This is not a self-insertion story. This "college student from earth" shares a little with me and others in the real world, but don't most characters in fanfiction, even the official ones? No, this is a character I want to use to explore what it REALLY means to be a Gear, and explore the world of Sera from a new perspective.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Gears of War.

--

"You're mine now, bitch!" roared James Cargaille, laughing as he mashed the B button frenetically. Onscreen, Marcus Fenix clashed chainsaws with Cyclops Drone, spraying the screen with sparks as the two characters struggled. To his right, his older brother Justin's thumb blurred with the quick movement of the chainsaw duel. The onscreen warriors grunted and struggled, sinewy muscles bulging beneath blood-stained armor.

"Yes!" cried James, thumb still flashing.

But then, with a startling splash of blood and gore that covered the screen, Cyclops Drone turned Marcus Fenix's chainsaw to the side and dug into him where neck met shoulder. James cried "No!" and mashed the B button harder, but to no avail. It was too late now, and the crimson cog, now sealed with a skull, filled his half of the screen. The bold words, "Locust Won the Match," were emblazoned in a box, showing the score to be '7' to '15', Justin's favor.

Justin turned to James. "Damn, we should do this more often!"

Unfazed by his Gear's shocking death, James whooped aloud. He was already setting up a second multiplayer game. "I almost had you, man, almost!"

"Yeah right, you've been playing with way too many bots."

"On Insane difficulty! That's fucking hard, you know."

"Yeah, whatever. Bots don't measure up to man. I am man. You are dirt."

The two brothers laughed and exchanged jokes while the match loaded. It was to be a game of "Guardian", a multiplayer mode in which teams were allowed to respawn, but only if their leader stayed alive. They had picked the map "Ruins", for its brooding atmosphere and defensible positions.

James watched the timer count down. "5... 4... 3... 2... 1... beeep," he muttered.

In the dark living room, with the silent hum of the Xbox 360 and the whir of the disk tray, James found himself edging closer to his older brother. He caught himself, remembering the rusty springs sticking out of his couch. The coils poked him in the thigh through his boxers.

He suddenly wondered what would happen if he got a spontaneous erection.

The distinctive death sound and a scream from one of his teammates brought James back to reality. He checked the bottom left corner of his screen.

Destructomator had just killed Cole with a pointblank shotgun blast. Destructomator was Justin. He was Skorge, the leader of the Locust team.

Knowing that Cole would respawn behind him, James held the A button and went into a roadie-run, maneuvering out of the spawn area and up the stairs, rolling to the left to make a sharp turn up another set of stairs. He rushed the bridge, checking his tac-com. One of his teammates, Baird, had just gone down. A moment later he was dead.

Destructomator executed Baird. The long red name that James had come to fear had just popped up on his half of the screen again. He glanced down at Justin's screen. Saw that he was coming up the stairs behind James with a lancer.

James briefly wondered if Justin knew he had screen-peaked, because he had just jumped behind cover with a tap of the A button. If he did, he didn't show it. He slammed into cover and opened fire. Three bullets in quick succession struck James, splashing blood from his side. James's character, Hoffman, reacted by throwing his arms up as he ran, and the crimson omen began to fade onto the screen.

But James was behind cover now, just behind the large block beneath the last set of stairs that led up to the arc of the bridge, where the flamethrower was located. He equipped a smoke grenade, blind-threw it, and rolled back, immediately holding down on the control stick and holding A to sprint up the stairs. On Justin's screen, the smoke grenade concussed, but did not knock him out of cover. He jumped forward and ran to the block that James had just come from.

One of James's teammates killed a Locust. The teammate quickly died at the hands of another Locust. One of his men went down and was executed. Another of his men drove a Locust into cover with hammerburst shots.

Justin had his own smoke grenade.

It was flying through the air.

It landed just behind James.

Reacting on instinct, James sprinted around his pop-up metal cover and slammed into the wall to his right at the base of the stairs. Despite the poor cover the wall afforded, Justin was on the same side of the bridge as he was, and had no good shot. Still, blood spurted from James's bicep. Twice. Thrice. The crimson omen became thicker and more red.

Pretty soon he would be dead.

He had to act.

Justin stopped firing and began to reload, and in that moment James was rushing him, shotgun at the ready.

But Justin always got perfect reloads. James's character screamed in pain as the bullets tore into him, slowing him. Justin was bullet-hosing him.

But James managed to reach cover by quickly tapping A, sliding into position.

He blindfired.

Missed.

Justin jumped around cover at the same moment, revved his chainsaw.

Big mistake. James slugged him with a melee from his shotgun. He pulled the trigger as Justin's character stumbled back.

Nothing happened. The delay between melee and shooting was greater than it had been in the first Gears of War.

The chainsaw revved, and as his blood covered the screen, James saw the horror of his mistake. It hardly fazed him, just made him more...

Determined...

To...

Justin was staring at James. He had paused the game.

"Jimmy? Jimmy, are you ok?"

James felt dizzy. He turned to his brother. There were two Justins staring at him with wide eyes.

And then the coffee table was rushing up to meet James' face.