Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-25828117-20160716181723/@comment-5543592-20160717000527

Tanner had been sad to see Kayleigh go when she left, and Rock when the mutant had backtracked to the east. He'd never had many friends in his life-- he had been unpopular in school, both because he didn't buy into the macho-military-dogma the rest did, and his status as the Elder's son had scared everyone else-- so he he'd been sorry to seem them go, Kayleigh especially. He hadn't thought on it much when he'd said his good-byes, but it hit him later that he'd never see them again.

That had left him and Pan. Tanner hadn't realized the precarious situation he had been, with she and Kayleigh, until years later in life. A wiser man would've never put himself on edge between two women in such away, but Tanner had made it through the ordeal unscathed. The pair had quickly given in their feelings for each other, which Tanner learned even quicker that he liked very much.

His life had seemed to be looking up-- he'd been healed, he'd found love, and he was returning home to his family. But halfway to the Crossroads he had run into the Boss. Or, what had been the Boss. Only 'Hades' had remained in the ghoul's place. The creature had attacked Tanner out of the blue, wounding him, raving nonsense. Tanner had only figured out who it was after his powers of deduction had led him to realize that Hades had doped with the FEV, and it had had devasting effects on his radiation-scrambled DNA. Tanner had attempted to reason with him, to no avail, but had gotten a glimpse of what Hades had been thinking. He had blamed Tanner's existence, the fact that the boy was a psyker-- a mutant-- on Hades' own now horrific existence. If Hades carried that line of thought to all mutants, and it didn't seem to be much of a stretch for someone as out of his mind as the new god was, then there could've been devasting consequences.

The conflict with Hades had caused him to come to the conclusion that the former ghoul needed to be stopped, no matter the cost. And Tanner, as possibly the only other psyker anywhere close to Hades' strength in existence, was the one to do it. Besides, if the Boss had been himself, he would've screamed for Tanner to put him down.

So even as he and Pan settled down, and started a family, he never forgot his promise or his mission.

(Will do a two blog posts soon that elaborate more on the Tanner/Hades thing)