A spectacle of the most epic was transpiring this harsh and stormy night: the lightning-lit profiles of a superhero and supervillain, leaping between shimmering rooftops, over neon signs, their cape-fluttering forms casting elongated shadows across the rain-lashed cityscape. A stunning vista it made, rapturous, like something out of a graphic novel. (Or a crappy Royal Road serial...)

  The tenants who's rooftops these 'supers' were bounding across, however, were not quite so enraptured. Kept awake by the thumping of foot against roof tile they yelled obscenities up at these two hooligans. Those tenants who's laundry hung drying on their rooftops patios (who, despite the aforementioned rain, were obviously too stubborn to bring their laundry inside – idiots!) were downright furious when their tights and knitted duvets and hot water bottle cosies were ripped from their pegs and gotten all dirty, like. One elderly woman, curlers ablaze with contention, leant from her window and damned that light-fingered misfit who was fingering her favourite nightie. “Give that back, you wonky-eyed fingerer you!” Having stumbled sideways through said bunting of granny attire, Detective Pilchard refuted to having any intention of fingering this old woman or her nightwear; but when you're trying to keep pace with a supervillain and superhero, and your legs aren't what they used to be (they used to be tank tracks, and before that pogo sticks, and before that pneumatic giraffes, but that's another story...) what's a portly, visually impaired detective with ear-eyes supposed to do?

  Thus, with so many soggy knickers and soggy socks bestrewn across his soggy face, Detective Pilchard hurried after the two supers as fast as his little legs/giraffes would carry him, all the while wrestling with a fingered nightie. (In the end the nightie won via a body slam, robbing Detective 'Big Daddy' Pilchard of his 0. It remains the Intercontinental Champion to this day.) Breathing heavily and coughing heavier, the detective was greatly relieved when the superhero and supervillain finally put their most-epic of chases on hiatus; his relief was only redoubled when they put their feet on a towering multi-storey rooftop, and came to a halt.

  By the time the wheezing detective arrived on the scene a duel of words was coming to a head – a muffin head, to be exact, for the supervillain in question had an imperious muffin for a head, not to mention an intellect as tart as the shavings of lemon rind which rippled his icing quiff, coupled with a deviousness every bit as greaseproof as that baking paper cravat which encircled his throat.

  And on the opposing side of this monumental duel: a chubby crumpet in an ill-fitting onesie. Our hero. God love him, he was trying his best.

  “You cannot outrun me forever, muffin,” said said chubby Crumpet-Hands Man, his declarations expelled between gasps for breath. “Wherever you run I shall...*cough*...I shall follow you...phew!”

  “Everywhere except into the provinces of athleticism, it would appear,” scoffed the villain known only as Muffin Mind. With a coy chuckle he ran his silk-gloved fingers through his icing quiff, licked them; if he didn't say so himself, he was, unquestionably, delicious. “As any fool knows, Crumpet-Hands Man, the muffin is far superior to the crumpet.”

  Outrage! Our hero almost choked. “How dare you!” he gasped indignantly. (And still for breath.) “I'll have you know that trumpets are great! Muffins are just plain...plain...erm...stupid! Yeah! *cough* Phew...”

  In the face of such a lacklustre comeback (one which contained a glaring typo that our hero was way too exhausted to correct) the villain's laugh was most maniacal. “Ha! What is a crumpet if not a semi-risen roll cavitied with craters?” he belittled with an rank articulacy which not so much toed the line of arrogance but trampled it. “The sandal of the bakery world, is the crumpet,” he went on with his grand deriding. “The sock with holes. The broken bucket. The leaky nappy. Any condiment one spreads atop these porous plops of ineffectual pap only dribbles through to the bottom, leaving a puddle of buttery excretion upon one's plate!”

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  (This stinging insult had little effect on our hero; any word with more syllables than 'plate' was lost on him.)

  “Whereas I, the delectable muffin,” the villain savoured, for he enjoyed the sound of himself just as much as the taste, “I come in an infinite plethora of variants! Behold!”

