Our heroes crashed heroically at the entrance to Trifle City's towering radio tower, the epicentre of The Slumberer's whining broadcast. Before leaping (heroically) from the upturned (and ablaze) Crumpet-Mobile, our ten-points-on-his-licence-hero was quick to ensure that the two nuggets of hyper-dense crumpet he'd fashioned between chapters were stuffed deep and securely inside his ears. (Fact: As well as being delicious, crumpet is also a remarkable insulator of sound; and good for filling plot holes...)
“OKAY! DETECTIVE!” Crumpet-Hands Man screamed. (Fact: As well as making him deaf, our hero's ear plugs had rendered him incapable of moderating the volume of his voice.) “YOU!” (We'll dispense with the capitals now.) “You head down to the radio tower's basement and try and cut the power to the entire building, thus disrupting the broadcast! If I can't stop The Slumberer myself before it's too late, I'll need you to back me up!”
“You can count on me! When the time comes, consider the power cut,” the detective vowed, readying and mock-chopping his police-issue garden shears. “But what are you going to do?”
Crumpet-Hands Man smiled the smile of a smiley hero – a smile which indicated that he had no idea what his partner had just said. “GOOD! I knew I could count on you!” he screamed. “Alas, my dear detective,” he said/screamed, turning away and gazing upwards at the radio tower, “here is where we must part ways, for I am heading to the roof!”
Having advised his partner if he wouldn't mind taking a step back – “STEP THE HELL BACK!” – our hero birthed from his hands an extra springy crumpet the width of a small trampoline; this aptly named crumpoline he placed on the ground, leapt upon, and was summarily rocketed up the face of the radio tower like a slice of jet-propelled toast out of a jet-propelled toaster. A hundred floors later, face splattered with ledge-leaping moths, our hero landed butter-side down on the roof, at the feet of the startled Slumberer.
“Ah, Crumpet-Hands Man, so we meet again,” the villain cackled from behind a large control panel, linked, via many cables, to the tower's radio antenna. “But I regret to inform you that my devilish plan to enrapture the city is already–”
“Ah, Slumberer, so we meet again!” Crumpet-Hands Man interjected, entirely deaf to his enemy's preamble due to the aforementioned soundproofing of ear-bread. (And moths). “But I regret to inform you that–”
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“–I said!” the villain himself now interjected, heedlessly attempting to correct this rudderless ship of narrative, “that my devilish plan to enrapture the city has been a success! Doubtlessly you are aware of the mind-altering frequency I am broadcasting?”
Our hero smiled, nodded. The villain was unconvinced.
“Erm, are you sure? Did you even hear what I said?”
Another nod, more vacant this time.
“Then what did I just say?” the villain asked.
A long, smiling, expressionless pause, before:
“AH, SLUMBERER, SO WE MEET AGA–”
“Well, that is not any mere whine you are not hearing,” Admiral Slumberer of the U.S.S. pLoT said. “It is, in fact, a entire decade's worth of tax returns; every dot and comma, every subtraction and carry-over, condensed into a single boredom-inducing second, and then repeated infinitum!”
“This I surmised, in fact,” Crumpet-Hands Man declared, having just remembered that he could read lips. “But why, Slumberer? Why hypnotise all these people with such a boring sound?”
“Revenge,” The Slumberer stated coldly. With nightgown flapping he stepped out from behind the control panel, drew breath. Our hero sensed a monologue coming on; he was right...
“You see, Crumpet-Hands Man,” The Slumberer began, “I was once a mattress sculptor, the finest of my generation. Nobody crafted a sleep slab as good as me – Nobody! But when this modern 'work around the clock' mindset began to overtake the city – twenty-four hour supermarkets, global connectivity, the convenience of breakfast cereals on bread and the like, like – everybody forgot the benefits of a good night's rest. As such, the mattress industry collapsed overnight, putting artists such as myself on the bread line; or, as you might say, on the crumpet line.”
Crumpet-Hands Man chuckled politely, the villain's pun God-awful. Cornflake-filled doughnuts?.. he pondered to himself.
“But I'll put pay to that,” The Slumberer proclaimed with a defiant tug of his nightgown. (The rooftop winds were causing it to flap open in all the wrong places.) He clasped his hands behind his back, turned to look out across the city far below, how pathetic it all was! “Now that I've put everyone in this wretched city into a state of semi-sleep, and on the path to a tumble unless they heed my demands otherwise, they'll be begging me to craft them a soft, cosy... Hey!”
It was at this moment that the monologuing villain realised that Crumpet-Hands Man had stealthily crept up behind him and gained access to the control panel; with typical technical competency, our hero was smashing it to bits with his fists, elbows and head.
