“You nerds are playing chess again? Don’t you ever do anything else?” Emma asked as she entered the house and saw her brother Robert and his best friend Joey at the kitchen table, a chess set between them.

“Go away, brat” was the response from Robert.

On the other hand, Joey didn’t mind if Emma stayed. Joey had grown up thinking of Emma as his best friend’s bratty little sister, but at 14 years old, she had blossomed into quite a beauty. She wore a tight, gray skirt that showed off her thin body nicely, a tight white blouse that emphasized the recent increase in her bra size, with black high heels and pantyhose on her long legs. Her shoulder length blonde hair framed her pretty, perfectly made up face, with her deep blue eyes and luscious red lips. Joey would be happy to just sit and stare at her all day.

“MO-OOM!!!” Emma yelled, drawing out the word “mom” into two syllables. “Robert’s hogging the table again!”

“What are you two arguing about this time?” asked their mother, as she entered the room.

Looking at Mrs. Steiner, it was obvious where Emma got her feminine beauty, not to mention her classy fashion sense. Her long blonde hair was longer than her daughter, coming half way down her back. She had a similar beautiful face, with full, red lips and intense blue eyes. She wore a tight red dress that showed off her perfect hourglass figure, hugged her perfect behind, and made her firm, round breasts stand out. Her red high heels and shiny white pantyhose accentuated her long, shapely legs. Jill Steiner was almost 40, but she was well known as the “hot mom” in the neighborhood, and she was the main reason Joey preferred to visit Robert’s house instead of inviting Robert to his place.

“Emma’s bugging us while we’re trying to play”, Robert complained to his mother.

“He called me a brat!” Emma responded quickly.

“Because you are one”, Robert answered.

“Enough!” Jill declared, forcefully enough to silence both her children without quite yelling. “Robert, you’re only a year older than Emma. Why don’t you let her play with you sometimes?”

“Chess is a two player game”, Robert responded. “Besides, she sucks at it. Joey and I would cream her every time.”

“I don’t want to play chess with them, anyway. Chess is for nerds!” Emma added.

“You used to like playing chess with your brother”, Jill responded, to which Emma just rolled her eyes.

“I have an idea”, Jill continued. “Since there are four of us, why don’t we all play chess together?”

It was Robert’s turn to roll his eyes. “You know Joey and I are good chess players. We’d clobber you and Emma.”

“Well then, we’ll have to pair up so you and Joey are on different teams, with one of us girls as your teammate”, his mother answered.

Being a 15 year old boy, Joey didn’t mind having the two beautiful blondes stick around, so he went along with the idea.

“We could play bughouse”, Joey suggested. “That’s a way to play chess with two players per team on two chess boards side by side.”

“Hmm”, Mrs. Steiner thought for a second. “I’m thinking of something simpler than using two chess boards. Emma and I can just play a normal chess game with you boys as ‘advisors’ to give us advice on good moves.”

“That’ll just end up being Joey and I telling you what the best moves are. It would be easier to just play each other without you”, Robert told her.

“Yeah”, Emma agreed with her brother for once. “I’ve got better things to do than play with this nerd, anyway.”

“Well…” Jill began, grinning slyly, “Maybe if the boys looked at the game from a different angle, they’d have a new perspective, and it would make the game more difficult for them.”

Joey didn’t know what Mrs. Steiner was talking about, but both her kids figured it out instantly.

“What?!?! No!!! Mom! You can’t do that!” Robert sputtered in a panic, his eyes wide with apparent terror.

Emma’s eyes were wide, too, but with obvious excitement, as she was grinning from ear to ear. “Oooh! That’s a great idea! I think this could be the most fun I’ve ever had playing chess.”

“What are you all talking about?” Joey asked curiously.

Turning to Joey, Jill smiled and replied, “We’re talking about this.” One hand on her hip, she reached out her other hand in Joey’s direction. The long, red fingernail of her index finger pointed directly at him, while her thumb stuck up, her hand making the form of a play “gun”. She winked at Joey playfully, then lowered her thumb as if firing the play gun.

“Mom! NO!!!” Robert yelled.

