"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.