Queen is too skilled and powerful to defeat directly, but a discovery catches her off guard...

You circle around Melter with your eyes focused on him, arms spread wide and looking for an opening in his guard. For his part, the big man is an in open handed stance, ready to grab your wrists or ankles if you attempt any strikes on him. As a superheroine with 'peak human' rather than 'superhuman' strength, you actually had to worry about things like fighting styles. Your favorite was Eskrima, emphasizing weapons and kicks rather than relying so much on upper-body muscles. If Melter had the same kind of 'not quite super' strength as you, he'd tie you up into knots based on the fact that he was quite a bit bigger and heavier than you.

Most superheroines who trained in fighting emphasized strikes over grapples or holds, and precision over brute ****... because all other things being equal (training, superpowers, etc.), they were still the weaker sex in the most technical sense of the term. The problem was that a big bruiser like this would take a lot of hits before he started to feel it, and one ill-timed attack by you is all it would take for him to get a hold of you and drag you down, and at that point it was all over.

The Melter seemed to realize that you were hesitating to engage him, and cracked his knuckles menacingly. "Come on chickie, you know how this is going to go. Un-ball those fists and play nice, and I won't do anything more than get a nice close look at you, promise. Oh, and while you're deciding..." he suddenly turns around and fires his bright red crotch-beam at the silverware that Queen has levitated to threaten Don Vida with, liquefying all of it. It seemed that Queen's ferrokinesis had its limits, as she wasn't able to keep hold of liquid metal.

"Nightingale!!" she shrieks at you, angrily. "I'm taking a page from the Wonderland Warriors playbook now - bring that meat-head down or its OFF WITH YOUR HEAD!" She tightened the chain around your neck to make sure you knew he was serious. Suddenly, before she could attack again, Don Vida leapt up and tackled her.

Falling back on the basics, you throw a spinning high kick at Melter, slamming your heel into his jaw. He barely flinches, and grabs your leg before you can pull it back, yanking you towards him (pussy-first, no less). For a moment you're afraid that you're about to feel the source of his rays sliding inside you... And indeed, that seems to be where he's aiming. Apparently he was one of all too many male supervillains who let their little head do all the thinking; he was in the middle of a brawl with a supervillainess trying to kill his boss, and his priority was trying to shove his cock (which wasn't very impressive at all in terms of size, you now saw) into the first costumed (err, ex-costumed) woman to engage him.

As it turned out, those priorities didn't work out so well for Melter. Diamond and Spade-9 performed an elaborate move, with the bigger, stronger Diamond hefting her sister up by her waist and throwing her upwards. Hearing the scuffle of an attacker approaching from behind, Melter tried to throw an elbow backwards without looking - but it was much too low. Spade-9 landed right on his shoulders, with her thighs around his neck, as if she were a little girl he was giving a horsie-back ride too. But this spiteful villainess didn't play nicely, and she started squeezing his neck between her thighs. She wasn't all that strong, but it still **** Melter to release you, **** sounds starting to come from his throat.

You could have counter-attacked right there, but did a backflip to gain distance instead. Now that Spade and Diamond had committed themselves, he was more their problem.

Melter whirled around and fired his crotch beam just as Diamond was trying to slip back into invisibility, melting a wide swath of her suit and exposing her pot-belly. He turned up the temperature so high that it actually hurt Diamond less, because her suit was flash-fried into dust where the beam touched it, giving her painful but very shallow burns. Nevertheless, she collapsed, wailing in agony and despair.

Spade was squeezing him as tight as possible and even reached down to put her fingers into his eyes, but Melter managed to grab her by the ass and heft her up off of his head and neck, throwing her across the room where she broke a table with a painful crash. "Ahhh!! I'm bleeding!" you heard her shriek. You looked over - she wasn't injured that bad, a little shard of glass stuck in her shoulder. But like her sister, she wasn't used to being on the receiving end of a hard hit.

You, of course, had been using all of this time to leap up to the rafters, carefully timing your movements to get the Melter right underneath you. When he's recovering from throwing Spade, you leap down and land right on top of his bent-over back with both feet. He goes down and slams into the floor with a crash. With grim satisfaction you note that his shoulder is dislocated, and he starts whining more like a little girl than either of the two women he just injured.

Something weird was going on with the Don, though. Stronger than an old man should be, he'd gotten Queen's neck in his hands, and some kind of black lightning sparks were flying from where he'd gripped her.

A very strange idea suddenly enters your mind. Perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps out of a sense of humor, you go over and grab the small, elderly mob boss by his shoulders and heft him up. He doesn't release his grip on Queen's throat, so she gets dragged along too, but getting him to let go wasn't your intention. Instead, you push Don Vida right into the path of the rainbow that had shot out of Doc's overstimulated lady bits.

Astoundingly, the rainbow had a violently destructive effect on the strange little crime boss's body. His entire back burst into oily black flames where the rainbow touched it, and he gave a shriek of agony that was disturbingly... avian?

