Speedzone

Speedzone's Halo 4 Armor

*"You may have a version of the speedhack, Arbiter, but never forget that I AM THE FASTEST PLAYER ONLINE!"*
— Speedzone to the Arbiter in "Flash Fact"
**Speedzone** is a hacker and is a secondary antagonist in *Arby 'n' the Chief: Next Gen* Season 1 who served as a mercenary-for-hire alongside his partner, Deathlok, for the cyberterrorist known as Brainiac.

## Character History

### Hackers for Hire

Sometime before the Chaos Theosis incident, Speedzone and Deathlok would acquire their specialized hacks that gave Speedzone the speedhack and Deathlok his teleportation ability. They would often be hired by clans to help them win clan raids and such. It is inferred that this is how they met Eugene Black, Michelle Harris, Duncan Douglas, Lockdown, Lydia Johnson, and Chaos Theosis. However, when it came to Chaos Theosis attacking the network, Clyde Marston decided not to bring Speedzone and Deathlok into the clan due to their reputation of being loose cannons at times, and they couldn't risk them pulling any stunts.

It is inferred that this is what made Speedzone more hostile towards the members of Chaos Theosis, as to him it felt like they were jealous of him and didn't want him stealing their spotlight.

### Working for Brainiac

Years after Chaos Theosis and TOSERS were shut down, Speedzone and Deathlok would be contacted by a mysterious figure known only as Brainiac to help shut down the network again with the help of his second-in-command, Lockdown. Deathlok and Speedzone would infiltrate a clan battle between rival clans The Eighth Prestige and the Level Killers, fragging all of the players with the exception of IronChild, who was The Eighth Prestige's clan leader. They would let IronChild go with a message for the Online Multiplayer Network Administration regarding the massive army that Brainiac was building. When the OMN failed to respond, Speedzone suggested that they attack more clans to set another example, but was surprised when Brainiac denied him the opportunity. When Speedzone mocked Brainiac, he was threatened, causing him to back off.

Later, Speedzone and Deathlok would speak with Brainiac regarding Deathlok's incursion at the OMN surveillance hub, and becoming impatient with the lack of tasks that Brainiac told him to perform. However, Brainiac at that point would give Speedzone a mission to bring together The Arbiter, Claire Ferguson, and Michelle, and make Arbiter aware that they were onto them. Speedzone would do this by tricking them into thinking he was letting them into a clan.

Speedzone would then show up to Arbiter, Michelle, and Claire, surprising Arbiter before he asked Michelle and Claire to leave them for a moment. After the two left, Arbiter and Speedzone would have a heated discussion, with Speedzone taunting Arbiter and threatening Claire's life. This caused Arbiter to make a promise that he would take him down, before Deathlok appeared and warned Arbiter not to try anything. At this point, the newly formed Hacker Removal Squad would arrive and ambush Deathlok and Speedzone's ambush, before a firefight would ensue. At one point, Speedzone would find Michelle and hold her hostage when Deathlok was cornered by the HRS, and threaten to frag her unless they let Deathlok go. After they let Deathlok go free, Speedzone would assassinate Michelle before escaping with Deathlok.

Sometime after, Speedzone would hang out with his friends Ron and Bobby and talk about how he never intended to let Claire and Michelle into any clan, even if he had one. Shortly after, a young kid named Billy would arrive and tell Speedzone that he stole a bottle of moonshine like he asked, before Speedzone would troll him by hazing him into drinking the entire bottle of moonshine on video. After Billy left, Lockdown would arrive and kill Bobby after being mocked by him, before telling Ron to run off. He would then reprimand Speedzone for not answering Brainiac's calls, before escorting him to Brainiac's server himself.

Once at Brainiac's server, Speedzone would be reprimanded by Brainiac for bluffing about knowing Claire's real name before the OMN attempted to track him down with his real name and voice, forcing Brainiac to take time to divert them away from Speedzone's true identity.

Later, Speedzone, alongside Deathlok, Lockdown, and The Outlaws, would attack a clan base owned by the Brotherhood of Gaming, with Speedzone assassinating one of the clan's lieutenants known as CoolZer0. Later, he would ambush Brandon Edwards shortly after Danny fragged BTHD's leader, Jake. Brandon managed to drive Speedzone off. Later during the fight, Speedzone would attempt to frag Autumn Washington, using his speedhack to continuously avoid her shockwave attacks. Speedzone would get annoyed by Lockdown's lack of help, and tell him that it would be great if he actually went and helped them.

After Lockdown drove the HRS back, Speedzone would arrive next to him, before Lockdown would stop him and Deathlok from attacking them in the water cave, forcing them to wait. After waiting for half an hour, Nicholas Martin would attack the three, causing Speedzone and Deathlok to intercept him before finding out it was one of his holograms. Later, Speedzone would come to attack Arbiter and Autumn before getting crushed by Jackson's falcon after it was blown up by Jason Burns. However, this did not frag him, as he was killed by the guardians.

