[As of writing: Inazuma Eleven Episode 27-28]

Today, around 4 or 5, I decided to approach the available PS3 next to the pillar. I wanted to go there because it reminded me that the Green Day: Rock Band demo finally got installed. As I was playing "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", I saw some guys who didn't look much older than me walk in and ask if they could play. I played both available songs on the demo and finally decided to switch over to Rock Band 2. The guy I was playing with was playing the drums and said I could choose any song. I decided to play "Give It All" which is a pretty challenging song for the guitar and drums and I notice he chose Expert difficulty, which shocked me. What shocked me the most was:

He was hitting the notes.

More notes than probably I could hit.

Now, he isn't the first person I met that is better than me at the game, but I haven't met anyone better than me at the drums. Also, his friend took over for him as well and, although he wasn't quite as good and not as good as I was, he was still much better than anyone else at YouMedia. I would've expected myself to get mad, but I was actually pretty damn happy that I've finally met people I could play at my level with (there are people on Xbox Live I play with that can do the same, but I'm really happy that I could take it to a couch-co-op play session)

After they left and feeling a bit competitive, I decided to connect the PS3 to the internet and play 1-on-1 against some people online. I played a couple of Tug of War matches with a guy and I was kickin' ass (even when he switched down to Hard difficulty while I was still on Expert). I knew that Tug of War wasn't where the people I was looking for were playing, so I switched over to Score Duel. That's when I met a guy named Doob. Right at the start, before we got to even playing a single song, he seemed to already know what he was doing, going straight for Carry On Wayward Son and choosing Expert Guitar for both of us immediately.

Simply put: he smoked me.

I got wrecked by about 30,000 point which is a pretty huge gap. I felt crappy but at the same time excited. People watching me were shocked that there was someone better than me and were trying to support me while it was the first time they've ever saw me lose.

Now it was my turn to choose the song. Maybe I could turn the tides. Actually, no. What was going through my mind was "let's see if this guy can do something I can't." So I went straight for Panic Attack on Expert Guitar knowing that I was pretty decent at the song. Maybe I could stand a chance. I couldn't lose that bad, could I?

I lost by about 100,000 points. I was somewhere around 200k while he was sitting proudly somewhere around 300k. I was in shock. I knew I wasn't awesome like the people I see on YouTube, but I didn't think I was THAT bad, and I knew most people that saw me at YouMedia thought I was pretty kickass. (just because I want to, I'm going to say that the battle was pretty damn epic. I was hitting notes I usually never hit before with some pretty dramatic and awesome music) Having them see that raised their standards and also raised mine.

I surprisingly felt really good and accomplished even though I got myself whooped. I had described it to someone like this: It's like an anime. There are the normal people who are decent at what they do. And then there are the super-powerful people. The ones that have some sort of hidden power that can't be seen until they need to use it. The awesome ones that are recognized as awesome after you see them once. They are super-cool and super-important and, even though they do most of their things with seemingly normal people, they break out into incredible awesomeness when they decide it's time to take things seriously. I feel like I'm one of those awesome people at YouMedia, and, just like an anime, I seem to have encountered my foreign enemy who's skill rivals against mine and I will have to try hard to become better (and maybe even the best).

Wow. Writing that makes me realize how cliché that is. The thing that makes this much more real is that the people that I consider rivals probably don't care as much as I do. They probably think I take the game way to seriously. You probably think the same as well. But it's fun to take things seriously like that. It makes you feel important and powerful in your own way. I treat video games like Endou treats soccer, or how Hikaru treats Go, or how Dynamite treats DDR. They are at the top tier of their game, but then they encounter higher tiers and things get really interesting. Yeah, that's EXACTLY how I treat it.