Still pointing at Joey, a smile on her full, red lips, Jill turned her head to look at her son. She slowly removed her other hand from her hip, and pointed her index finger from that hand dramatically at her son.

Joey didn’t notice anything different at first. But as he sat there, looking up at where Mrs. Steiner stood next to the table where he was sitting, she started to seem… taller. He looked over at Emma, and she seemed to be slowly growing as well. In fact, the table in front of him seemed to be getting higher, too. It only took a couple of seconds before his mind put it all together.

Just as Joey realized what was going on, he heard Robert say “You promised you’d only shrink us as a punishment when we’re really bad!”

“Oh, relax, honey”, his mother responded, still pointing at Joey and Robert, who were now just barely able to see over the edge of the table from their seats on the kitchen chairs. “It’s not like I’m going to give you a spanking or something. This will just be a fun game.”

Joey knew there were real witches in the world, people who had magical powers, but he had never known that Mrs. Steiner was one of them.

“Can I use Robert as a chess piece?” Emma asked eagerly, as the boys continued to shrink.

“NO!!!” Robert yelled.

“Actually, that’s a good idea”, Jill responded.

“WHAT???” Robert began to panic.

Jill looked down at her son. “I was just going to have you boys stand on the table to change your perspective, but letting you act as pieces will be even better. You’ll get to move around the board and participate from right in the middle of the game!” she told him enthusiastically, as if she thought this would be fun for the boys. “I’ll shrink you down to exactly the height of the kings, so you can take their places on the board.”

“Mom, please!” Robert was getting desperate now. “Don’t let Emma pick me up!” he begged, standing and looking up at the humungous form of his mother. Standing in the middle of the kitchen chair, he was now so small that he barely came up to her waist in her tight, red dress. He had to crane his neck to look up past her protruding chest to see her smiling while pointing down at him.

Turning to the other side of his chair, he saw the bottom of his sister’s gray skirt rising as he continued to shrink, until he could start to see up her skirt to her black pantyhose clad thighs inside the skirt. It was a perspective on his sister that he’d never wanted to see. He looked higher up, past her tight white shirt to see her pretty face smiling excitedly as she looked down at him, her eyes wide with excitement.

“It’s not like I’ll pick you up a lot”, Emma feigned sweetness. “Only to move you on the board once in a while.” She grinned as she teased her brother.

“I think I should probably separate you two”, Jill said. “Robert will be my teammate, and serve as the king on my side of the board. Emma, you’ll have Joey as your teammate.”

“Awww, I really wanted to have my ‘little’ bro on my team”, Emma whined jokingly.

The look on her face told Emma that her mother wasn’t buying it. “You know, you two are going to have to grow up and get past this sibling rivalry thing eventually.”

“Right now, I’d say it’s Robert who has some growing to do”, Emma joked, and looked back down at her chess piece sized brother, giggling.

At this point, the boys had finished shrinking to the height of chess kings. They were standing in the middle of the kitchen chairs where they’d been sitting comfortably a minute before. From their vantage point, they had to look up to see the bottom of the table. Joey could see Robert on the chair across from his, as well as the pantyhose clad legs and high heels of both of the gigantic ladies, though the table prevented him from seeing either of them above the waist.

Robert, on the other hand, was surrounded by his mother on one side of his chair and his sister on the other. He was still looking up at his sister nervously, afraid of how excited she was by his shrinking in front of her. Their mother usually kept their punishments private, so Robert had never been shrunk in front of Emma before, except for a few times when their mother shrunk and punished them both at the same time. This was also the smallest Robert had ever been shrunk. Usually, she just shrunk them down to a foot or two tall, to make them easier to manhandle and spank.

He looked down from his sister’s glowing face to see that the bottom of her skirt seemed like it was a few feet above him, and each of her legs were bigger than the biggest tree to him. In fact, he realized that at his current size, she could easily cross her legs with him in between, crushing him between those mountains wrapped in smooth, black pantyhose.

Emma bent down a little, and reached out as if to pick him up. Robert let out a nervous gasp, and was about to call out to his mother for protection when she beat him to it.

“Emma, stop teasing your brother. Joey’s your teammate. I’ll take care of Robert.”

