Their cheeks red from the stinging rain, the exertion, and yet more slaps across each other's faces, together Crumpet-Hands Man and Detective Pilchard fought to keep the nightie wrapped around the enraged supervillain's head. The detective tugged with all his might, “Quickly, Crumpet-Hands Man! I cannot hold him much longer,” he repeated for the sake of linkage. “Help me tie up Muffin Mind before he gets loose!” he added, all-too aware that time was of the essence (also the detective's aftershave of choice; he never headed to a case without a quick dab of Essence behind the eyes) and that no old lady's nightie, regardless of the robustness of its woolly tassels, was going to imprison the infuriated Muffin Mind for long. This prophecy was soon realised; embittered by so many derailments to his villainous scheme for mealtime supremacy (not to mention the indignity of being smothered by a night-time garment which smelt strongly of tiddle and magnesidam – another metal/cheese gag, there...) the villain exploded a shrapnel of molten, razor-sharp hokey pokey from his muffin head, shredding the nightie to ribbons in an instant. Detective Pilchard was sent cartwheeling backwards by the honeycomb blast, landing in a heap in the furthermost corner of the rooftop. Once the smoke of candy-caramelization had cleared, however, Crumpet-Hands Man was nowhere to be seen.
“Come out and face me, you hollow-headed runt,” Muffin Mind roared, peeling those remaining of tatters of pongy-pink silk from his face. “Out with you, Crumpet! Reveal yourself!”
“Reveal myself? At this time of the night? But it's freezing,” gasped a voice from the shadows, rubbing it warm. “Besides, I'll have you know Muffin that my head is not hollow! It is packed full of stuff. Like brain, for one.”
“Pah, that I do doubt,” the villain chortled, for some reason addressing his nemesis as Pah (–mesan; that's two in a row...). “Just for once in your sorry existence, try and acknowledge your failings!” the muffin belittled the hero. “Never mind your pathetic hands, your head is beset with more holes than that tattered cape of yours, Crumpet-Holes Man!”
“Hollow head? Hollow head?!” our hero screeched then he exploded from the shadows, outstretched, outraged, out for lunch, reinvigorated by this insult to his composition. “Hollow head? We'll see about that, hollow Muffin!”
Taking Muffin Mind completely by surprise (and the head) our not!-hollow hero seized himself atop the villain's shoulders with all the grace of a fat goose crash-landing on a rickety weather vane. He clamped his crumpet-palms around the temples of the villain's head, pressed them tight like the sides of a vice; he closed his eyes, went deep into a trance-like state; then, just as in the previous adventure, he began to absorb–
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Too consumed by the task of dispelling this flailing fool from his shoulders, Muffin Mind was initially blasé to our hero's intervention – and, thereafter, his own dwindling state of awareness. It was only when a serious case of brain fog set in, followed by an easterly cold front emanating from the central lobe, that the villain noticed that his mind, his very wisdom, his delicious intellect, were being syphoned via two leaches of crumpet like proverbial brain-jam sucked out of a maniacal doughnut!
“You insolent fool,” the villain growled, flailed, his head cycling from lemon to ginger to pumpkin to chocolate in an ungoverned rainbowing of muffin menu. “Do you really think that...that you can absorb all of my, you know...stuff?”
A growing slur curdled the villain's voice, his once free-flowing cream of a dialect becoming evermore congealed until it was as thick as something, something....erm?..something very...thick! Yet despite the rapid depletion of his loaf (Yoghurt! Like very thick yoghurt! That's it!) Muffin Mind's disdain for our hero was unwavering.
“Silly little crumpet!” he waved. (Two supermarket security men waved back from beneath an old blah blah.) “Do you really think you can absorb every last drop of my genius, Crumpet-Hands Man? Your feeble mind would explode like a balloon!”
Through gritted teeth and pebble-dashed lips our hero explained to the contrary (and to the villain, moreover) that he had no intention of retaining even the merest tinkle of Muffin Mind's mind. “As you yourself said,” he said-ed smugly, drawing out the last of the villain's villainous brain-slurry, “my crumpets, for all their superiority, are prone to leaking!”
And with that our hero withdrew his hands from the villain's sunken temples; what spewed forth from said hands can only be described as a vile 'head jelly', a pale, slimy, green-tinted secretion which smelt mightily foul and probably tasted worse. Temping though it may have been, Detective Pilchard wasn't about to dip a finger in said jelly and find out for himself; rather, while Muffin Mind was still engaged in ridding Crumpet-Hands Man from his shoulders the detective grabbed a nearby mop and swiftly wiped away every last drop of the villain's slippery intellect. Mess thoroughly wiped the detective threw the sodden mop into a convenient rooftop woodchipper which just happened to be there in readiness for the next adventure (beginning Monday, March 16th, see you there!)
Mission accomplished, wiping all wiped, the detective clapped his hands together several times for a job well done; having been incubated in a cinema refreshments counter as a baby he mistook the clapping sound for freshly-popping popcorn, and instantly fell asleep.
The now hollow-headed Muffin (No)Mind came to realise the inevitability of his defeat; gasping, he dropped to his knees. Still perched on the villain's shoulders, Crumpet-Hands Man toppled and dropped to the floor. For differing reasons, both began screaming.
