So, I've been playing Speedrunners (the game) recently after I first got it on my Nintendo Switch, and I came up with a theory after playing through story mode & watching the launch trailer for its release on Steam from a long while back, and it's pretty dark.
You see, the more I thought about it, and apologies to anyone who's played the game, but...Speedrunner (the superhero and main character of the entire game, itself) was actually the martyr for what happened to New Rush City, and believe or not, everyone kept challenging him until the Falcon decided to take matters into his own hands and challenge Speedrunner, himself.
I know what you're thinking, I'm just spouting stupid things at this point, but what if I told you was that the very thing that Everyone, and yes, I mean EVERYONE was obsessed with destroyed New Rush City until there was nothing left of it, pand Speedrunner was always the target of Everyone who challenged him, out of becoming the fastest person on the face of the earth, and in Falcon's case, stop Speedrunner from destroying the city.
Now, it's not Speedrunner, himself, but those who challenged him, and yes, the characters who appeared in story mode, Everyone else who appeared in multi-player and DLC are not part of story mode, and those that do appear don't have much on their origin stories other than facts, Moonraker is one of the few characters who do their origins, but more on that at a later time.
The characters who challenged Speedrunner were the catalysts for what happened because THEY were the ones who antagonized him throughout the entirety of story mode, and at a later point, can't stop a devastating explosion from leaving New Rush City a pile of rubble as shown in the launch trailer.
Now that I've got that out of the way, it's time to go into the dark part of the theory since we went into the lighter part of it.
Judging by what happened in the launch trailer, it starts off with Speedrunner racing against Moonraker, Unic, and Hot head, all is lighthearted until Hot head is reverse grappled by Speedrunner and is thrown backwards, and when Hot head accidentally blows up, he starts a chain reaction as the city bown into rubble, the only known person to escape the explosion was Speedrunner, but what about Moonraker?
Moonraker was nowhere to be seen after the explosion, either she escaped and went back to the future, or likely perished in the destruction of New Rush City, Unic was engulfed in the flames and likely died after Speedrunner drilled right past him, and Hot head? Likely died from his powers going out of control and exploded, seems to be a common trope of people who can't control their powers, it's the likely explanation for what happened to him, and all of the people he burned alive/killed, adding to the list of casualties.
When you think about it, at one point, Falcon makes one final challenge to Speedrunner, and when he threatens to exile Speedrunner, he says that Falcon has gone too far, and Speedrunner is right, how can Falcon exile Speedrunner if the crime rate would go higher to the point where Falcon would have to do this all on his own if all the runners would be forced to stay as civilians?
I think this is where things get even more complicated from here. Remember, each of the people in story mode challenging Speedrunner all have a goal, and it's pretty obvious for a lot of them, to be the fastest runner in New Rush city, and Moonraker probably started that, and she's not even the villain.
I think Moonraker's the one everyone in-universe should blame for causing New Rush City to be a pile of rubble, she challenged Speedrunner and that led into what led to the creation of the Falconeers, something she would try to stop, and ultimately failed, she's the biggest catalyst of them all
Okay, here's a few things that went wrong:
One, she challenged Speedrunner instead of trying to talk him into quiting, which wouldn't work, either.
Two, she couldn't contact anyone from the future because she didn't think to bring a communication device that would have given her a chance to tell her future team that she failed in her mission, and since she's stuck in the past, she has no way back.
Three, she should have joined forces with Speedrunner, that likely would have been the best course of action, and since she was on her own, she couldn't ask anyone to to help her, leading into the events that transpired throughout
And four, Moonraker should have come up with a strategy before she challenged Speedrunner to a race.
Way to go, Moonraker, you just sealed your fate, and history will repeat itself.
For calling herself the queen of speed, she just kept adding fuel to the fire.
I don't know about you, but Moonraker is practically one of the best characters with wasted potential, heck, she hasn't made any more appearances in story mode after her chapter ends!
Still, Moonraker has a lot of bad luck going to the past, and she should have stayed in the future.
Forgive me for ranting so long and getting this off track, but still, it's nice to see some characters get some development, though, Moonraker has a lot of potential that was wasted.
I think that's about it for now.
