“-Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-” blah-ed on the villain.

  “Yep, good times,” Crumpet-Hands Man ignored said on-ing villain, went on(ing) reminiscing about his first successful hero deed – and arrest with slamming thereafter. “You never forget the feeling of thwarting your first thief,” he said, coating the villain's muffin in sputum. “That sweet taste of justice is something which stays with you forever.”

  “That I do not doubt,” Muffin Mind retched, mopping his face dry on our hero's skirt. “And it would appear that your ego does not forget such an instance, either – or following instances, if this surrounding manifestation of self-importance is anything to go by,” the villain smirked, directing our hero's wavering attention towards a seemingly never-ending aisle of breakfast comestibles. Lining the aisle's shelves, stacked to the ceiling like tower-blocks of tooth decay, were hundreds upon hundreds of cereal boxes, each box, much to our hero's amazement, displaying the cartoony portrait of a supervillain he'd quashed. “My, I'd forgotten just how many there were,” he basked, grabbing the centremost baddie-box from a vast promotional pyramid; all those boxes stacked above it collapsed to the floor, under which now rested another old lady.

  “Pants Man!” our hero read from the first cereal box's branding. “Now he was a difficult customer to take down!” Muffin Man paid a quick visit to the store's Healthcare aisle, his sides having spilt...

  Our hero set the Pants Man box down/threw it over his shoulder, picked up another. “And then there was The Amazing Flying Turnip,” another box, “Colonel Psoriasis, Captain Pasty-Face, The Pair of Pickled Pickles of Pickleton Place!” our hero further lionised of his box-based trophies. Having moped his face again, the ever impatient Muffin Mind cycled through his flavours; to his eternal frustration, he could find no variant with even a trace of cyanide.

  “Rat Legs and the Three-Armed Crisp! Preface! Butter Brain!” our hero went on – and on and on and on. “Eight Knees! Killer Death Machine! Killer Death Machine's Pet Rabbit! Captain Radio and His Merry Band of Sausage-Faced Turnips, accompanied by The Great Big–”

  With more than a thousand yards of breakfast boxes still to cover and a disposition bordering on the suicidal, Muffin Mind was eager to bring this reunion of hero and cereal-enshrined villain to a close. Besides, when it came to breakfast, the supervillain was no advocate of such an odious repast. “I am more inclined towards the ritual of afternoon tea,” he stated, striding muffinlong towards the store's bakery, that department which he and our hero were both synonymous. “Such a civilised interval as afternoon tea is a far more gentlemanly way of taking one's bakery treats.”

  Following behind the villain while tipping the contents of a cereal box into his gapping mouth, Crumpet-Hands Man found himself in opposition to Muffin Mind's rather haughty standpoint. “I don't know about that,” he tipped, choking on the toy.

  “You do not agree?” the villain asked. “You prefer a different mealtime to afternoon tea?”

  “Oh no,” our hero clarified, throwing the now empty cereal box against the nearest wall, causing a passing old pyramid to blah blah-something. “I just don't know about that, that's all. But I have heard that there's a new craze sweeping the breakfast scene. I'm told THAT Rice Crispys dusted over griddled sourdough is rather–”

  “That is nothing but a bovine fad from a previous adventure,” the villain snorted, dropping a four-pack of blueberry muffins into the trolley. “Bovine, sir!”

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  “What about a Frosties bap, then?” our hero (who was not a cow, sir!) offered from the trolley's baby seat. “Or a bagel bursting with Golden Grahams? Don't tell me that doesn't sound tempting.”

  The villain didn't.

  “Then a Weetabix inside a panini, huh?” our hero offered, wafting one under the villain's muffin nose. “Coooome onnnnnne!”

  Regardless of the unmatched fit of breakfast cereal oblong inside oblong bread (and stunted hero inside baby seat, for that matter), the manner in which the villain deposited further and further muffins into his trolley suggested he was less than enamoured with our hero's culinary recommendations.

  “You got enough muffins, there, muff?” Crumpet-Hands Man enquired with considerable sarcasm. “Sir, one can never have too many muffins,” his nemesis replied with considerable mouth.

  “What about some English muffins, Mr. Muffin sir?” wafted Mr. Crumpet sir. “Or breakfast muffins, even? I'm sure we passed a whole stack of them back–”

  “Those are not muffins!” the villain erupted, so brought to incandescence by our hero's contemptuous insinuation that his buttercream moustache took to combusting. “English muffins are stodgy imposters with two bottoms, no substance, and even less flavour! I wouldn't use them to wipe my posterior, let alone desecrate the sacred ceremony that is afternoon tea! Which, my dear Crumpet-Hands Man, is where we now find ourselves,” the villain announced, the pair having somehow magically arrived before a quaint dining table decorated with doilies, cake stands, and tea-ware of only the finest china. Fearing that he was about to be drawn unwittingly into a battle of wits with the witty and muffin-meddlesome-minded Muffin Mind (you can unknot your tongues now...) Crumpet-Hands Man nonetheless sat himself down at the elegant little table. Pinky erect, one leg much the same, he held out a teacup.

  “Do you take sugar?” the villain asked, doing the honours. “Naturally!” our hero smiled. “Then put it back!” the villain/mayor demanded. “Fine,” our hero muttered, turning out his pockets to a tumbling of pilfered sugar cubes. “Why are there slices of green snake inside those sandwiches?” he enquired.

  “That is cucumber,” the villain explained wearily, pouring the hot tea from teapot to teacup in the time-old fashion; due to the hero's insolent stupidity, the villain did well to resist the urge to turn the hot spout upon his own face in a similar fashion. “A cucumber sandwich has since time and memorial been considered a most delicat–”

  “Oh my God!” Crumpet-Hams Man shrieked, his crumpets having momentarily switched into chunks of jellied meat on account of the shock and a typo. “What on earth happened to those sandwiches' crusts?”

  “I removed them.”

  “Oh... Do you still have them?”

  “Why?” the villain simmered, his teacup and saucer rattling with anger. “Do you favour the scraps? Are you a pig?”

  “I don't think so,” our hero said uncertainly. “I can't remember anyone ever telling me that I tasted like bacon. You can lick me if you like, though, just to be sure? No? You sure? Fine, then I'll do it myself. Bear with... If you can hold up my cape a moment.”

  The villain dropped to his knees, began screaming into the teapot. Our hero rimmed his empty cup, sought further sustenance. “Are you eating that?” he asked the still screaming villain.

  “My chair?” replied the still bewildered villain. “Am I eating my chair, you ask?” Our hero nodded, licked his (his) lips. “Well, I'm sitting on it.” the villain demonstrated.

  “You can have it back when I'm finished.”

  “Finished? Finished eating my chair?”

  “Eating chair? Where?” our hero shrieked from the sandwiches before oinking uncontrollably. “Who said anything about an eating chair?”

  It was somewhere around the time when Crumpets-Hands Man began gnawing on a chair leg that Muffin Mind feared his long-anticipated duel of intellects may not turn out to be the illustrious occasion he had envisioned.