Odd Jobs and Grand Quests [Mister Steel & anyone he invites]

While Cheri had been busy with her investigations, Steel had been busy trying to earn himself some cash.  All of his day-to-day clothing had been destroyed in an earlier tussle with a strange Majin... as had a good portion of his remaining possessions.  In fact, he really only had his show clothing, some sunglasses, and his phone left.  And the phone's screen was cracked to hell, making the device barely functional.  His boombox, his spare pairs of clothing, everything... everything that wasn't in a storage unit in East City was absolutely gone.  All he had to wear at that point was a pair of Amara's leggings, his sneakers that had somehow survived, and his tank-top.  Well, and a pair of shades.  He always had a spare pair or two of those...

Either way, he had a lot of replace.  Various training clothes, a big ol' backpack, survival supplies, snacks, a boombox, and his personal computer which he'd used for various bits of work and job applications.  All that stuff cost Zeni, as did tickets to get off Papaya Island by plane or ship.  Tickets that Steel needed since he had no ability to fly.  How did one get Zeni?  Well if you had no long-term plans in an area, and only a cell phone for connection to the Internet, then you took odd jobs.  All sorts of odd jobs... walking dogs, cleaning up houses for sale, picking up trash and hauling it to a dump site, washing dishes, serving food, and delivering odds and ends for various people.

So, right after Cheri started to wait, Donût, aka the Unbreakable Mister Steel, approached.  He was running at about the speed of a hovercar, which was impressive considering the fact that he was toting what appeared to be a cargo container and was wearing a bunch of heavy weights over his legs, forearms, and chest.  Weights that appeared to be made of some strange, ultra-dense metal from outer space.

"Comin' up on yer left lady!"

That was all Donût said to Cheri before he ran past her fast enough to blow wind through her hair... Then he was a little figure and a big square disappearing into the horizon.



Entering this thread with a PL of 17,000 and the following item...

Weights, which are being used to set his effective PL to 1,000!

Donût didn't seem all that surprised when a strange woman started running alongside him, matching his speed perfectly.  After all, the Tenkaichi Budokai was coming up very soon!  Obviously, this woman was a powerful fighter of some sort, how else would she be able to keep up?  And if he'd learned anything from martial arts movies and animated shows, it was that women that appeared to be middle aged could very well be ancient sages using secret techniques to keep themselves young and fighting fit.  So who knew?

Either way, he still had packages to deliver from RAZON before a very tight deadline.  And he didn't have a truck to invite the lady to ride in while they chatted.

"Yeah, I can jog'n talk.  What about?"

He prayed that this conversation wasn't just a prelude to the pink-haired little woman pulling out a big gun or just kicking him in the face.  Followed by a one-sided beatdown with absolutely no explanation given.  That would actually have sucked pretty hard.  What he really hoped was that this woman had some sort of sacred quest to give him, or that she was recruiting him to some interstellar band of heroes due to some inherent act of kindness and valor he'd performed.

Of course, she might just have wanted her package a little early, but that was no fun.

Donût listened as intently as he could while keeping an eye out for a houses... and leaping over grandmas... and leaping over scooters... and while trying to filter out honks and hubbub from the streets they ran on.  It was a bit difficult, but he got the general gist of General Cheri's words.  Apparently she was a leader for some planet called "Plant", which Steel had heard of, but never visited or really paid much attention to, and she was looking for some properly heroic dudes to defend her planet when the time came.  That sounded exactly like the plot to The Final Star-Guard, a pre-FTL movie about a kid that managed to get the high score on a mysterious game machine... only to find out that it was a secret recruitment tool for the Star-Guard when he was teleported to a waiting spaceship above Earth.  He went on to save the universe from some interdimensional warlord alongside an "alien" that looked suspiciously Majin-like...  It was a pretty fun movie.

Wait a minute, did she ask if he was Mister Steel?

"Oh!  Yeah, that's me!"

Donût came to a stop on a seemingly random street.  He shifted his weight and hand so that one arm was free, in order to check his phone for an address.  After that, he set down the shipping container that he'd been carrying over his head down with a thunderous clang.  Then he dashed around to one end of it, and started undoing the locks that kept its big metal door closed.

"O' course, that's just ma stage name.  Most folks call me Donût!"

The little padlock clicked as Donût unlocked it with the key he'd fished out of his pocket.  After pulling the lock free of the chains, Donût clicked it around a belt-loop on his jeans and began un-tying the chain.

"I mean, I don't need much money.  Like, if yer offerin', I could prolly take uh... hfff...  Lessee... fifty-thousand a month fer rent fer ma parents' place... that adds up ta about... six-hunnered thousand zeni fer a whole year.  So uh, yeah, six-hunnerd thousand zeni's fine if we win.  I c'n cover ma own gas, and I'm savin' up fer a spaceship, so I should be able ta get over ta Planet Plant right quick if ya give me tha signal."

Donût was speaking very casually about the whole thing, even though this was sort of his secretly-wished-for fate for years now.  To be the hero, or a hero, to an alien civilization that needed a savior.  The reason he was speaking so casually?  One, he was trying to control his excitement.  Two, he still had a job to do.  And three, he wasn't quite sure HOW to act for this sort of thing.  So, he just started scanning boxes with a scanner tool he'd been given by the company he was delivering for, and took a look at his phone.  He had about three deliveries to make here...

Within the blink of an eye, three packages had been dropped off and the door to the cargo container was re-chained and re-locked.

"So um, yeah...  I'll come.  Gotta fight tyranny wherever it is, right?"