Burnout - An Old Friend

[Deleted]

In my hotel room, not long after my battle royal at DBABUTS, my phone begins to ring. It's Mr. Tozawa.

"Ishimura?"

"Yes, sir?"

"I am proud of you. You showed great courage out there. So much so, that I want you to stay out there one month longer, and I've already picked your opponent. Tomorrow morning, do me a favour. When you go downstairs for breakfast, check the lobby. You'll be in for a surprise.

I went to sleep with my mind all over the place wondering what on earth Mr. Tozawa was talking about.

Monday (6:05am)

As Mr. Tozawa instructed me to do, I got out of the lift in the hotel and walked into the lobby.

"Ishimura!
To my surprise, the man who trained me, and a man who I haven't seen in over ten years, Ichigo Kurosawa was sat down in the lobby.

"Masahiko, my son, it is so great to see you! Toshiaki gave me the call to come over here to help you out."

I am very surprised to see you sir! It's been what, ten years?!"

"Almost to the day."

"Sir, if you don't mind me asking, where have you been all this time?"

"When you've been doing this as long as I have, you start to miss your family. I missed my son's high school graduation because I had to wrestle. My eldest daughter, I didn't even see her wedding because I was wrestling. After 31 years in the ring, it dawned on me that I had let my children grow up away from me, and for that, I felt terrible. The day before you made your debut, I drove home to my wife, and I went off the grid completely."

"Wow... so, why are you back now?"

"Haha, Masa, I might have been off of the grid for a good 10 years, but I've still followed you. I did see your debut match. And the first time you won that JPF Junior Heavyweight Title, my face lit up with excitement. I am so proud of how far you've come, and when Toshiaki called me? I couldn't resist the offer. Come on, that's enough jibber jabber.
Let's go the gym. I want to see you train."

Monday (7:25am)

Push yourself Masa! Come on! Keep going!

After almost 100 squats, my legs had turned to jell-o, yet Ichigo was still pushing me. After the 100th squat, he finally said, to my immediate relief..

"Ok, haha, that's enough. You can go, huh?"

"Well.. *heavy breathing*.. I try.. haha."

"Come on, let's get some breakfast. You've earned it, after all."

Monday (7:45am)

As I sat down and ate breakfast, myself and Ichigo had a little more time to catch up, so he started talking.

"Masa, you have a son, correct?"

"Yes, sir."

"Come on, now. Cut out that sir garbage! How old is your son?"

"He just turned two about a month ago, actually."

"Are you booked anywhere this week?"

"Not to my knowledge, no."

"Good. Masa, I want you to do something for me. Whenever you have a day off, don't do what I did. Whenever I had one, I went off drinking with the boys. Whenever you have one, spend it with your family. Go home, see your wife, see your son. Don't make the same mistakes I did. Don't take your family for granted. Because, if you do.. sooner or later, they'll be grown up, and they'll want nothing to do with you."

I was almost at a loss for words after realising that Ichigo was pouring his heart out to me. I didn't want to say anything about the situation, so I just politely agreed to go home with my family.

Saturday (11:46am)
As I sat in my hotel room ahead of another WFWF show, my mind was racing.

"With Ichigo back, I at least have someone on the road who understands me. Nobody else here can speak Japanese. And I have to fight a WOMAN at the next show? Should I show mercy? Will she show mercy? I suppose, like Ichigo said, the best thing for me to do is go out there and think of her just like any other opponent. Ok. I can do this."

I went to sleep.

[Sleazyness]

Please next time can you use separate colors to indicate who is talking? I got confused at first! lol

I felt the scenes were short. The conversations could have been a bit more in detail. I think you need to make your character have a bit more personality. Also, try to use more verbs and what not to show what each character is doing. It seemed like a bit too much convo and not enough other things going on. I do love how Ishimura is dumbfounded over the fact that he has to fight a woman. I wish you would have taken a shot at Zoe, but eh.

Overall, it wasn't bad. I enjoyed it and can't wait to see more!

[Mr. PerpetuaLynch Motion]

I enjoyed this overall. There's just a couple of things I would like to see you change for next time.

I didn't like that you abbreviated the previous show's title. Granted it was an absurdly long title but it's an important title. The abbreviation pulled me out of it for a second.

Also next time it would make things easier to follow if you did something to not only differentiate the person that's talking via color coding but to also do something to make actions and description stand out more. I would suggest bold because I personally used to use italics for my scene description and apparently it gave people headaches reading blocks of slanted text... who would've known?

The last thing is that while I quite enjoyed getting a feel for what makes Ishimura tick as a character and getting to know some of his supporting characters I feel all of that was at the sacrifice of you actually talking about the match. Next time try to find a better balance. If you split your RP into 3 pieces, it's alright if you spend two of them for background information as long as the third part is about as long as the other two and you spend it talking about the match, your opponent, why the win is important to you, that sort of thing.

And the last thing (and I want to clarify this is just personal preference so don't take this one to the bank, I'm just crazy like this) is that for some reason I don't like seeing numbers in RP's. It's a weird thing I've developed recently and it's something I try to avoid. For example where you have "After almost 100 squats, my legs had turned to jell-o, yet Ichigo was still pushing me. After the 100th squat..." it looks cleaner to me if it were to be "after almost one hundred squats.... after the one hundredth squat..." but like I said, that's just a weird thing that you may want to use or you may just be like "That guy is crazy and OCD" or whatever.

Overall content wise I enjoyed it. Just make some little tweaks to it here and there and you've got a solid character going forward.

[Drakz]

Okay, this was a little too short to serve any real purpose I feel. At no point did I really get into the swing of what was going on. If you're going to write something of this length I think it's important for the RP to only include one scene. The numerous short scenes meant nothing was really accomplished by any of them other than acting as a list, telling me what's going on. There was bones but no meat on them.

If you stick with this character I'd like to get to know more about him. What does he think about the fact that he's achieved so much in Japan and yet is treated as a new kid on the block in the WFWF? There are emotions that need exploring rather than just showing us "a day in the life".

Also I'd like to see more focus on the match itself. You gave so little notice to Zoe that, had I not seen the card, I wouldn't know who you were facing. The RP, anyone's RP, needs to be focused primarily on the match and telling us why you're going to win. Discuss your position within the fed, your previous match, what direction you want to go in, but most importantly focus on your opponent.