“Ta-ta, Pre-Crumpet-Hands Man!” said the faceless Preface in six/five/three-and-a-bit words. With an evil little grin he pointed his gun-like weapon at our hero-like hero. Blast! the gun blasted, emitting a beam of searing neon radiation; thankfully Crumpet-Hands Man possessed the reflexes of a gluten rubber band and was able to evade the initial shot; alas, the second was too quick, a glancing blow to our hero's iconic hands resulting.
“My thumb! My beautiful thumb!” Crumpet-Hands Man decried aloud, cradling the shrunken digit against his crumpety breast. “Look what you've done, you villain! Me thumb's like all tiny and baby sized! And my beautiful crumpet palm!” he decried ever more aloudly. “You've gone and turned the edge of it into gooey dough!”
Indeed the villain had; the crumpet-cusp of one of our hero's famously turgid hands was now all droopy like the under-cooked crown of a miss-flipped pancake dribbling over a skillet's rim. Horror! At least in part/hand, our hero was becoming a pre-hero! His crumpets were being unbaked, made batter!
“And that is but a mere taste of what my weapon is capable of,” the villain with the gun-like gun squeaked most evilly. “Now stand still and stop bouncing about on your head, will you. I wish to devolve the remainder of your form into store cupboard ingredients!”
Our hero bounced and bounced until he could bounce no longer. (Twice.) Cornered, sore, lumped with a wibbly thumb, he found himself staring down the barrel of Preface's transformative weapon, destined to spend the remainder of his days as a heap of flour, runny eggs, artificial raising agents and body bits–
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But fear not, dear reader! Fear not! Our ingenious hero was not to be outsmarted by such faceless deviousness! Let it be known that Crumpet-Hands Man was as cunning as a fox, as brave as a lion, as wily as a wolf – and as adept at thwacking with boot a villain between the legs as a very vindictive donkey. This our hero did – very heroically – before more-very-heroically shoving the wincing Preface in front of an oncoming bus.
“Ooooh,” the mangled villain squeaked post-crush, body laid out on the road, head a mess of a tyre tread, his top hat all flattened and dirty; had he possessed a face of conventional dimensions one can only picture the agony it would have expressed. “Ooooh!” the pained squeaking went on, “I...I can't feel my legs.”
“That's OK, I'll feel them for you,” our hero fondled. (Heroically, etc.) “Yes, very nice, of good length and girth. Since I'm here would you like me to fondle your arms as well?”
The villain grimaced. “Well if it's all the same–”
“Yes, they are both the same,” Crumpet-Hands Man reassured via much tugging of socket. “A bit bent, but fine arms to be sure. Mirror images of one another, just as God intended – Whoop, watch out!” our hero leaped back; the arrival and departure of another oncoming bus brought yet more mangling, crushing, head-treading and implied agony to the villain's little face. Overcome with sympathy for the stricken villain (for he was good like that) our hero leaped back forward (as in, having leaped back, he leaped back again, only forward instead of back this time. Understand?) He offered, taking said gun up, “Perhaps I could blast! you with this reverting firearm of yours? Would that heal your mangled limbs, Preface? By returning them to their original state of alignment?”
“Oooh,” the villain said hopefully, “it's worth a try.”
It wasn't. Despite concentrating his aim, right down the gun's sights, point-blank, our hero's blast! missed the villain by several miles, striking a distant bus driver between the eyes and causing him to devolve into a baby and lose control of his bus. Such is life, Preface was once again mangled under a third bus, as was his gun, some butter, and a passing sewage worker from a forthcoming adventure.
