Bronco grimaced as he felt another surge of pain throbbing through his right wrist when his fist clenched hard against the punching bag with a loud thud. A nagging remainder from last night's swift victory. Bronco found it a totally infelicitous intervention from the referee when he decided to squeeze himself, in a somewhat clumsy way, between the two fighters to stop the match at the moment Bronco’s right fist was underway to put his opponent's lights out. It was due to this that Bronco's killer blow, which was masterfully aimed at the left side of his opponent's jaw, grazed hard against the back of his skull instead, causing his wrist to hurt painfully when his fist bent slightly inward during contact. He did won the match though, as usual, since the start of his still quite fresh professional career. 

As his body was busy finishing his work out session, Bronco’s mind evaluated last night's fight. He tried to scan in on flaws and weak points from his side which could use a bit of improvement before he would face his next opponent. 

Thud 

Thud thud 

Tha tha tha tha thud! 

Bronco pummeled the bag with a blitzing combo as warm sweat dripped along the grooves of his furrowed brows. The long strands of his top knot danced up and down after every strike. 

“Good morning, Knuckles.” a lilting voice, feminine, pitched above the hard slaps coming from the punching bag. 

As bronco turned his head, he already knew who it was. 

“Knuckles?” he sniggered. Bronco continued with his combos as the perky footfalls from Ensley’s high heels, his stepsister, became louder when she stepped up to him. 

“Its your new nickname, stupid! Check this out!” 

Bronco wept the sweat from his forehead and took over the newspaper Ensley gave him.
On the frontpage stood a large printed photo of him standing in triumph over his downed opponent accompanied with big fat letters stating: 

Young talented Bronco “Knuckles” Bain on the rise to legendary glory? 

“I do not pretend to have the slightest knowledge about this whole fighting business.” Ensley said. “but THIS” ─ her finger tapped on the headline ─  “is impressive, bro!” 

Bronco shrugged. “I find it even more impressive that a youth of your age still reads a printed newspaper.” He handed the thing back to Ensley and continued pummeling the punching bag. 

Ensley stepped up to him, closer, entering his intimate zone, “You're ready for a real work out, hotshot?” her warm breath breezed in his ear as she stood behind him. 

"I think I'll take a rain check." He spoke curt as he kept punching the bag. 

Ensley's hand found its way under his shirt and groped his abdomen, caressing some of his tensed muscles. 

“What do you say, huh? Just you and me, relishing like the old times.” Her hand kneaded some blocks of his impressive six pack. All the while, Bronco did not cease to pummel the bag. 

Bronco's fists just slapped harder and harder. 

“Mom and dad are gone for the weekend, you know?” Ensley prodded, as her hand slithered lower and made an attempt to infiltrate his underwear. 

Her fire-red hair slapped in her face as she flinched backwards when Bronco's strong hand yanked her arm away. He continued his work out on the punching bag, even fiercer than before, like he was engaged in a battle to the death with a real opponent. 

“Puuuuleaaaaaase, brother. Its been such a long time since─ “

“I DON'T WANNA!” Bronco spun around, heaving heavily from exhaustion while looking defiantly at his eighteen-year-old sister's shocked countenance. 

“Why don't you just─ “ Bronco's face churned when he noticed that Ensley suddenly appeared an inch taller than him. Ensley's mischievous glee, which followed after she noticed his recognition, angered him even more. 

“You unshrink me right now, Ens!” 

“I can't.” 

“What do you mean you can't?!” 

“Becaaaaause, I haven't changed anything about your height, brother. I was just” ─Ensley's arms made circling movements in the air as she gracefully danced through the room like a ballerina─ “stretching my toes a bit, you know.” Ensley tiptoed her way through the trainingroom and stumbled, landing with her cute butt on the floor. After a brief moment of processing this sudden accident, Ensley bursted into a boisterously laughter as she whipped her head backwards, slamming on her leg, “this is like really hard, brother! I dare you to put on some high heels and top my performance. What do you say, huh?” 

“Are you done?” Bronco said, looking death serious. 

“What the hell is wrong with your attitude? sheesh. You've won for christ's sakes!” 

Bronco turned around towards the punching bag and started hitting it again. 

Ensley kept sitting there for a moment, cross legged on the floor. She crossed her arms and looked at her two-year older stepbrother like an angered toddler who had failed to receive what she came for. 

“Killjoy!” Ensley snapped, before standing up and clattering her way out. It was not until Bronco heard the rattling sound of the gym’s frontdoor opening and slamming close that he dared to push out a deep exhale. 

