Description: Kenzo's road to recovery is just beginning but not all injuries are physical.
After spending so much time in the infirmary, Kenzo was feeling restless and unfortunately, he had a lot of time to be alone with his inner demons and pain. Thankfully, with the best medical care that money could buy, the physical pain will soon be a thing of the past.
The emotional pain was another matter. Kenzo could only describe his performance in the NFG as wildly inconsistent. The first fight there was a curbstomp at the hands of Genie. Someone who, at that point, couldn't throw a proper punch or kick if her life depended on it. Even his technical skill couldn't see him through. The tournament bonus stages showed flashes of what he failed to show in the tournament. In Sunshine City, there was a loss to Buck that could've gone either way. A few tiny mistakes ended up being the difference between victory and defeat. He fought out of his mind versus Hawksley and a combination of preparation and mental warfare against Buford saw him through. The Rumble, he wasn't worked up about. His skillset didn't lend itself to free for alls.
His time in Metro City on the other hand, was a struggle. Kenzo forced Chevy to pull out all the stops to beat him and even then it was a close matter. After that, Kenzo fought a close fight with Braun. After that, it was curbstomp delivered by his biggest fan partially brought on by a combination of inability to keep the fight in the designated area and the damage to his morale from getting attacked while trying to get back to the ring. He got through his first fight in the final tournament against Ayala mostly thanks to managing to capitalize on small errors. Then his fight with Junko came along. At first, he had trouble making reads on her. Everything he did was wrong. The one thing going right for him was that she was almost as harmful to herself as she was to him. By the time he started getting good reads on her, it was almost too late and if it was almost anyone else, he would have won. He then had to deal with her ability to bounce back from severe damage. He was then eliminated from the tournament so he dedicated himself to preparing Djamila for fighting Junko. He got curbstomped once more. In theory, if he fought more like himself he might have stood a chance but even still, he not only lost quickly, painfully, and devastatingly to someone that he should be considered a peer to.
It was enough to shake Kenzo's confidence in his fighting ability. Kenzo's greatest strength was in how refined his technique was in comparison to others in the NFG. The ninja was starting to wonder if he was a high floor, low ceiling fighter. And as the more talented started to catch up to his technical ability the more likely he was going to be left behind. He then turns to his laptop close by and starts typing an email on it.
| From: | "Kuroiwa Kenzo"<lightning_engineer@kurokomail.co.jp> |
| To: | "Ultratech"<info@ultratech.com> |
| Subject: | Ultratech Partnership |
At this time, I'm afraid that I'll have to decline your generous offer to continue my partnership with Ultratech. While I desire to continue my partnership, I don't believe I have what it takes to adequately contribute to the E.V.O.L.V.E program. My performance in the NFG has been inconsistent at best and until I can find a way to step things up, I'm not sure that my addition will improve things. Thank you for your consideration. | |
There's a lull where the tech ninja stops typing. He neither has the confidence in his fighting ability to definitively say yes to the partnership nor the testicular fortitude to say no. And so Kenzo exits the email application which in turn sends the email to drafts.
Log created on 14:07:25 12/09/2023 by Kenzo, and last modified on 12:17:46 12/10/2023.