About a minute passed and I got tired of waiting so I decided to just go for the kill. I went to body him with my gnasher but the second I pulled the trigger my character got stunned and couldn't move. It was similar to when you get stunned by a ink grenade but instead of getting out of stun a few seconds later my character stayed there forever frozen. I mashed buttons on my controller trying to get him out of stun but nothing would happen. Then I noticed his character turn to me, and slowly start to walk towards me. I tried to move my character again and became angry because I didn't want to lose! "This is bullshit! How are you doing this?" I yelled into my mic hoping he would hear me. The next thing I saw was his cog character walk up to my locust while dropping his gun to floor. This really freaked me out because i've never seen anything like this before. His character continued to walk towards me with nothing but his bare hands and placed his right hand on top of characters head. I heard a loud ripping sound as he ripped my characters head off and then proceeded to drop it to the floor. The scream my locust let out as this was happening was loud and sounded too grotesque even for a violent game like Gears. I stood by in horror as the game continued on, even though my character had already dropped to the ground. Usually when you die in a execution match the round is over and it would either start a new round or end the match but the game did neither. I was stuck in ghost cam but I couldn't move it at all, nor could I go to dashboard, it was almost like if my console was frozen. His cog character then stared right at me, almost like if he could see me through the tv, and proceeded to walk slowly towards the screen. He eventually got so close to the screen that all I could see was Anthony Carmine's helmet, just his face complete with those dark purple eyes. It continued to stare at me for about 10 seconds and I did nothing but stare back at it in horror. Out of no where the screen went into a static and I could hear nothing but that ripping sound again and again as my tv seemed to grow louder with static and the sound of ripping flesh. I immediately went to turn off my xbox but it wouldn't turn off so out of a panic I grabbed it, unplugged it, and threw on the ground as hard as I could. I got angry with myself because I realized I could've just turned off my tv and I didn't even need to throw it. I was filled with various emotions from fear of what I just saw and anger at myself for throwing my beloved console to the ground. I decided to leave it unplugged for the night. The next day I decided to plug it back in and try to boot up my console. It worked and I signed into xbox live just fine as usual and immediately checked if I had any new messages, but I didn't. I wanted to try to play Gears of war 3 but my console was too banged up from me throwing it, I guess I threw it harder than I thought. It couldn't read discs anymore so I was really disappointed that all this even happened. This was my second xbox so I really didn't want to get a new one. I felt almost done with xbox after all this. I decided that I didn't want to get a new xbox so I decided to get a Playstation 3 instead. I was kind of esctatic to try something new, I always wanted to get a PS3 but I was always too hooked on Gears to do so. After last night something different sounded like a great idea to me. I always heard that Uncharted was a great series and seeing as it was a third person shooter I just had to try it out. I went to my local gamestore and bought the ps3 and a couple of games including the God of War collection and Uncharted 1-3. When I got home I immediately plugged in my new console and booted up Uncharted 3 and jumped in the multiplayer. I was a pretty crappy player at first but after a few matches I was starting to get some good kills and started to do very well. After I got a little more confident I started to reenact my old ways and start trash talking, sending rude messages etc. About 3 hours had passed and I was having a great time. I suddenly got a notification on my screen. All it said was "sent you a message". I shuddered when I read that, but I still decided to open the message. All it contained was the words "that's enough"...