Seeing Emma reluctantly back off, Robert turned to his mother, afraid to ask what she meant by ‘take care of’. Because of her longer legs, and the similar tight, skimpy clothing they both wore, the bottom of Jill’s red dress was even higher above Robert than the bottom of Emma’s skirt. He didn’t mean to, but as he turned to face her, he looked up her skirt, and saw the shiny white pantyhose covering her long, shapely thighs. A cold fear ran down his spine as he had the same thought he’d had about Emma – that his mother could easily cross her legs with him in between and crush him between her silky pantyhose.

As he watched, the titanic mass of her body hugging red dress lowered, as she bent her knees to kneel down next to his chair. Her pretty face, the size of a billboard to him now, smiled down at him gently, just before her hand reached out to grab him.

“No!!! Mom!!!” was all he had time to say as giant fingers wrapped around him. It was disconcerting seeing something so large move so quickly, yet she managed to maintain her usual graceful presence despite her size and speed. Jill grabbed him gently around the waist and torso, her fingers behind his back and her thumb across his chest. She applied just enough pressure to support him without squeezing him painfully, and took care not to touch him with her long, red fingernails. He yelped in surprise as she quickly lifted him off the chair, his arms bracing himself against her thumb, and his legs kicking wildly, as she raised him in front of her enormous face and stood up.

“Don’t worry, dear. You know I won’t hurt you”, she told him and gave him a reassuring smile, then gently lowered him to the table. As his feet touched the ground, she let go, leaving him standing aside chess pieces that were nearly as tall as he was. She sat down on the same chair he’d just vacated, and Robert got another shiver down his spine just thinking that her firm rear end in that tight red dress could have crushed him if she’d sat down that way while he was still standing there.

“There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Jill asked her son. Without waiting for a response, she turned to her daughter. “Emma, go help Joey on to the table. Be very gentle with him when you pick him up, like I was with Robert.”

Joey had watched Robert’s beautiful mother gently pick him up, and thought this could actually be fun, like an exciting thrill ride at an amusement park. But the thought of the much younger and less gentle Emma grabbing him was enough to scare him. His fear intensified as he saw the giant shoes and black pantyhose on Emma’s legs start to move in his direction, her high heels clicking loudly on the tile floor with each step. He looked around in a panic, as if there might be somewhere to hide, but he quickly confirmed what he already knew – that he was 4 inches tall, standing in the middle of a chair, with nowhere to hide, and no easy way to climb up to the table or down to the floor.

As Emma passed the table and came into view, Joey looked up at the beautiful titaness. She had a slightly annoyed look on her face until she looked down at his shrunken form. Like Robert, he noticed that he could see part of the way up her tight, gray skirt, and followed the smooth, black pantyhose covered thighs as far as he could. Above that was the gray material of her skirt and her tight white shirt, which wasn’t quite pushed out enough at the chest to block his view of her lovely face and long, blonde hair.

She put her hands on her hips, raised an eyebrow, and smirked down at him.

“Hey there, teammate”, she said sarcastically, obviously reveling in his predicament.

“Be gentle with him”, her mother reminded her. “And try not to scare him. Remember, we’re like giants to them right now, so it might take them some time to get used to this.”

“I know, I know”, Emma replied, rolling her eyes at her mother’s comments.

Turning her attention back to Joey, she reached her hand out to touch him, intentionally remaining upright and only bending slightly at the waist, so she continued to tower over him. “I hope I’m not too scary for you”, she told Joey sarcastically.

“Please, Emma! Be careful!” Joey yelled, putting his arms up in a futile attempt to ward off her giant hand.

Bright pink polish glistened on fingernails the size of his head as her enormous hand slowly approached him. The excitement on her face was readily apparent as she savored the power she had over him. Although she’d prefer to have this power over her brother, Joey had been Robert’s best friend for years. Joey had taunted and teased her right alongside his friend, frequently treating her as if she was his own bratty younger sister. While he’d toned it down some recently as she blossomed into an attractive teenage girl, she hadn’t forgotten the years of being treated as an inferior.

