Lightning Bruiser / Fragile Speedster-style fighting help.

I've had this character rough drafted for a long time, starting from my OC days with One Piece. His name is Mach (yes his name is supposed to be stupid). He's fast. Very athletic guy. Running, and speed in general, is his thing.

However, his fights that I've planned are... lackluster. They lack certain qualities that the other fights in my planned series have, mostly, "How can I keep a guy who's schtick is running and going fast interesting?"

More about Mach: he fights with his hands and feet. No weapons, basically. He is not The Flash kind of speedster. He has to actually build his momentum to start hitting ridiculous speeds, which means that, while he can start moving really fast and use that speed to build up strength, he needs time and space to actually get there.

Essentially, Mach doesn't know Flash Step. He's not "teleporting" from place to place, he's actually running around, looking for the best path, gaining momentum, etc. The closest he comes to flash stepping is using a technique that lets him move much faster than usual, including his start-up speed, but he's at risk of over exhaustion. However, that technique isn't used for awhile, so I'm not intending on using that anytime soon.

So, back to my question. How do I give Mach interesting fights with all this in mind? I'd like to focus his fights on other speed-based fighters, but I won't limit myself primarily to that.

Here are some ideas I've had, but some of them are pretty... weakly made.

• Constructing a race track in mid battle. Basically, while Mach is running around and fighting and trying not to die, he's causing collateral damage with what he can in order to set up a course for him to keep his speed. Downside, this is really scenery based. I obviously can't do this in a very flat setting, and this can become repetitive quickly since there's not too many variations I can think of with this concept.
• Parkour. Going straight for the target, jumping over obstacles, roof jumping, etc. Again, I can't imagine a whole lot of variations of this.
• "Throwing" his momentum. After getting enough speed, Mach approaches the target and throws a powerful attack, stopping himself and letting motion do the rest. This is the basis for one of his first "huge" attacks, and essentially how I've established his fighting style this entire time.

I'd appreciate hearing some different running styles maybe he can use, different ways he can put his speed to use, and maybe some basic enemies/scenario he can fight in. I've never really read The Flash, but I do know he deals with a lot of speedster-scenarios (obviously) and maybe a fan of his comics knows some ideas I've looked over? Anyway, thanks for the help.

Mighty Glacier and Stone Wall opponents are some interesting match-ups for a Fragile Speedster hero.

Where does the story take place? If he's fighting in an urban environment, le parkour would be a wiser choice.

If not, I suggest you keep his power of building race tracks. Remember what Sonic can do with all those loops and slopes?

Dependent on Required Secondary Powers, but frankly his best maneuver is simply to dance around an opponent. Duck and weave and never seem to be where the blow lands. Not as fancy as the other options, but simple is a virtue in such things and it's quite effective if you can pull it off.

More so if you do it because you can, not because you have to. If you work really hard to not take a punch and then at an inopportune moment, demonstrate you can and gee that was stupid leaving yourself open like that because you know I can hit you if I'm willing to take a hit.

edited 6th Mar '12 2:31:30 AM by Night

It's easier to make parkour look interesting, if that helps.

Honestly though when it comes to super speed I've always felt they should have weapons of some sort.

@fillerdude: The million mach megaton punch is a deadly weapon. :D

Dance Battler. We can use one.

...A dance battler that dances really fast?

Is it just a weird coincidence that another character I'm rough drafting on the side is a Dance Battler?

A-Anyway.

@judasmartel: That's true, but it seems like once enough momentum is achieved, he has enough powerful attacks to rush in and do his fair share of damage. Not to mention that he's much more likely to hit a slow-moving target, just use hit-and-run tactics.

@Yuri Strike: Not very urban at all, but it can be. It's a mix-matched kind of world.

@Night: I'm trying not to give him many secondary powers. While he's still extremely good at stopping, he still needs to skid to a stop - he can't just suddenly, whoosh, no motion. Again, not like the Flash. (Though, coincidentally, he does learn how to ditch momentum temporarily, but again, that's not something I intend on using soon.) The only secondary powers he really needs are ones to keep him not breaking bones from moving as fast as he does, which isn't a stretch from the reality of the world this book takes place in.

And while weaving around the opponent is indeed efficient, it's not very creative or makes for very interesting fights.

@fillerdude: "Look" interesting, yes. "Write" interesting, not so much. However, I think that if I mix parkour with his "track building" ability, I might be able to make some interesting fights.

In general, I'm beginning to conclude that all his fights are going to be heavily based on the environment. Now I need cool environments/settings for him to fight in...