  If only to further deride our still *pant*ing hero, in a demonstration akin to the spinning of a fruit machine's reel the dastardly Muffin Mind began a metamorphosis cycling through a seemingly inexhaustible array of flavours. Initially his head assumed the guise of the aforementioned lemon drizzle, his quiff of citrus frosting, his part-sponge part-aristocrat face speckled with glistening zest; yet in an effortless transition the villain's brain-glaze took on a shade of gleaming caramel, little chips of both milk and dark chocolate blossoming from the pours of his cheeks like delicious toffee blackheads. This edible acne the villain suddenly weaponized against our heroes; before they had a moment to react, with a scrunching of his face he unleashed a blast of choc-chip shrapnel in their immediate direction.

  Crumpet-Hands Man, quick on his feet and quicker on his hands, dived behind a low-edged wall; Detective Pilchard, kinda-quick on his pogos, threw himself into a rooftop ventilation pipe, winced as the choccy chips pinging against the corrugated metal. Much to the detective's annoyance a stray chip put a hole through his fedora, spinning it around most blah; Crumpet-Hands Man was similarly aghast when his prized cape became tarnished with more holes than a rusty cheese grater. (As in the grater itself being rusty, not the cheese; I know of no dairy foodstuff which is metallic. Unless you count Steelton?..) Yet this tarnishing of his hero-attire only inspired our hero-hero into action; in an instant he was again on his hands, unleashing bread-based projectiles back at the villain with all the vigour of an Olympic discus thrower gone ape. As crumpets of both high velocity and razor-edged crust came within whiskers of decapitating his oversized head, it was now Muffin Mind's turn to seek avoidance. But what the villain lacked in agility he made up for with ingenuity: a devious switching from supple chocolate sponge to the densest of oatmeal provided him with a layer of armour comparable to a suit of iron-clad wheat. Crumpet-Hands Man continued his barrage of armour piercing crumpets nonetheless, upping the intensity; yet Muffin Mind was again clever, the crumpets deflected this way, that way by a swiftly-born plating of pecans, banana chips, coconut, bran, and pieces of very hard nougat. Not to be outdone by such deviousness our hero brought a searing oven-fresh heat to proceedings, his steaming crumpet-Frisbees eviscerating the edible Kevlar clean off the villain's jowls.

  Victory seemed our hero's; yet, despite realising he was outgunned, Muffin Mind still had one final trick up his sleeve; or, rather, up his face. With a clenching grimace he reconfigured his skin of tooth-cracking confectionery into that of sponge stippled with squidgy, mauve berry. When two-dozen said berries popped from the villain's face and rolled innocuously towards Crumpet-Hands Man's feet, it's fair to say our hero was less than awed.

  “Pah, is that all you've got?” he giggled, for some reason addressing his nemesis as Pah. “If you think a dozen bush-danglers will be enough to retard the mighty Crumpet-Hands Man, then I regret to inform you–”

  But! Like so many tiny nutritious grenades, the berries at our hero's feet suddenly, inexplicably, went off pop. Our hero found himself engulfed in a cloud of noxious fume; as a result, he soon began to feel light headed.

  “Ha, you crumpet fool,” mocked the heavy-headed villain, rubbing his hands together with diabolical relish. (One of Hellmann's less successful condiments. Blah.) “Those are not any normal berries you have succumbed to; those are Jubba Jubba berries. Very rare. Highly sought after. And extremely toxic...”

  Consumed by the berries' stank, Crumpet-Hands Man dropped to his knees and into a fit of coughs. The villain dropped to his knees in a fit of laughter. In a crash of timber and fingered knitwear, Detective Pilchard dropped through an announce desk and was counted out, helpless to our hero's plight.

  Disorientated beyond all description (not literally, otherwise this paragraph would end here) Crumpet-Hands Man struggled to his feet; having wrapped his cape around his mouth in the form of a makeshift mask he flapped his way free of the suffocating cloud; yet, after much coughing and spitting and sneezing from both ends he was confounded to discover that he was no longer standing upon a rooftop in the rain–

  He was instead inside a warm bakery kitchen, beside a large table; and working around said table, much to Crumpet-Hands Man's disbelief, was a whistling child he recognised all-too keenly.