When the police arrived via clamber onto the rooftop, due primarily to all the complaints they'd received from the building's residents of so much pre-dawn screaming, our hero asked that they apprehend the now not-so-super supervillain. This the police did, dutifully carting Muffin Mind away – in an actual cart, no less. “Not in a police van, as per standard practice?” our hero asked.
“Nah guv', it's job swap day,” said the horse at the front of said cart. “All the cop vans are parked in the market square, selling vegetables and novelty handcuffs out the back and stuff, while my fellow officers are in the fields, ploughing. Daft idea, if you ask me,” Officer Horse did neigh. “I do like the uniform, though.”
“It suits you,” our hero agreed, requesting a twirl. “Especially the hat and chaps.”
“Ta bud,” appreciated the horse, galloping from the rooftop before landing with a sickening crash many floors below. Awoken by the disturbance and so much sickening Cockney neighing and crash, Detective Pilchard yawned, rubbed his ears open, wandered over. “What just happened, Crumpet-Hands Man?” he burped. “The last thing I remember–”
“No, it is I who should be thanking you,” our hero offered a crumpet-hand, completely ignoring the flow of the conversation. “My dear, dear detective! How ever can I ever thank you? For I assume it was you all along who was attempting to free me from the bounds of my berry-induced nightmare? You, the hairy-legged girl, who threw that volleyball at my head? And you who's face appeared in the wibbly custard of that tart I summarily gobbled and retched on?”
Swelling with pride (and so many wrestling-bout bruises) Detective Pilchard confirmed our hero's assumptions to be true. “But,” he said, parading his championship belt before a humbled nightie, “there's still one thing which still puzzles me still.”
“You wish to know what your tart incarnation tasted like?” our hero winked. “Creamy,” he winked again and burped, both from the same eye. “And the nutmeg moustache really–”
“No, it's not that.”
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“Then the logistics of how I was able to syphon the evil from Muffin Mind's mind, considering that malevolence is not a physical substance, muffins do not have liquid centres unless under-cooked, and such an act of crumpet-suckeridge would likely have killed him?”
“I just put that down to lazy writing,” the former Detective Roe yawned our his ears. “Fair point,” the worker's paunch and parrot panged. Blah.
“But what I meant, Crumpet-Hands Man,” the detective said, “is now that Muffin Mind knows the ins and outs of your backstory, surely it will only be a matter of time before he pieces together your secret identity?”
Crumpet-Hands Man smiled, leant closer to his partner, so close that they accidentally knocked heads. “Just between you and me, my dear detective,” our hero with a headache whispered, “...I made the whole story up.”
“What?” the detective gasped. Our hero nodded. “Yep. All that rubbish about schools and deer teacher etcetera was just to annoy him. Ha!”
“So all of it was a fictitious creation of your crumpet-mind?”
Our hero yep-ed again and nodded.
“Even the long-winded exaggerations of your father's navel bakery?”
With a joyous flourish our hero nodded for a third and final time before performing the Cartwheel of Confirmation. “Besides,” he said, untangling his cape from around his head and dusting himself and his partner off, “in reality my true origin story is far more enthralling.”
The detective crouched in preparation for the Somersault of Surprise; but, our hero confessed, performing the Somewhat Sombre Backflip of Admission, “In truth, my dear detective, that is an anti-truth. Keep it under your hat – literally! – but really rather bland backstory is this:
“My mother ate a mouldy crumpet smeared with nuclear waste when she was pregnant, and I ended up born like this.”
“Oh.” said the detective, attempting the Bellyflop of Disappointment. Not for the first time, he landed with a sickening crash atop a cockney horse.
With the coming of a new day the rain falling upon the rooftop began to ease. Rays of orange and cherry dawn broke across Trifle City's glistening skyline. Bathed in the heartening glow of their triumph, our two heroes turned to face one another–
Then dropped to their knees and began screaming.
Well now: three villains faced, three villains defeated. Our hero is truly on a roll! (He wasn't, as crumpets don't really go well on rolls; or inside rolls, for that matter – carb overload, to put it mildly!) Have we seen the last of the supervillain that was Muffin Mind? Spoiler! ----> (*Indeterminate shrug*)
But will the coming of a forth villain, one stronger, tougher, more ruthless and made from the densest of timber, be too much for our hero? Find out shorty in the next Crumpet-Hands Man adventure: The Pilfering of the Planks!