Later, Speedzone and Deathlok would clear a path for Lockdown in the Halo Harem, where he taunted Lydia before getting threatened by Shay, who would get threatened by Deathlok shortly after. After Lockdown got the information he needed from Lydia, he ordered Speedzone to frag everyone in the club except for her clan, which Speedzone would do.

### Comatose

Speedzone would then go back and forth between going from game-to-game on matchmaking fragging all the players and playing custom games with his friends, up until he was warned by Clyde and Kylie Fitzgerald that the HRS were cracking down on Brainiac's forces, and that there was likely a mole, with Speedzone being one of the suspects. This angered Speedzone, who responded by telling Clyde and Kylie to get out of his sight before running off. Clyde would then have Kylie follow him to see if he was indeed the mole.

Shortly after, Speedzone and his friends would be playing custom games (with Speedzone using the speedhack without the fragban) before Ron arrived and notified Speedzone that Billy was put in the hospital after attempting to chug the entire bottle of moonshine he stole, which gave him alcohol poisoning and put him in a coma. Speedzone's reaction to this (due to his drunken attitude) was apathetic and insensitive, implying that he did Billy's parents a favor and giving them a reality check because they bought their son an M-rated game. Ron, disgusted by this, would yell at Speedzone and denounce him as a crazed sociopath before telling him that he hoped he choked on the moonshine. Speedzone got annoyed by this, activating his fragban and fragging Ron. After threatening his two other friends, Speedzone would run off and go to matchmaking.

As Speedzone fragged players in Big Team Battle, Clyde would contact him and notify him that the HRS had entered his game and advised him to retreat to Brainiac's fortress. Speedzone would refuse to comply, mocking Clyde before disconnecting. After replacing his energy sword with a SAW, he would wait for the HRS to show up, before attacking one of Nicholas's holograms.

The HRS would then attack Speedzone, forcing him to defend himself before he would run off to another matchmaking game on *Halo: Reach*. The HRS would find him and attack him again, which made Speedzone realize that they would never stop coming after him. He then retreated again, this time going to his custom Hot Pursuit racetrack to bring them to his turf.

However, to his surprise, only Arbiter and Master Chief would arrive, with Arbiter using an older version of the speedhack to catch up to Speedzone. The two would get into a speedster fight, with neither one gaining ground up until Arbiter's speedhack burned out, forcing a timer to slowly count down for his version of the speedhack. Speedzone laughed at this, before firing his SAW at Arbiter and missing due to the alcoholic moonshine impairing his brain and vision.

After missing, Speedzone would then drink more moonshine, before he succumbed to the poisoning, getting cold and falling to the ground choking over the microphone. Hearing the commotion, Speedzone's sister would arrive and find him choking on the ground before telling their mom to call 911. As this happened, Arbiter would use Chief's rocket launcher to blow Speedzone's avatar off of the racetrack and into the depths below, fragging his account.

Later, they would find out that Speedzone was put into a comatose state and was hospitalized.

## Personality

Speedzone is a foul-mouthed sociopath with an addiction to alcohol. He feels no empathy, and often doesn't think before he acts. He has an inflated ego and a high opinion of himself, and often doesn't take people's feelings into consideration before acting abrasively towards them.

In "Mercenaries", Speedzone is seen as a misogynist, implying that Claire, Michelle, and Autumn couldn't be good players because they were females before writing off the notion that the fact there was an all-female MLG clan was "SJW propaganda." In this same episode, he is a toxic troll, using Billy's excitement at getting in a clan to haze him into drinking a bottle of moonshine and putting his life in jeopardy.

Speedzone is also impatient, as he dislikes that half of the time is him standing around and waiting for someone to do something, or for Brainiac to go and send him to do something.

Speedzone is also a bit of a pushover at times, namely with Brainiac and Lockdown. When he gets overzealous in "Squad Goals", he is frightened when Brainiac uses one of his tentacles to threaten him. In "Mercenaries", when Speedzone sees Lockdown, he immediately makes excuses to get him out of trouble, and is pushed to go meet Brainiac with little-to-no struggle.

Speedzone also likes to take shots at his sister, namely considering her a whore for having casual sexual encounters, and often using her as the butt of his jokes. It is unclear if this is from his own dislike of her, or if this is a result of the alcohol impairing his judgement. Speedzone likes to make sexual innuendos constantly, and sometimes makes "your mom" jokes while also threatening sexual murder against some players. It is implied that something happened between Speedzone and Lydia's half-sister in "Angelic Widows", as when he mentions her half-sister, Lydia responds with resentment towards him instead of her usual seductive attitude.

