Spriggan: Stranger in a Familiar Land

By: Ominae

Rating: T

NOTE:

All characters of Spriggan are under the copyright of Hiroshi Takashige and Ryoji Minagawa.

Summary:

Yu Ominae tries to get acquainted with Japan once more after his traumatic time with COSMOS while he's in America. Takes place prior to the First Mission one shot/the story in the manga.

Chapter 1: Back

Somewhere in Akihabara, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan

Akihabara wasn't anything like what he read in the books or what he saw in the Japan-filmed documentary specials.

With many people going in and out of the area to buy anything otaku-related ranging from anime/manga merchandise to the latest Famicom games to come out from Japanese developers and publishers, it's no wonder that Akihabara was known as Akihabara Denki Gai or Akihabara Electric Town in English.

For someone like Yu Ominae, who had been absent from the country from his days as a young kid all the way to his early teens, Japan seemed like a bit of a stranger to him even though he had Japanese relatives and his parents were from Japan.

"Damn. Didn't know that a lot of people would go here, even on a Sunday."

The Japanese teenager, who had been raised in America for the second half of his adolescent life, decided that prior to settling back to Japan since someone from ARCAM Japan arranged for his lodging, he needs to take a good look around the country and see what has changed in Japan.

Been away since I was like what... 6... 7 years old maybe. It's time to get reacquainted.

Looking down at the main street, he saw both locals and foreigners (maybe including those from the expat community) enjoying a non-sunny day by browsing through the stores, buying the stuff they want and take pictures of themselves in the streets, in front of an anime/manga/video game store or just pose next to a mascot.

Life in Tokyo is different than the time I was in California with the old man and Akiha nee-san.

So Yu decided to do what any sane person would do.

Enjoy the rest of the day here.

Because there's no telling when ARCAM needs to get his attention to do a mission to save the rest of the world from certain doom if a nation or some shady group or company decides to exploit an OOPArt for military purposes.

"Help! That man stole my purse!"

Except for that one.

Yu turned to the back and saw that the person was heading towards his direction. He had a hoodie on that concealed his face, but otherwise had a black backpack on his back. He wore jeans, Nike-type sneakers and black fingerless gloves.

"Just when my day was turning good."

Yu sighed when he made the decision to take him on. He leaned back so that a bystander would assume that he's standing on the side. Yu used the opportunity to wait and wait until the hooded thief was in his sights when he looked to the right.

Okay. Here goes.

When the thief was running in front of Yu, he instantly pushed him quickly with his arms stretched out in a snap. This made the thief trip and fall down hard. He was knocked down when the right side of his temple made hard contact with the front passenger door of a parked 1986 Mazda Bongo Brawny cargo truck. The glass window was smashed, while the door had a slight dent since his body got forcefully shoved into.

That oughta do it.

Yu went off, leaving the scene when two uniformed officers caught up with the downed thief and cuffed him while he was down on the sidewalk.

"Hey! Let go of me, dammit!"

"Shut it!" One of the officers shouted when he placed the handcuffs on his wrists. "You're under arrest for attempted robbery!"

The other officer ensured the cuffs were secured on the wrists before he did some crowd control by telling the bystanders to move back and give him some room.

A few minutes, a black and white 1987 Toyota Crown squad car was already approaching the gathering crowd with the red siren lights turned on.

Okay... Better not draw attention. Yamamoto might be forced to turn his hand if he finds out about this.

Yu kept moving towards the nearest fastfood restaurant he can find as the police took the apprehended thief into custody.

Chapter 1 END

PS - There's not a lot of fics dedicated to Yu's past prior to being a Spriggan aside from living in America for a while until he returned back to Japan to study in high school and be a Spriggan after he was in his early teens. So I decided to do this thing. The genre'll be a slice of life in terms of theme.

I'm not sure if I accurately portrayed how Akihabara was in the 80s. Then again, I was "personally" exposed to the area when I went in the mid 2000s back in college with my folks. So I don't know much. Not that many peeps posted photos of the area back then.

I did a shoutout (somewhat) to the Hong Kong Option Zero when Sing ambushes one of the Taiwanese arms smuggler making a run from a Royal Hong Kong Police Special Branch team hunting down by shoving him to a parked vehicle when he was in front of him while running in mere seconds.

In the meantime, let me know how I did this story. Thanks a lot.