The Sensational Punder Woman fell from the sky like a meteor, yet landed on the stage as delicately as a bee on a flower. The man giving the eulogy stopped what he was saying and looked at her with dread. "Oh," he said to the Caped Clown Crusader. "Punder Woman. What a...what a surprise. You came."

"It's my honor to be here this mourning, Mayor," she said. She then put her hand on the open casket. "Much like little Amanda here, I only regret being so...late."

There were groans in the crowd. Amanda's mother wailed, and the father consoled her against his shoulder.

The mayor gestured for the crowd to remain calm. He put his hand over the mic so no one could hear him address their city's hero. "I thought...you were fighting Grand Theft Otto today?"

"It wasn't hard to convince him to...take a brake."

The mayor rubbed the headache growing between his eyebrows. "Fine. I can see a seat in the back. I'm sure--"

"May I say a few words?" Her fists were on her hips heroically, but she slapped the side of the casket to make her points. "I've been dying to express my condolences. It would kill me if I never say anything. Such a regret would certainly be the death of me. This is a duty I simply. MUST. UNDER. TAKE."

The crowd convulsed and whimpered with each slap of the casket. The mayor tugged nervously at the buttons of his suit. "Um...perhaps later, Punder Woman, if there's enough time. There's still so many citizens who want to share stories about their time with Amanda, you see."

"I assure you, mine will also be as quick and painless as possible."

There was an explosion in the distance, from the city. Grand Theft Otto had resumed his spree. The mayor was almost glad to hear it. "Oh drat! What a shame! Maybe at the next funeral! Off you go, now."

Punder Woman floated across the stage, smiling, the tips of her clown shoes barely hovering above the floor. "I don't think you punderstand, Mayor." She stopped once her eyes were no more than a few inches away from his. "I'm not leaving here puntil I've expressed my sym-pun-thies." Her eyes were glowing orange. "Don't punderestimate my need to puntificate."

The mayor wiped a bead of sweat from his brow using his tie. He glanced at the crowd, all of whom were shaking their heads at him, wide-eyed, like a field of terrified prairie dogs. There was another explosion in his city--a big one, this time, one he could feel in his feet--and he could sense the heat radiating from her pupils.

"Fine," he relented. "But please...keep it brief."

"Like Amanda's life, I'll make sure to cut it short."

The mayor closed his eyes in regret, then let Punder Woman take his spot behind the podium.

She tapped the mic to check it. "Hello? Is this thing live?" Someone fainted.

Curiously, she reached into her polka-dotted costume with both hands, one in each pocket. She hissed as if she had grabbed two handfuls of hot coals. Her feet dropped to floor clumsily, as if her gravity had suddenly turned itself back on. After taking a moment to catch her breath, she held her closed fists out to the audience.

"What I have in my hands here," she said, sounding as if she were holding back tears. "Are my only known weaknesses. I dare not share what they are, but I will tell you this...when they come into contact with my skin, I lose all of my powers. All of them. Including my insatiable need to speak in puns. I am taking a grave risk--a dire, risk--by bringing them here. However I feel the solemnity of this day requires more tact than I can adequately provide in my super state."

The audience had braced themselves for the worse, but their apprehension melted the longer she spoke.

"Even though I saved thousands of lives in that earthquake--with only one single causality, young Miss Amanda here--I still feel the pain of failing this city. I still feel the weight of a great tragedy in my heart. To save one life is to save all life, and to lose one life is to lose life itself. I think we all understand the meaning of this today." A tear rolled down her cheek, and she smiled, wiping it away. "Understand," she said softly. "It's good to be able to say that word again."

There was another explosion in the city, but no one seemed to hear, even the mayor. What their hero was saying was far more important.

"In times like this, most of us can only ask a single question: why? Why does such unspeakable pain and heartache exist in this world? She was so young. She had so much to give. It's not fair. And I wish I could provide an answer. The best I can offer is a personal story, one I cling to in these trying times."

Punder Woman walked over to the casket and looked as if she were seeing Amanda's lifeless face for the first time.

"My Uncle Eric--my mother's brother--was a gardener. A bit of a grump, from what I remember, but always kind, especially to us kids. And every holiday, he would bring bushels of vegetables from his garden. And I tell you! These were the biggest tomatoes you've ever seen! And you've never had okra with such flavor, or cucumbers with such snap! And I would tell him:

" 'Uncle Eric, you have the best vegetables in the world!' And he would smile and say thank you, but also look a little sad. He would say, "Well...almost. My garden has the best seeds from the best stock of every vegetable in the world...except one. And I swear, before I die, I'm going to add it to my garden. If I perish before then, I will have considered this life a life wasted.

"That last vegetable was a magical kind of variegated peapod that grew on the tallest mountain in our home country, Mount Rheston. Many had died trying to get just a few seeds from the top of that mountain...including Uncle Eric. 'Just a couple!' he would say when we tried to talk him out of it. 'That's all I need! Just two!' But he was obsessed, and that obsession claimed him in the end. My mother said she would still see his ghost in the garden, sobbing, because he never fulfilled his life's mission, his spirit unable to continue to the afterlife.

"And so I took up his vow to complete his garden. It's why I was so determined to gain these powers of mine. I knew I wouldn't be able to survive a trip up that mountain as I was. So I made a deal with an ancient trickster, and that's how I became Punder Woman. Invulnerability, flight, super speed...but at the cost of only being able to speak in puns."

She gasped, as if whatever was in her hands was killing her. The crowd jerked forward instinctively to help, but she was able to wave them back into their seats. "No, please...I'm almost done. I beg you...just listen." And they did.

She touched Amanda's cheek with one of her clenched fists, ever so softly. "And so, on my first super day, I flew straight up to the top of that mountain. The temperature was sixty below zero, but I felt nothing, and the wind was as fierce as a tornado, but I did not sway in the air one inch. And there it was, at the very top, a golden vine bearing green fruit--long pods, each loaded with five golden seeds. But all I needed was one.

"In a flash, I flew back to my uncle's garden on the other side of the world. It was where we had buried him, and I planted a couple of those seeds right at the foot of his tombstone. His garden was now complete. And I said...I said--"

She was sobbing now--deep, belly-punching sobs--but she held it together just long enough to finish. "I said: 'It's okay Uncle! Now you have TWO RHESTON PEAS!"

She unclenched her fists, and two handfuls of wet peas tumbled over Amanda's cold face. The super hero dropped the mic triumphantly, then blasted off into space.

And the mayor, once again, wished he had chosen Turtle Boy instead.