Due to Speedzone's nature as an alcoholic, it is difficult to pinpoint whether or not this is how he acts when sober, or if he's a completely different person when his judgement isn't impaired. Considering he is an alcoholic and chose superspeed as his hack of choice, it can be inferred that Speedzone is using them as metaphors and means of running away from problems in his past. This is shown as he constantly tends to run away when he is attacked rather than using his super speed to attack the main characters.

## Trivia

* Speedzone is the first character in *Arby 'n' the Chief* to show an actual use of the speedhack, even though Chief was the first to use it in the episode "Cheater" from Season 3 of *Arby 'n' the Chief*.
* Speedzone has ADHD.
* Speedzone failed English class. It is unknown for which grade exactly that he failed this class.
* Speedzone's theme is called "The Fastest Player Online".
	+ This theme is used in the song "Dickhead Duo" and is remixed later with "Hot Pursuit."
	+ "The Fastest Player Online" is a reference to the Flash's title: the fastest man alive.
	+ The title is also a reference to "Flash Fact" where he tells Arbiter he is the fastest player online.
* Speedzone's fate in "Flash Fact" is foreshadowed a couple of times in the episode, namely when he finds out that Billy got alcohol poisoning and was put into a coma, when he tells Ron that all he did was give Billy's parents a reality check and basically told them their actions have consequences, when he says "Some people can't hold their liquor, I guess!", and when Ron tells him that he hopes he chokes on the moonshine.
* In the second drafts of the scripts for Next Gen, Speedzone's name was Quicksilver, and his fate was very similar to Deathlok's in "Death Squad."
* Speedzone shares many similarities to Adam MacIntyre from Season 6 of *Arby 'n' the Chief* in many ways. They both tend to have sociopathic tendencies, they both speak of family members in a negative manner, they are both foul-mouthed, they both tend to treat their friends poorly, they like fragging everyone they come across, they are both disliked by their respective allies, and they both have unofficial rivalries with Arbiter stemming from something they do to Claire.
	+ Clyde and Kylie note that Speedzone is very similar to Adam, which Speedzone earlier implies resentment with the notion that he's anything like Adam.
	+ Speedzone and Adam's last episodes of Season 1 of Next Gen and Season 6 of the original *Arby 'n' the Chief* have striking parallels, as they both alienate their friends on a custom-built racetrack, they are both chased by Arbiter and Chief across several maps (in Speedzone's case, two different games), they both have their final battle on the same custom-built racetrack, and they are both defeated when something in the real world affects them and gives Arbiter the advantage to frag them. Arbiter notes these similarities after fragging Speedzone.
	+ In a coincidental fashion, both Speedzone and Adam's voice actors have been changed during production. In the canonical *Arby 'n' the Chief Season 8,* Khail Anonymous was replaced by Eric Watkin for Adam. In Next Gen, John Carter was replaced by Kunami13 due to John being in the middle of a move to Japan. Coincidentally, both voiced Jackson too before and after John had to be recasted.
* Speedzone shares some similarities with Tyler King from Season 7 of *Arby 'n' the Chief.* Both of them are members of a notorious organization of hackers who frag anyone they come across, are very malicious during matches, have very foul mouths, have short tempers, and both where fragged during a stand off against both Arbiter and Chief (Tyler gets mauled by his dog and Speedzone gets alcohol poisoning) which gives them enough time to frag both.
	+ Coincidentally, like Adam, both Speedzone and Tyler have had voice actor changes during production. However, Tyler's actor was changed more. John Carter was replaced by Kunami13 due to John moving to Japan, and Tyler was voiced by Khail Anonymous, Rob Talbert, and Jordan Kast in Season 7.
* Speedzone has a voice modulator like Lockdown, Brainiac, Deathlok, and Clyde. However, he only uses it once in "Flash Fact" for effect.
	+ This is similar to how Eobard Thawne, AKA the Reverse Flash (nemesis of Barry Allen's Flash), is able to change his voice mid-sentence in the CW Flash TV Show.
* Speedzone is often compared to other fictional speedsters, such as the Road Runner, the Flash (Barry Allen), Jesse Quick, and Silver Streak.
* Speedzone's line "Never forget that I am the fastest player online!" is a reference to a line said by Hunter Zolomon, AKA Zoom, in the second season of the CW Flash TV show, where he tells the Flash "Never forget that I am the fastest man alive!"
	+ The fastest man alive is also the Flash's title.
* Speedzone is the only major antagonist in Next Gen Season 1 who doesn't have a main alias that references another fictional character.
	+ However, characters like Arbiter and Clyde give him different nicknames that are in fact references to other fictional speedster characters.

## Appearances

### Season 1

* Squad Goals
* Outlaws (Mentioned Only)
* Mainframes
* Mercenaries
* Lost in Translation (Mentioned Only)
* Locked Down
* Angelic Widows
* Firecracker (Mentioned Only)
* Cyberterrorist (Mentioned Only)
* Flash Fact
* Death Squad (Mentioned Only)