Both cross-legged and cross in general (Ten-hut! What?), Muffin Mind had been sitting alone at the table for longer than was in any way acceptable. His tea had gone cold, his cakes stale, the temper of his muffin somewhere in-between. Deeply offended that the wee-wanting hop-departing Crumpet-Hands-Man – wherever he'd gotten to! – would not bestow upon him the same courtesy of a long-winded backstory which he himself had indulged, Muffin Mind nonetheless took up a stack of napkins and a quill. A brief summation of his biographical writings are thus:

  

  
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    Before becoming a super villain, Muffin Mind (Then Marshal Mein – Ten-hut!) was originally a tea-time puzzle writer. He focused so intently on these puzzles that one day, for some reason, his head turned into a great big muffin. (I'm told this can happen. I read abouts it on the internets, so must be trues.)
  
    


  
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    Due to the flourishing of his intellectual/muffin-based powers for some reason, he initially decided to become a superhero, for he reasoned (for some reason) that the world's problems could be thought out rather than fought out. But having discovered that people are as thick as bladders and just as difficult to coerce, under the guise of Muffin Mind he reverted to villainy. (He also rode a washing machine to victory at the Grand National, beating a man with pneumatic giraffe legs by a burp, But that's another story...)
  
    


  

  “Fascinating stuff,” our returning hero yawned upon skimming the ream of napkin-based testimony. He used the final sheet to dry himself. “Brought a tear to my eye,” he winced.

  “So, my dear crumpet,” the villain said, downing his quill and cracking his knuckles – our hero mistook the cracking for freshly-popped popcorn, and readied a traffic cone. “Do you now comprehend the reasons for my wishing us to join forces?” the villain enquired.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Not really.” Our hero unzipped himself, began hopping again. “But if you could write them down on a napkin I'll read them once I–”

  “Damn it sir!” the villain roared with a spray of infuriated poppy seeds. “I wish us to take over the world together! For the past year I have been assembling a legion of bread-based baddies, a proverbial army of evil, with I, the muffin, at the consortium's helm! All I need to complete my brilliant scheme is you, Crumpet-Hands Man. You are the final piece in my puzzle.”

  “I will never become a villain,” our hero said adamantly. “I am a force for good!”

  The villain guffawed. “Come now. Surely you have seen in the recollections of your past that you are not cut out to be a hero?”

  Our hero was about to clarify that crumpets are not cut out, not like scones or cookies or other such mass-produced comestibles. (As anyone who's seen How It's Made: Crumpet Special will know, their batter is cast into ring-shaped moulds and baked individually on a revolving hot plate.) The villain, however, was too enraptured in unfolding the mechanics of his grand scheme to listen to our hero's recount; a brief summation of his villainous scheming, or at least the last line, is thus:

  “–then the world will be trapped under my proverbial piecrust of tyranny!” he cackled.

  Thinking it socially awkward to remain deadpan in the face of such maniacal mirth, Crumpet-Hands Man emitted a churlish giggle. “I see you are coming around to my way of thinking,” Muffin Mind interpreted of said giggle.

  “Not really. I just thunk it socially awkward to remain deadpan in the face of such maniacal mirth, like. *Giggle.*”

  Drop. Knees. Screaming. A shower of molten raspberries burst from the villain's head and melted their way through the very crust of the earth. The hero asked if there was any more tea going.