2021 & 2022 Daily Jump Challenge RP (2024)

"Hey there! Handsome boy! Stop!"

Jeremiah Cross looked at the man who had called out across the street. He was an elderly man with a bald head and a long beard somewhere in the transition from brown to grey. He wore dirty robes, carried a rucksack, and was partially hunched over as he walked with a metal staff. He had a single arm outstretched, pointing at Jeremiah as he hobbled over to the young man. When he reached the teenager, he began circling around him, his eyes roaming as if examining a miracle made flesh.

"What exactly is happening now?" Jeremiah asked, partially to himself, partially to god, partially to Soundbite, the transponder snail riding on his shoulder.

The strange man eventually stopped in front of the Strawhat's new Communications Officer.

"Amazing!" he exclaimed, raising the arm not holding his walking stick to point-- "Do you know you have a special aura?"

--directly at Soundbite.

"You're so young, but you have the bone structure," the man continued as he leaned forward to get a closer look at the snail, "and chi flow of a kung-fu genius. If your chi flow can be channeled, then you will be invincible!"

"What even is my life now?" Jeremiah muttered in disbelief, "Goda, have you truly forsaken me?"

"Like the old saying: You cannot escape your destiny," the old man said, stroking his beard and nodding to himself, "The duty of upholding world peace and punishing evil will be yours."

"Sure!" Soundbite responded instantly, his eyestalks wiggling with mirth.

"This is the scroll of Lama Pai's Lion Roar, carefully and painstakingly translated from Cantonese to English." the old man said as he reached into his robes and produced a small booklet, holding it out to Soundbite before he continued. "It's priceless. But as it's fate, I'll let you have it for 1000 Beris."

"I was saving up my money TO BECOME a doctor or lawyer," the snail said "But this IS world peace."

Jeremiah's jaw dropped as he stared in horror at the snail on his shoulder.

"FWAHAHAHAHAHAH/HOOHOOHAHAHOOHEHAHEHE"

Only for his shock to be replaced with frustration as he finally realized they were doing a bit and facepalmed.

"Now that you got your laughs out of the way," Jeremiah said, "Care to tell me who this is, Soundbite?"

"I have no earthly idea," The snail responded.

"Jeremiah Cross," the would-be kung-fu mystic said as he straightened up and held out a hand, "My name is Simon Peterson, and I was hoping for a chance to meet the Pirate Prince and submit an application for a position as the Straw Hat's Harbormaster."

"THEN WHAT THE HELL WAS WITH THE SALES PITCH!" Jeremiah shouted.

"I suppose you could say that I'm just as foreign to this place as you are, Jeremiah, and I wanted to prove my credentials," Simon said with a thoughtful frown, "but I used a different travel agency to get here. I had the choice of here or Waterworld. So I decided that, if I was going to be stuck on boats anyway, I would prefer a chance to meet the Strawhat Pirates. And that means I could recognize you as an outsider, and that my immigration had some benefits and some problems that yours seems to have lacked. "

"Oh, really?" Jeremiah said, "And what were those,"

"To start, while I woke up on a deserted island, same as you, I didn't get picked up by the Strawhats, so I had to rush here to Lougetown and wait for the Going Merry to pull into port.. Fortunately, I had a ship of my own to get me here. Moreover, I had a devil-fruit, the Human-Human Fruit: Model Rennaisance Man in my possession. So, I got to cheat my way to being the poor man's Sengoku and poor man's Vegapunk."

"That is..." Jeremiah said, his mouth open in shock.

"Such..." Soundbite continued, a similar expression on his face.

"BULLsh*t!!!" the pair shouted.

"Yes, but what glorious bullsh*t it is," Simon said with a smile and a faraway look, "But the real issue is that, while I woke up on an island a few days ago, my entry was retroactive. So, while I'm not as fragile as a person from Earth_null, I have a history here: one with a bounty. I've been Clark Kenting to avoid attention. Shaved my head, restyled my beard, changed my clothes and everything."

"Fine," Jeremiah said, throwing his hands in the air, "you can come with me to Execution Square and explain what you mean by fragile."

Later, after the Strawhats escaped the Marines and have made it back to the Going Merry

"AND WHO THE HELL IS THIS STOWAWAY?!?!?" Nami shouted, still riding the terror of barely escaping death or capture at the hands of a Marine Captain.

"Why did you follow us onto the Merry?" Jeremiah demanded once he had managed to stop laughing.

"I didn't get a chance to talk with Luffy during the chase," Simon said with a shrug.

"Don't you have your own ship?" Jeremiah asked, "We can't take you back to Loguetown. You're stuck with us until we can drop you off somewhere."

"Don't worry about Home Away From Home," Simon said, "It's not a problem."

"What do you mean, it's not a problem?" Luffy cut in, "You've got to take care of your ship. You can't just abandon it behind for a new one, even one as amazing as Merry."

The ship itself seemed to vibrate with his words.

"I mean it's not a problem because of this," Simon answered, pulling a small metal disk, perhaps six inches across, from his rucksack.

