CotH: Book 2 Ishiro Homecoming: Chronicles of the Handlers, #2

By Paul Springsteen

This story follows the intrepid Ishiro Tamazaki as he braves for a new adventure, meeting with his estranged daughter. The town of Burutaun is a peaceful town and usually isn't beset by monsters. Surely, there won't be any kind of problem with his return. Right?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Springsteen
• Release date: May 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224375868

Paul Springsteen

Paul Springsteen is someone that grew up in a medium sized town in Texas located in the united states. He went into the military upon graduating high school.  Though it didn't last long he did get an honorable discharge because of medical reasons. After this he went to the local college of his home town.  There he got a master's degree in physics. Due to illness he had a hard time in the job market before he discovered the joys of writing and wishes to spend his time writing stories for the forseeable future.  This came about from a strange origin.  From D&D of all places.  He kept feeling like he was getting shafted from playing stories.  So he pushed himself to write his own stories and enjoyed it. His stance on writing though is that he doesn't write to whatever is the it thing in the market.  Instead he has a particular way the story is supposed to go in his head and follows that.  So the reader should be aware that even killing the protagonist and having the bad guy win is a possible way things could happen in the story in the future.

Book preview

Disclaimer:  This is a work of fiction.  Any similarities between characters, names, places, or things is coincidence.

––––––––

In Memory of Larry Springsteen.  I feel like that sounds better than what I put before so it is in memory of.  I can do that more than once right?

––––––––

This book is a Tales of Crisis(ToC) 2.0 book.  Meaning that I kept a lot of the same rules but I loosed some things making the rules more soft.

––––––––

Dedication:  This book is dedicated to God.  All works are possible only through him/her/it/them.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1.......4

Chapter 2.......7

Chapter 3.......9

Chapter 4........15

Chapter 5.......19

Chapter 6.......24

Chapter 7.......28

Chapter 8.......31

Chapter 9.......35

Chapter 10.....37

Chapter 11.......41

Chapter 12.......46

Chapter 13.......49

Chapter 14.......56

Chapter 15........59

Chapter 16........62

Chapter 1

Ishiro Tamazaki was on a train that was headed toward the town of Burutaun, located in the country of Kumokuni.  It was there that he was supposed to meet a very important person to him.  So important in fact that he neglected to meet her for about 28 years (18.4 earth years).  It was her mother who was the problem.  They didn't really see eye to eye on things.  But her mother passed recently, and he had a lull in jobs.

The mission where he fought multiple vampires made him aware once more that he could very well die on one of his jobs.  It was something that a handler was always acutely aware of.  After all, if a normal person could do the job without any strain, why would it even be a job for the handlers?

Ishiro Tamazaki stood at about 5'8".  Not that much to look at but the people of Hadne knew better than to just judge a book by its cover.  He was about 76.4 years old (50.2 earth years).  Though, that was something that was of little consequence when an ascension path really does do strange things with the life span.

Ishiro Tamazaki was something that you would call a Japanese man of origin.  Though in this year of 3415 (about 2,247 earth years) there had been much time since the first crisis took people from the old planet and transported them to this world or changed it.  He was unsure.  It was the 4th month of Hadne in the month of Tuy, day 20.  The days were 24 hours long.

Ishiro Tamazaki had black hair with black eyes.  He had on his normal blue kimono.  He had half of his head shaved on the right.  Which was in due for a little bit of a hair cut as the hair was growing back.  Ishiro Tamazaki carried a katana with him where he went.  It was his father's, where it was his father's, and so on.  At least for as much as he knew.

Hopefully, though, there wouldn't be any problems as far as he knew it.  Burutaun wasn't known as having a monster infestation as far as he knew it.  Another reason for not visiting for a while was that none of the handler jobs went to there. 

One of the train attendants went up to where Ishiro was sitting and offered him his choice of beverage.  They even had scotch, his favorite drink.  That would make the waiting go by faster.  He was currently surrounded by normal people.  They were not allowed to carry weapons, but Handlers and some other professions were.  That is for two main reasons.  First, with an ascension path, their body could easily be the weapon instead, so it was futile.  Second, some train attendants and conductors had no ability to tell an ascension path individual what to do.

Ishiro made sure to keep his wits about him as always.  Most of the people would never try to do anything aggressive toward him.  However, some brave souls would try.  Or rather, they would try when he was sleeping or something like that.  Some of the bravest people seem to only pick a fight with you when they think that you are weak.  Strange how brave they are.  At least, that is what Ishiro learned throughout his life.  It doesn't matter, though.  Even at less than optimal ability regular people were no match for him.

They were leaving Copperland and entering Kumokuni.  So it wouldn't be that much more of a wait for him.  No one tried anything.  Well, it was rare for them to.  Usually as was said before most people only try something when they are drunk on power or they think they have an overwhelming advantage.

The people filtered in and out of the train at different stops.  Ishiro could afford a better spot on the train, but he didn't want to.  Constantly surrounding yourself in the lap of luxury weakened you in various ways.  It was better if whatever you used for a bed was hard rather than soft.  That was except for a good glass of scotch.  One of the simple pleasures.  Other spirits were not good enough.  Scotch was something that seemed better than all of the others.

Ishiro's daughter should be all grown up by now.  He didn't know what to expect or where to find her or other things about her.  It was something that would take some work when he got there.  On his previous big job, someone else handled a lot of the tracking.  Though not from prints in the ground but talking to people.

His daughter was named Keiko.  Hopefully, she was still named as such, or it would be impossible to find her.  Her mom, before she died, was named Namika.  Namika took his last name so perhaps Keiko still had the family name as well.  He did have around 2 other wives throughout his life that bore him children.  Keiko had a brother that was also Ishiro's child, though no one knew about where he was.  So Ishiro couldn't visit him.

The long train ride was coming to an end rather shortly.  It pulled up to the platform that was the station in Burutaun.  Ishiro didn't travel with that much.  There were companies and organizations that took care of transporting goods for him.  So he just had his sword, the clothes on his back, identification, and some cash.  Well, it was