Her eyes were wide with anticipation, and her bright red lips were grinning wildly, as her hand slowly moved in to touch his tiny form. He braced himself, expecting her to grab him, but instead of picking him up, she just reached out one finger and shoved him from the side. He fell over sideways from the force of her giant digit.

“HEY!!!” he yelled, sitting up on the chair and looking up, preparing to try and dodge another attack.

Emma bit her lip excitedly at seeing him fall. It was one of those little things that Joey and other boys often found cute, but from his position looking up at her massive face, she looked more sinister in her excitement than anything else.

“Oops! Sorry about that!” She hid most of the sarcasm in her voice for the sake of her mother, but it was clear to Joey that she didn’t mean it.

“MRS. STEINER!!! HELP!!!” Joey yelled as loud as he could.

“Is everything ok?” Jill asked, about to stand up and come over.

“It’s ok. Joey just squirmed when I tried to pick him up, and I accidentally knocked him over”, Emma lied, then turned her attention back to Joey. She bent down close to her shrunken hostage and told him quietly, but firmly, “You need to be more careful, or I might accidentally squeeze you too hard while trying not to drop you.”

She narrowed her eyes at him menacingly as she said the last part, and Joey got her meaning immediately: She could hurt him before her mother could get across the table to help, so he’d better play along.

“Are you sure?” Jill asked. “Joey, are you ok?”

“Uh, yeah”, he responded, yelling slightly to be heard. “I just sorta panicked at first.”

“Well, ok then. Emma, honey, hurry up and lift him up to the table so we can get the game started.”

“Oh, I’d say the game’s already started”, Emma bent down close and whispered to Joey quietly, so the others couldn’t hear.

With that, she reached her finger out to him again. He was still sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him, and this time, she pushed down on his chest, forcing him down on his back. She held her finger on his rib cage, the flesh of her fingertip holding him down firmly, but not pushing hard enough to hurt him. Her long, pink fingernail extended in the direction of his neck, and Joey realized that it would only take a simple shift of her finger to push that long, sharp nail down and decapitate him. He looked up to see her looking back at him, her blonde hair dangling down around her gorgeous face, while her deep blue eyes looked him up and down like a predator stalking its prey.

After a second, she grinned, removed her finger from his chest, and reached down to his legs. She quickly grabbed his left foot between her finger and thumb, and gave a gentle squeeze, as if testing to see how tightly she could hold on without hurting him.

“Please be careful”, he begged quietly.

Her eyes looked back at his face angrily, then darted to the side, looking across the table to see if her mother had heard. Apparently she hadn’t, as Emma’s gaze turned back to Joey’s legs. She began to pull on his foot, sliding him along the wooden surface of the kitchen chair. As he slid what seemed like at least ten feet, Joey had to force himself to keep his mouth closed and not yell out in panic, knowing that if he made any sound that alerted Mrs. Steiner, Emma could hurt him quickly.

Emma pulled Joey all the way to the edge of the chair, paused thoughtfully for a second, then continued. Joey realized where she was going with him and tried desperately to grab hold of something on the chair to resist her pulling, but he knew it was fruitless. For a split second, he considered calling out for help, but he quickly dismissed that notion. She could toss him off the chair, squeeze his foot hard enough to break it, or any number of other punishments that would only take a split second if he pissed her off.

Emma continued to pull until his legs and torso were floating over the kitchen floor, then stopped again. His weight rested partially on his shoulders and arms on the chair, and was partially held up by Emma’s grip on his foot. He looked back up at Emma’s pretty face, to see her looking him directly in the eyes. She grinned and raised her eyebrows briefly in a playful expression, then lifted his foot.

In less than a second, Joey was dangling upside down from his left foot. The teenage beauty held him up above the chair, carefully not lifting him to the height of the table, so her mother and Robert couldn’t see what she was doing. His arms and free leg flailed wildly, and he once again had to force himself to keep his mouth shut.

After a second, Emma lowered him slightly, then lifted him again, then moved him side to side. She kept her motions slow and gentle enough not to hurt him or panic him so badly that he’d call out, but she was clearly having fun with her shrunken plaything.

