Rush

Mulder and Scully investigate a bizarre murder and find a group of teenagers with Super-Speed.

Tropes:

• Antagonistic Offspring: Max assaults his sheriff father for uncovering the heavy-duty flashlight he'd killed the deputy with, saying that he no longer needs to be afraid of him.
• Anti-Villain: Chastity, who goes along with her boyfriend more out of fear than devotion.
• Artistic License – Physics:
  • If Max is moving faster than the eye can see, then so should whatever he is holding; therefore, the table, chair, and other objects he interacts with should not be visible.
  • When the bullet is seen passing through Max and about to hit Chastity it is perfectly formed, just as it would be when still attached to the casing. In reality, bullets deform significantly when they enter an object such as a human body and exit looking more like a mushroom than a bullet.
• Bait-and-Switch: In an inversion of the usual way this sort of plot goes down, Max is the one who wanted a real friend in Tony; Tony quickly gets cold feet and turns on Max while he's indisposed.
• Blessed with Suck: The cave grants adolescents Super-Speed; unfortunately, it also omits the Required Secondary Powers, which leads to the users of the power literally tearing their bodies apart.
• Bullying a Dragon: Max's teacher makes the mistake of getting on his bad side by failing him on his exam due to cheating in spite of having no proof that he actually did and ends up paying for it with his life.
• Deconstructed Trope: Max has the ability to move at Super-Speed... but the forces this puts on his body and the lack of any Required Secondary Powers means that he's tearing himself apart every time he does it.
• Double-Meaning Title: Refers to both the literal meaning of the word, reflecting the teens' Super-Speed, and the "rush" they get from using their powers, which is expressly compared to an addiction.
• Driven to Suicide: Chastity after killing Max, stepping into the path of the same bullet she uses to do it.
• Enhance Button: Chuck Burks' experimental technology is used to extract an important clue from blurred security footage.
• Evil Is Petty: Max drives a teacher into a wall with a cafeteria table and then launches a chair at his head just because the teacher failed him on a test for cheating despite no proof...a test which he had perfectly filled out after coming to class in the final minute.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: The delinquent Max's father is the town's sheriff.
• Mama Didn't Raise No Criminal: Sheriff Harden initially refuses to believe his son could be involved, insisting he's a "good kid" who just needs better discipline, and even getting angry at the suggestion. However, when he finds the bloodied flashlight in Max's drawer, he's forced to accept the fact that his son is a murderer.
• Monster of the Week: An ordinary, albeit delinquent, teenager that found a way to gain Super-Speed powers.
• Motion Blur: A key plot-point where security footage at a high school was found to show a strange blur. Using experimental technology to colorize it, the agents reveal the blur is made up of the school colors, suggesting that it comes from the jacket of one of the (superpowered) students.
• Murder-Suicide: Chastity chooses to stand in the path of the bullet she kills Max with, claiming to Tony that she "can't go back" to what her life was like without Super-Speed.
• One-Hit Polykill: A teen essentially commits murder-suicide in this way, shooting someone in the back, and then using her super speed to step into the path of the bullet as is passes through.
• Pet the Dog: Max sticks up for Tony when the kids in their class ostracize him.
• Required Secondary Powers: Notably averted. To put it in comic book terms, Max and the other teenagers are basically given The Flash's main power of Super-Speed, but at the same time none of his Super-Toughness or Healing Factor. Their very average human bodies therefore takes the full brunt of being subjected to stress that they're not designed to handle, resulting in appropriate medical issues (exhaustion, muscular and skeletal damage, etc.), especially in the case of Max due to him using and abusing it. Nor do they have speed-proof clothing; globs of synthetic polymer left at the scene of the evidence theft turn out to be melted bits of the soles of Max's sneakers. His father later finds a closet full of identical-looking pairs, suggesting he's frequently had to replace them without anyone noticing.
• Super-Speed: What the cave provides to teenagers.
• Teens Are Monsters: Some of them are responsible for the deaths appearing in this episode.
• The End... Or Is It?: The ending implies that Tony either still has his Super-Speed, or is at least going through a form of withdrawal where regular time feels painfully slow in comparison to the Rush.
• The Un-Reveal: The source of the teens' super-speed is never explained. All that is known is they go into a cave, interact with a strange metal, and emerge with superpowers. Sadly before Mulder or Scully can test their theory about it effecting teenagers the cave is filled up with concrete.
• Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb: Max uses his Super-Speed powers for murder, cheating at tests, and playing a prank where he abandons a car mid-drive and then saves Tony right before it crashes.