Suplex: Rumour Has It

Criminal Activity

The mysterious supervillain Rumour kidnaps Transonic and the only person Suplex knows that can help her is her friend Alec Upton.

A few months after the events of The Railyard Raid, Rachel Stephens is finally able to focus more on herself again. Her friends have all-but-retaken The Railyard and she's been seeing a new man, a young, up-and-coming doctor named Tyler. Things seem to be going well until one night, while staying over at his place, she wakes to see a man in grey armour looming over their bed. With the press of a button, Tyler disappears from beside her and Rachel springs into action.   Despite fighting like Hell and putting the man through a wall, Rachel was unable to stop him before he too disappeared, using some sort of rudimentary teleportation technology, leaving her alone to piece together what just happened.   In lieu of a better solution, and knowing that reporting the kidnapping to the police may compromise Tyler's secret identity, Rachel heads back to the slums and asks around about the man in grey armour. She's only able to gather vague reports and brief glimpses from her friends at the Railyard. Apparently he tends not to visit the area. With her options running thin, Rachel decides to call her recent friend; Alec Upton.   That evening, Alec joins Rachel back at Tyler's place and combs over the scene of the crime. He takes samples of residue left behind by the teleport and takes a description, hoping that he may have more luck by referencing the police database. He calls in a favour with a member of the department's investigations team and finds out that apparently there have been a substantial number of cases over the past couple of years of people disappearing, with only that same residue being left at the scene.   While this is going on, Alec's police partner and best friend Amelia is finally growing tired of his suspicious behaviour; showing up to work battered and exhausted, cancelling plans last-minute, and being evasive about his late-night activities. She decides to follow him after their shift, tailing him back to Rachel's apartment where she discovers his secret. Amelia had always been fairly vocal regarding her disdain for superheroes, often complaining that their recklessness may put more people in danger than they save, and so Alec has decided not to tell her about his own heroing, a fact that hurt her deeply.   Alec tries to make it up to Amelia, but she won't hear it. While she wasn't going to out him to the authorities, she didn't want to speak to him. It was only when he told her what it was that they had been investigating that she finally agrees to hear them out, but made it clear that once the case was over, she'd be requesting a change of partner. Alec reluctantly accepts her terms and the three begin to examine the evidence they've uncovered. They deduce that every victim of the kidnappings is a high achiever and they are able to plot out a map of events over time.   Using the geographical profile and victim characteristics, the team are able to put together a plan to ambush Rumour before his next kidnapping. The two supers move in to apprehend him but after a desperate chase, he's able to escape out a second storey window and down into the alley where Amelia is waiting. She attempts an arrest and even manages to remove his mask, revealing his true face to her, before the two wind up taking to their respective vehicles in a car chase. Amelia is a very competent driver and is easily able to keep up with him until a blast from his kinetic staff sent her car careening off course and she crashes into a building.   Blue, who'd been following the chase from the rooftops, trying to get ahead of the pair, sees the crash and rushes down to help Amelia. An ambulance is called and she's rushed to hospital. Amelia's injuries are severe and she spends many hours in and out of the operating theatre, having lost both legs below the knee and her left forearm, and accruing burns over much of her body. She's left comatose, while Alec and Rachel flounder. The former devastated and feeling guilty for allowing this to happen to his best friend, while Rachel begins to lose hope of ever being able to track down the supervillain, knowing that Rumour wasn't likely to continue his same plan now that they were onto him. Their only hope was for Amelia to wake up and give a description of their culprit.   Several days pass and at first Alec refuses to leave Amelia's bedside, but eventually Rachel convinces him that they both need rest, and the two head home to recuperate. A police watch is posted outside Amelia's room but a certain orderly is able to visit with her, ostensibly to perform routine checks and changes, but Charles Knox knows that if he's to stand any chance of fading into obscurity once again, he needs to be rid of the only person to see his face.   So distracted by his obsession and the task at hand, he fails to notice Amelia stirring. She allows him to speak, gaining key information about his plan while subtly disconnecting her IV line before he can inject an air bubble into it. She spies his ID badge and, once he's left, convinced that the job is done, she is able to reference the hospital employee database and find out who exactly he is. She calls Alec, having exhausted herself with the strain so soon after waking up. The two briefly reconcile, though Amelia is more focused on the case at hand. She tells Alec who Rumour is and is even able to get his address, allowing him and Rachel to head to his home to confront him.   Charles isn't at home when they get there, but looking around his place, they can see that he's a man plagued by visions of the apocalypse. His small apartment is covered in all sorts of papers, from conspiracy theories to potential omens, as well as hundreds of personal medical records from his victims. The place is a mess, but after sifting through it, Rachel and Alec discover documents from Schurk Industries pertaining to a secret warehouse for the storage of experimental tech.   Rachel and Alex deduce that the warehouse is where Rumour is keeping his victims and the two head over there to find a whole facility outfitted for continued suspended animation and a somewhat unhinged supervillain ready to defend his life's work to his last breath. Using a variety of advanced weapons to fight the two. After some difficulty, they manage to close the gap and Rachel, having used her street fighting expertise to analyse Rumour's fighting style, is able to gain the upper hand. Eventually she's able to disable the villain as the police, lead by Amelia from an electric wheelchair, arrive to arrest him and release his victims.   In the aftermath of the fight, Rachel is reunited with Tyler, and Alec is invited to join the investigations team as a missing persons specialist. After some physical therapy, Amelia is offered the same promotion, but decides against it in favour of an offer from Schurk Industries that included a new form of experimental weaponised prostheses utilising NET technology, leading to her re-emergence some weeks later as Agent Abel.