I'm just going to say this:

Speed can very easily win you a battle. Forget hitting impossible speeds, just be slightly faster than the reaction time of the fighter, and there is NO way you can lose.

You gouge out their eyes, hit them in the groin, completely dislocate their jaw, break their nose, all very easy things to do when you can hit them before they can block.

It can even beat a gun, because in terms of reaction time, pulling a gun out and using it is actually harder than pulling a knife out and using it, just due to process.

edited 6th Mar '12 10:59:05 AM by MrAHR

I've always had a love for speedsters- my one attempt at fanfiction (for Hunter X Hunter) featured one. I'm just wondering if you haven't written yourself into a little bit of a corner; if this guy is forced to obey the laws of momentum like anyone else, he's not likely to use his actual speed in a fight. He's far more likely (practically speaking) to use the Required Secondary Powers he'd have to have for effective superspeed. Namely, ungodly reflexes and reaction time, incredible durability and shock-absorption, and legs that could casually kick holes in battleship plate. He'd also (depending on his top speed) likely give some flame-users a nasty shock, given that (barring some kind of frictionless envelope or whatever) he'd need be largely heatproof.

A lot of the speedster 'classic' tricks wouldn't work well with him; the 'run in tiny circles to make whirlwinds' isn't likely with his limitations, and the drive-by-punching also, given that he'd need a fair bit of room to swing past the guy and come back to him. One rather vicious trick (again, dependent on his top speed) would be for him to simply zip past his opponent at Mach 2, then point and laugh as the guy is shredded by shockwaves and whatever he pulled up in his wake- getting hit by a sonic boom full of broken glass would likely be unpleasant at best.

Oh, and if you're wondering, my particular speedster was a bit of a 'cheat'- he was superhumanly fast because of the ability to absorb, generate (by converting it into aura/ki/nen and vice versa), and manipulate kinetic energy (thinking about it, I'm not entirely sure that's the right terminology, but I think you get the idea), allowing him to bend the rules somewhat- near-instantaneous stops and acceleration are easier to explain when he's just converted his momentum into nen and stored it in his aura, after all.

Yes, the battle winning is my biggest problem. I seem to be stuck in that he's either too good, or too bad. I figure that, in a way, this is what I want, as to keep him balanced, but at the same time, it's hard to just keep his fights interesting.

Mach's speed is all Charles Atlas Super Powers. The reason he got so fast is through being the son of a famous runner, being raised on an island full of good runners, and doing every chore as fast and as efficiently as possible, making him move faster and faster. Everything else is just him being a human in a world of badass.

Funny enough, yet again, in one his upgrades in the distant future, he does accidentally gain the ability of hurting people just by running by them.

I think I may make heat an additional power of his, though I'm going to look really tacky if I end up looking even more like One Piece even more. For these books, that's my biggest fear right now, but looking at Mach, I feel that this is necessary if I intend on having him in the main story. Give him something else to work with in his fights.

If that's your issue, then just make sure that his brain can't keep up with his body. He knows what he WANTS to do, but he's essentially running blind, because his body moves faster than his eyes and brain. Of course, that's what reaction time IS, your brain. But that's where reflexes come in.

edited 8th Mar '12 1:55:13 PM by MrAHR

Yeah, making his reaction time slower is a good idea. Make him kinda like Kuro from One Piece: really fast, but can only attack blindly.

You can also have enemies that are tricky to deal with. Like maybe a guy who can phase through matter, or has a really strong defense, or even just being able to fly. Of course, this is assuming such powers exist in your setting.

@ Yuri Well, yeah, but if I had super speed I'd get a bunch of landmines and make you play RL Minesweeper, minus the numbers.

edited 8th Mar '12 10:06:00 PM by fillerdude

Mmm. I may just give him semi-super reflexes. Thinking about it, if I'm pulling out the stops to say he can move this incredibly fast, I may as well give him the ability to at least know where he's going.

Any ideas on how to not make him run blind, but still give him a reasonable fault in reflexes?

Momentum. Doesn't matter how quickly he can perceive and react, a body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force. Ditto a body at rest. He's not going to be able to start and/or stop fast enough to avoid a sufficiently skilled or clever opponent's attacks. For that matter, if he's depending on his eyes (and at anything past the 100 mph mark, he's gonna have to), optical illusions are going to completely wreck him. Hell, you could probably pull off a Wile E. Coyote-into-the-painted-wall trick if someone knew he was coming. Or even if he was in an unfamiliar area that had had a talented enough mural artist working on it.

What was that line in Mass Effect 2? "That means- Sir Issac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space!"

Even normal speeds are a bitch to stop when running down hill. For reference.

I actually really like that. Momentum can become his greatest strength and weakness.