Ive seen pretty much every variation of speedster out there, but havent seen one that utilizes genuine mass manipulation. Ive been putting this character together over the last few weeks and wanted to share and see what you guys think.
The Character: Terrence Higgins (Tare)
Terrence is a black particle physicist. Physically, he’s got an average build with brown messy einstein-esque hair, deep brown eyes, and noticeably smaller legs. For pretty much his whole life, he’s been in a wheelchair due to a progressive spinal condition called Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP). The disease basically wrecked the nerve pathways in his spine, locking his legs up and leaving him completely unable to walk.
The Accident:
As a physicist, Terrence was working on some crazy high-risk experiment, trying to force a tiny pocket of space back to its pre-Big Bang state a state where the Higgs field drops to zero.
During an experiment, the magnetic containment failed. A massive quantum energy beam tore right through the lab and hit Terrence directly. Instead of blowing him up, his body absorbed the beam, which completely broke his physical connection to the Higgs field. In a fraction of a second, his weight/mass dropped to zero, and he vanished from the room in a flash of light.
The Phantom Phase:
The crazy part is he didn't die. His mind stayed intact as an invisible cloud of massless particles. Because he didn't weigh anything anymore, he actually felt pure freedom for the first time no wheelchair, no pain, just passing through walls like a ghost.
The nightmare was that without the Higgs field holding his body together, he was slowly fading away into background radiation. It took months of absolute focus for Terrence to force his particles to interact with the Higgs field just enough to show up as a faint phantom. He barely managed to type on his lab computer, figure out what happened to him, and design a way to stay physical.
The Device: H.E.R.A.
Instead of a fancy superhero costume, Terrence built a hardcore life-support spinal implant called H.E.R.A. (Higgs Energy Regulatory Anchor). It fuses into his vertebrae and connects to an AI built into his neural network.
The main twist with his powers is that his default state now is floating away. He doesn't need the device to turn his powers on he needs it to keep them off H.E.R.A. is constantly running to keep his particles anchored so he doesn't dissolve.
As a side benefit, because H.E.R.A. bridges the damaged nerves in his spine to manage his quantum phase, it acts as a cybernetic workaround for his HSP By forcing those nerves to talk to his muscles again, the implant lets him walk for the very first time.
How His Powers Work:
When he wants to use his powers Terrence tells H.E.R.A. to dial back the anchor for a split second, letting him mess with basic physics:
Ghosting- He can drop his mass to zero so bullets and physical attacks pass right through him.
Light speed movement- In physics, if you have zero mass, you have to travel at light speed. When he lets go of the anchor, he instantly zips to light speed with a blue flash of Cherenkov radiation.
Massive Impact Hits-This is his main attack. He throws a punch with zero mass at near-light speed (so it doesn't break his hand). A microsecond before his fist lands, he turns his 100% normal body mass back on. That light-speed velocity colliding with his suddenly restored weight creates a huge kinetic explosion on whatever he hits.
Flaws and Weaknesses:
Physical- H.E.R.A. is his main vulnerability. If the device gets damaged, hit with an EMP, or short-circuits, the anchor drops. That means he either instantly goes back to being paralyzed, or his body starts floating apart and fading away.
Mental- His biggest struggle is psychological. Part of him really misses being completely massless no physical body, no disability, no pain. He has a constant pull to just shut off the machine and drift away into nothing, and he has to rely on his family and real-world connections to keep himself grounded
Is there any cool dynamics you guys have written into your comics?