After a few seconds of this, Emma glanced back in the direction of her mother and realized she was probably taking too long, so she’d have to stop messing around and actually put Joey on the table.

“I guess the easiest way to lift you carefully is for you to just sit in my hand”, Emma said, clearly speaking louder for the benefit of her mother, and extended her free hand beneath him.

She slowly lowered him so that his arms, then head, then shoulders, and eventually his body rolled into her outstretched hand. He ended up on his back on her soft flesh, and he sat up slightly, leaning back on his elbows, and looked up at Emma’s face again.

“See? This isn’t so bad”, she told him, and smiled down at him warmly.

This time, she seemed to genuinely mean it. Joey realized that despite wanting to mess with him a little, she really did seem to only be teasing and playing around a little, and she probably wouldn’t have really hurt him. Perhaps his original notion of it being like a thrill ride hadn’t been so far off, after all.

Emma raised her hand with Joey in her palm, and put it down on the table. Once she stopped moving, Joey braced himself against her fingers, swung his legs out of her couch sized hand, and stood up on to the solid surface of the table. It was good to be on solid ground again.

Robert called from the other end of the table, “Are you ok?”

“Yeah, I’m good”, Joey answered, as he saw Robert looking up at Emma nervously.

From his new vantage point on the table, Joey saw the chess board stretched out in front of him like a baseball field. In various positions on the board and around it were chess pieces that were almost as tall as he was. On the other side of the chess board stood Robert, seemingly 30 or 40 feet away.

And beyond Robert was Mrs. Steiner. Rising up from her chair behind the table, Joey could see her red dress tightly clinging to her hourglass figure. Continuing to look up, her massive chest, which stood out even at normal size, seemed absolutely immense to him now. And above that was her beautiful face, her long blonde hair hanging down around it, looking at him with her deep blue eyes and a smile on her face.

Emma sat down in the chair previously occupied by Joey and announced, “Ok, boys, time for you to set up the chess pieces.”

Jill smiled warmly and shook her head as Emma giggled at her own joke. It was obvious that at their size, Robert and Joey would have a hard time even moving the pieces.

“Now Emma, quit making fun of the boys”, her mother told her. “You and I can set up the chess board like normal for a new game, except for the kings. We’ll put the king pieces aside and let the boys take those squares.”

With that, her hand shot out towards Robert, who let out a yelp of surprise as his mother’s giant fingers and bright red polished nails suddenly came towards him. He tripped over his own feet and fell backwards on to the surface of the chess board, as her hand passed over him and grabbed a bishop off the board.

Jill smiled and let out a little chuckle at her son’s predicament.

“Sorry about that, dear. I didn’t mean to startle you. I was just reaching for this”, she waved the chess piece above him.

Robert looked up at the white plastic piece that was almost his size, its green felt bottom wider than his head. Seeing something that large held above him by his mother’s enormous hand, he couldn’t help but imagine her putting the piece down on top of him and pushing down. He realized that at his size, she could easily break his bones and squash him with the simple game piece.

“Are you ok?” she asked sincerely, carrying the bishop back to her edge of the chess board and putting it down, just as easily as she’d carried him up to the table a minute before.

“Uh, yeah,” he responded as he stood back up slowly, still shaken by the experience.

Jill smiled warmly down at her son for a moment, then went back to gathering the white chess pieces to her side of the board.

In the mean time, Emma had picked up a black pawn and held it above Joey’s head.

“Look out below!” she called to Joey.

Joey dove to the side as she dropped the immense object, narrowly missing him.

“HEY!!!” Joey yelled, as he looked back at Emma, afraid of what she might do next.

“What? I waited until you moved before dropping it”, she responded innocently.

“Emma, you know better!” her mother scolded.

“I really did wait for him to get out of the way,” Emma responded, innocently. “It’s not like I’d ever really hurt him.”

Her mother merely glared at her for another second, then went back to gathering the white pieces, while Emma went back to grabbing the black pieces. Whenever her mother wasn’t looking, she’d swing her pieces near Joey while moving them to her side, causing him to nervously scurry around the chess board trying to avoid her.

Robert stood on the chess board, nervously watching Emma’s antics, when something suddenly tapped him in the back.