He gestured to the other Strawhats to clear a space, then threw it to the ground. Once it hit the ground, the disc expanded, until it was four feet across, a small metal platform large enough for two or three people to stand on."

"This is a teleport platform," Simon explained, "It's paired to a room on my ship. If you stand on this and I activate it, you'll be instantly transported to my ship. And I can use the room on my ship to teleport back as well, so long as this platform is charged and deployed."

The various members of the crew all looked at the platform in shock.

"So it's a mystery platform?" Luffy asked, prompting Namie and Usopp to face fault, and Zoro, Sanji, Jeremiah, and Soundbite to smirk.

"Yes, Luffy," Simon said with a wry smile, "It's a mystery platform."

"Shishishishishishi" Luffy laughed, "So why did you want to talk to me, old man?"

"I was hoping to join your crew," Simon answered, "As Harbormaster, or Logistical Officer, or Quartermaster, or whatever you want to call it. My job would be to make sure that everyone on the crew has whatever supplies or equipment they need and to 'clean up' after any messy parties or adventures. I figure, I can teleport back to my ship, sail to the Conomi Islands, or the Gecko Islands, or Dawn Island, or any island in the East Blue. Then I can use my Teleport Platform to provide a back channel to the East Blue: a source of fresh supplies, even at sea, a way to visit your families and friends, or send back mail. I can even leave some platforms on any islands we pass on our adventures if you want an easy way to visit without sailing back. We can even build an outpost somewhere to store tools, treasure, or equipment that wouldn't easily fit on the Merry."

"How did you build something like this?" Nami asked, "I've never even heard of anything like this before."

"Devil Fruit"

Everyone in the room just nodded in understanding.

"Specifically, I'm a Renaissance Man, a man of the Enlightenment, a man who knows a little bit of everything, or, in terms that only Cross would understand, a 12th level intellect."

"Are you sure you want to join the crew, old man?" Sanji asked, "If you can teleport to the Merry and then back to safety in the East Blue, do you really want to put yourself at risk instead of just being, I don't know, ancillary crew? A friend who visits occaisionally?"

"We wouldn't want you to fall and break a hip or anything," Zoro agreed.

Faster than anyone could react, Simon picked up his staff and rapped the chef and swordsman over their heads, "Don't worry about me. I may not be Garp or Whitebeard, but I know a little bit about the secret of Longevity and a little bit of Kung Fu and a little bit about Mystery Power. And what I don't know, I'll learn on the way."

"sh*tTY OLD MAN!" Sanji and Zoro shouted together, as each rubbed the goose eggs on their heads.

"Then I guess there's only one thing left before you can join," Luffy said, his typically happy demeanor giving way to a serious expression, "What is your dream?"

"My dream?"

"Yeah," Luffy said, "everyone on my crew has a dream. To be the best swordsman, to find All Blue, to be a warrior of the sea, or to draw a map of the whole world," he continued, nodding to his crewmates in turn.

"What's yours?"

"Ah," Simon said, understanding, "That's, a bit complicated."

"We're not in a rush," Luffy said, drawing a raised eyebrow from everyone who vividly remembered fleeing the marines at a break-neck pace mere minutes ago.

The elderly man paused, then let out a sigh, pulling a chair from a nearby table, and taking a seat before continuing.

"I know a bit of everything," Simon began, his eyes distant, as if trying to remember something he had seen long ago, "But there's one thing I don't know that I very much would like to learn. You see, after he collected the Road Poneglyphs and discovered the way to the end of the New World, Roger took his crew, save Buggy, who was sick and needed to be left somewhere safe to recover, and Shanks, who stayed behind to take care of him, and sailed to the end of the Grand Line: to the final island before the Red Line."

Everyone on the crew stared at Simon as continued.

"And when Roger made landfall, when he saw what was on that island, he laughed."

The Strawhats listened with bated breath to a story known to only a handful of people in the entire world.

"He laughed, and he laughed, and he laughed," Simon continued, "He saw the end of the long journey he had taken with his friends, what was there at the end of his tale, and he laughed: so long and so hard, that his crew decided that the island would, from then on, be known as「Laugh Tale」"

Pausing for a moment, Simon returned his focus to Luffy.

"I want to see what he saw, find what made him laugh. I want to know the secrets that can only be found at Laugh Tale. And I'll follow you, Pirate Prince Luffy, whether as a crewmember or as captain of my own ship until you've taken the throne of the Pirate King."

Luffy stared at the older man. And time itself seemed to stop as the Prince judged the man before him. A gaze heavier than the world itself fell on Simon as the Strawhats watched in anticipation.

After a single, endless moment, judgment was delivered.

"Welcome to the crew, old man,"

"Then, I would like to give you a welcome present, captain. Though tradition would demand you draw it from a stone, we're at sea, and no stone is available, " Simon said, as he pulled one more item from his rucksack, something just a little too large to fit in it, "I offer you this weapon, Monkey D. Luffy, forged and empowered with all my skill, all my knowledge, and the barest spark of something more, that it may be as strong as your convictions, and as unbreakable as your will. May it be worthy of the future king."

Without a word, Luffy accepted the pipe.

"Shishishishishishishishi"