"What?!" Queen's eyes widened and she gasped as she saw Cornelio Vida undergo a disturbing transformation. His skin seemed to boil away into nothingness, revealing a vaguely humanoid figure of pure shadow, save for pinpricks of light for eyes and two bird-like claws for feet.

Never one to waste an opportunity, you immediately made a lunge at Queen from behind, hoping to knock her out quickly with one clean blow to the back of the head. But she actually had some training, herself, and turned halfway to the side and reached back with one hand to deflect your hammer-fisted strike. Then you felt yourself sharply yanked backwards by the chain collar on your neck... and then suspended in the air by it. Your eyes bugged out with horror as you started to ****, no longer able to breathe. You were at her mercy now, all she had to do was leave you like this and you'd **** to **** in a matter of minutes.

Though you raised your hands in a gesture of surrender, Queen wasn't paying attention. She marched forward, picked up a nearby pizza-cutter, and held it to the obscured 'throat' of the shadowy figure that had been impersonating(?) Don Vida.

"Start talking, creature! I command it!" Queen of Spades barks demandingly. "The last time I saw my husband he was going to visit you about his gambling debts! Don't tell me that you didn't kill him! What are you, an alien? A demon? What did you do to him?!"

"Ha..." the shadowy figure laughed in a hoarse, croaking voice. "Hahaha. HAHHAHAHA! Very well, your 'majesty'. I shall soon dissolve back into the shadows from whence I was formed, but I do not fear my end, or your wrath... or the wrath of my mistress, even, since I shall soon be dead anyway. Your 'King of Hearts' didn't lose those millions of dollars at the poker table. He paid them in ****... to a certain other villain. I promise you, I had nothing to do with that, although my mistress was, heh, quite responsible for the scandal that the 'King' was being blackmailed with."

Doctor Rainbow has finally regained consciousness and produced, from her magic, a tiny surgical circular saw. She comes up behind you and starts cutting through the chain around your neck with it, producing a shower of sparks. With a whirring blade mere inches from your throat, it's a good thing you're too close to passing out to struggle. Fortunately, Doc has a steady hand, and you collapse to the ground, leaving the cut-open chain collar constricting against thin air now.

Queen is so distracted she doesn't notice you being rescued. "Enough! Enough of your games, you fiend! Tell me the truth now! If you didn't kill my King, then who did?!"

The shadow-creature Don Vida cackles dryly. "He took his own life. Swallowed a handful of sleeping pills with a glass of his favorite cognac. As part of his deal with my mistress, it had to be kept secret from you... which is why I allowed rumors to spread that I'd had him killed for debts. Hahahaha. Don't worry - I'm going to tell you why. But first, didn't you think that young lady Cordelia is just lovely? Of course, she isn't really my granddaughter, but my mistress is proud of her all the same. You shouldn't have chased her off with that sex-show you **** Nightingale into. After all... don't you think your son and daughters would've liked to meet their half-sister?"

Queen of Spades gives a **** sob. Her legs wobble, and she suddenly falls forward onto her knees. "N-no... He, he would've told me, he knew how much I loved him, he never would have..."

"He did. Don't feel so bad, human. You're just not that special, not compared to the magnificent demigoddess of a woman who your man begat Cordelia with. No man could've stopped himself. But cheer up! He sacrificed himself because the truth was gonna come out after all these years, and he'd rather die than let it be revealed he betrayed you. Oh, and not just sexually either - financially! That counts for something too, right? Oh, and incidentally, all of that cash you've been stealing from 'my' banks and casinos is marked. The first time you try and spend a cent of it, the heroes and cops will descend on you like a **** of crows. Aahahhahaa. But don't worry. I'm sure your children will do just fine even though all your thefts have amounted to nothing. After all, Acropolis city always needs more whor-"

The smug little demonic(?) being is cut short as the pizza cutter slices right through his chest, sending a spray of liquid shadow and black bird feathers out of his back. Queen lets out a shriek of pure fury and despair as she gathers up a huge cloud of every loose metal item in the restaurant and throws it all into him at once with near ballistic ****. There's a sound like a tornado tearing through a scrapyard. Liquid shadow oozes from the bottom of the pile like blood, the creature now silent.

Queen buries her face in her hands. Dr. Rainbow starts pouting. "Oh dear. I don't... I don't think I have a rainbow bright enough to make you feel any better, ma'am. I'm sorry. I really am. If anyone deserves an apology right now, it's you..."

"Listen heroes." Queen says, her voice cracking. "You... you can go ahead and take me in. I don't care any more. The only thing I ask is that you let my... my Spadie, Dia and Clubby go. I refuse to see them rot in prison. They deserve better."

You swallow. She's right there, defeated and ****. But this doesn't feel like a victory. In fact, you realize with a little chill running up your spine, there's something oddly familiar about all this... about one of the things that the fake Don Vida said before Queen killed him. But you can't quite put your finger on it. The police will be here soon, you could easily have them all tied up and ready for arrest... but should you?