“Wha?” he jumped with a start, and turned to see a white pawn behind him, held aloft by his mother’s hand. Again, he couldn’t help but think of what would have happened if she hadn’t been so gentle when hitting him with that pawn. His mind imagined it hitting him with the force of a heavy baseball bat, knocking him down and bruising him, all caused by the simple and graceful movements of his mother’s slender fingers.

His mother giggled slightly at his startled reaction, oblivious to the panic she was inducing in her son’s overactive imagination. She pulled her hand back to put the pawn down on an empty square, completing the row of pawns in front of her.

“You were facing the other way, so that seemed like the best way to get your attention,” she told him. “Ok, teammate, it’s been too long since I’ve played this game. I remember that the pawns all go across the second row, but you’ll have to remind me how to set up the rest of the pieces.”

“Oh, uh, sure,” he began, then walked closer and started pointing out which pieces went on which squares of the chess board. By the time Jill was finished setting up her pieces, Emma was also done.

“So we’re putting the kings aside and using the boys for that?” Emma asked her mother for confirmation.

“Right”, Jill responded, putting her own king next to the chess board so it would be out of the way. With that, she reached over her pieces to where her son was standing, and this time she really did grab him.

“MOM!!! NO!!!” Robert shouted in a panic as his mother lifted him off the board.

Jill brought her shrunken son directly in front of her face and smiled as she looked him over for a few seconds.

“Time to put my cutest chess piece on his proper square”, she announced, then brought him even closer to her face. Her shiny red lips puckered into an “O” shape as she brought him close, and she gave him a quick kiss on the top of his tiny head. Then she lowered him to the only open square on her side of the chess board, and gently released him to a standing position.

“Ooh, my turn to put my king on his proper square, too”, Emma said excitedly.

“NO!” Joey shouted suddenly, taking off towards the black king’s square as fast as he could. “I can walk!”

Before he could get past the row of pawns between him and his square, Emma’s gargantuan hand wrapped around him, grabbing him firmly, yet gently. She grinned mischievously as she lifted him off the chess board and held him up to her face to examine him.

“You can’t get away from me that easy.”

After a few seconds, she lowered her hand over the empty king’s square, but instead of placing him there gently, as her mother had done with Robert, she stopped while he was still a couple of inches above the chess board. To him, this seemed like he was about five feet above the surface, and he waited nervously for a second before she did exactly what he feared and let him go. He slid out of her hand, which slowed his descent, and his knees bent as his feet hit the surface of the chess board, allowing him to land on his feet as if he’d just landed from a controlled jump.

“Well, that was fun”, Emma said. “Now I guess it’s time to play some chess.”

"Who should go first?" Jill asked.

The boys were still a little shaken from their recent adventures, so neither answered right away.

"Doesn't the person with the white pieces usually go first?" Emma asked.

"Uh, yeah", Robert responded. Joey nodded and mumbled a quick agreement.

"Well then, I guess we get to move first", Jill said. "So I remember the basics of how the pieces move, but you're the strategy expert. How should we begin?"

Robert looked up at his mother. Her pretty face was smiling down at him, calmly waiting for an answer. It didn't seem like she was going to pick him up again any time soon, and he was more in his element playing his favorite game, so he began to relax a little.

"I always play king's pawn openings", he told her. "So push the pawn in front of me", he turned and gestured to the pawn, "forward two squares."

"Ok, dear", she replied, then her hand reached out directly over him to get to the pawn.

Once again, years of being shrunken down for spankings when he was bad made Robert imagine the worst as her immense hand came near him. Her hand was bigger than he was, and he could easily make out every fine line in her soft white skin, as it completely covered him while passing overhead. He instinctively thought of all the times she had shrunk him down to a foot or two tall and spanked him with that same hand, and the image of her hitting him the same way at this size popped into his mind. If she smacked him down with the palm of that hand now, it would slam him flat into the chess board, completely covering him with her soft skin, and hurting him from head to foot. Repeated hits like that could easily break his bones and eventually squash him like a bug.

He shuddered at the thought, as her hand continued past him. Her long, delicate fingertips gently grasped the top of the pawn, lifting it slightly off the chess board and moving it forward two squares as Robert had instructed.

Her hand retreated back the way it came, almost as if she were deliberately passing directly over her son to tease him.
 
"Your turn", Jill said, looking across the board at Emma, then shifting her gaze down slightly to look at Joey.

Joey didn't even notice Mrs. Steiner's gaze, and barely noticed her words, as he stood facing Emma, nervously readying himself to dodge whatever she tried to do to him next. Emma stared back down at him, grinning wickedly, as if planning something.

"You know", Emma began, thoughtfully, "the kings really don't move around much in a game of chess. Maybe we should use the boys as pieces that get to move around more, instead of just hiding in the back trying to avoid being checkmated."

Jill looked at her daughter and thought for a moment. "Well, I guess we could have them fill in for more active pieces instead of the kings, but then they're more likely to get captured and be removed from the game."

"But then we could just trade them out for another piece that's still on the board, so they'd still get to play", Emma responded.

Robert and Joey both didn't like where this was going.

"Mom, no!" Robert yelled up at his mother, afraid that she might actually go along with his sister's suggestion.

"I like this idea. It would let you and Joey take a more active role in the game", Jill told her son.

"We don't want to take a more active role! We didn't want to be shrunk down and used this way to begin with!"

"Oh relax! Get into the spirit of it, and this can be fun for everyone", Jill told him. She turned her attention back to the other side of the board. "Go ahead and put the king back on the board, and remove whatever piece you want Joey to fill in for instead", she told Emma.

Emma reached for the black king from the side of the board, and Joey quickly moved off the chess board to make room for her to put it down on the square he'd been occupying. Grinning wickedly, Emma swung the king towards Joey, as if trying to hit him where he stood. He let out a startled shout and jumped back, just as Emma diverted the king to avoid him, and placed it in the empty square that her teammate had just vacated.

"Careful where you swing that thing!" Joey shouted up to her.

"Oopsie!" she replied, with a playful giggle. "Now to put you in your new place."

Her hand suddenly reached out and grabbed the back of Joey's shirt before he had a chance to react. With just the slightest upward movement of her hand, the boy suddenly found himself dangling above the table, swinging with his arms pulled back by the material of his shirt.

"Now I know I want you to be one of my knights, but I just have to decide which one", she told him, as she swung him back and forth precariously above the black chess pieces.

"Emma, quit teasing him and put him down", her mother scolded firmly enough to make Emma stop suddenly. Unfortunately for Joey, his momentum continued, and he rocked back and forth under the log sized fingers that held his shirt.

Frightened by her mother, Emma removed her king's knight from the board with her free hand, and gently lowered Joey on to that square, but didn't release him once his feet touched the surface.

Still holding him in place, she announced, "He'll take the place of this knight. And now I want him to move to ..." her hand suddenly lifted, dangling him in the air again, "... this square over here."

Her hand jerked forward suddenly, and Joey with it. He let out a startled shout and lifted his legs to avoid ramming into the pawn she was moving him over. Just as suddenly, she lowered him to the surface of the chess board, this time releasing his shirt once his feet were back on solid ground.

“That makes it our turn”, Jill began, but was interrupted by her daughter.

“Wait a second, Mom”, Emma began, looking down at Joey as if examining him, then looking up at her mother. “Joey’s too big for a knight. Don’t you think you should make him the right size for the piece he’s playing?”

“Wait... WHAT???” Robert yelled. “Mom, you can’t go along with that!”

“That’s a good point”, Jill told Emma, and pointed at Joey, who began shrinking even further.

“NO!!!” Joey yelled. “Mrs. Steiner, don’t do this to me.”

Jill looked back and forth between Robert and Joey. “You know, you two really need to relax and try to enjoy yourselves. It’s just a game, and Emma has had some good ideas for making it more fun, so both of you, calm down.”

Her last words were stern enough that both boys immediately stopped talking, as Joey finished shrinking to the height of a chess knight, making him much shorter than Robert.

“Now, what move should we play?” Jill Steiner asked her son happily, as if everything was perfectly normal.