He watched his open palm and saw his hand trembling from the adrenaline still, “I almost killed her.” He heard himself saying, with a tone of regret in his voice. 

Bronco grabbed his stuff and ambled towards the locker room to hit the shower. 

His mind reeled with long past memories from his childhood whereby Ensley first discovered her ability to change someone's size with the sheer power of her will. That day stirred up the power dynamics within his family drastically.

“Hey look, brother! Im taller than you now! Ha!” nine-year-old Ensley boasted while using her hand to measure her height with that of juvenile Bronco. 

It was only a few inches at that moment. And luckily, Ensley was also capable of restoring it back to normal again. 

After that, things went downhill from there for poor Bronco. One moment, he was the older and stronger brother, the one who was both needed and feared and where his kid sister looked up to. Now however, the roles were completely reversed. Ensley had a playful and mischievous nature and this newfound power to alter someone’s size opened up an endless row of possibilities to indulge in various pranks. 

Bronco remembered well that one time in some theme park whereby Ensley deliberately shrunk Bronco just a tiny bit while he was waiting in line for a highly coveted roller coaster. Right before Bronco was about to enter, they measured his size and concluded he was still too short and turned him away. 

Another time, when both Bronco and Ensley were biking their way towards school, she suddenly enlarged him a bit so that his head smacked hard against an overhanging tree branch. 

Bronco still wore the scar of that day on his forehead. 

Things only became worse when the years passed by. While Ensley became older, her abilities became more powerful too. 

In the beginning, she was only capable of altering the size of a person by a few inches. When Ensley gained more control over her powers, she was eventually even capable of shrinking Bronco to the size of an action figure. It was a terrifying experience when Ensley wrapped her warm fingers around Bronco's tiny fragile body for the first time and journeyed him all the way along her cute freckled cheeks up to her sparkling blue eyes. Bronco could tell that his 'little' sister was really relishing in the power she wielded over him. He was tightly clenched within her fist, completely powerless. 

Fresh steam swirled up when Bronco spun the knob to turn on the hot shower. The sound of clattering drops echoed against the tiles as Bronco stepped under the warm stream, buck-naked. It felt refreshing and revitalizing after such a long work out. 

While cleansing his body with a big chunk of olive oil soap, Bronco thought he heard some noise coming from down the hall, like footsteps of some kind. That was odd, seeming the fact that he should be the only one left in the gym. The owner and he were friends and trusted Bronco to leave things cleaned when he closed it up. 

“Anyone there?” he called out. He heard nothing. 

He shrugged and continued with showering. When he was clean again after rubbing his sweaty body and washing his hair with shampoo, he could have sworn he heard Ensley's characteristic high-pitched laughter echoing from another room. 

“Ensley? You there? I thought I told you to buzz off.” 

“Ensley?” he called again when he heard only the clattering from the shower echoing against the walls. 

“Dumb bitch will push me into a psychosis one day.” Bronco mumbled. 

When he was about to spun the knob again to turn the shower off, Bronco felt a familiar sensation penetrating through his body, both warm and queasy. 

“ENSLEEEEEeeeeeeeyy!” Bronco's voice fainted while his body reduced in size rapidly. Before he knew it, Bronco was fighting for his life in the swirling water on the tiled floor as his shrunken body was dragged relentlessly towards the plughole, with water droplets almost the size of wharthogs crashing down all around him. He flailed in panic as the stream directed his tiny body towards the plughole. When he was about to plummet into unseeing depths, his body felt compressed when two large soft pillars pinched him and pulled him up, saving his life in the nick of time. 

He coughed up a lot of water when he was plaved down onto a soft surface. When Bronco came to his senses again, his mind had to process a wealthy shock. 

He was sitting on his knees, still buck naked, in the vast palm of Ensley's hand. Being there as a shrunken person was nothing new to him. What was new to him was the fact that her hand seemed immensely huge this time, stretching out at least half a football field long in diameter. Bronco could come up with only one plausible explanation to this; Ensley's powers had evolved to even more frightening levels. She was now capable of shrinking him tinier than ever. 

He craned his neck and had to shade his eyes with his hands against the bright tube lights hanging on the ceiling. 

“You owe me one, brother.” Ensley's playful tune called down. 

While Bronco looked up in shock at his stepsister's countenance looming over him like an oversized billboard only one thought kept repeating in his head, a valuable life lesson he and his parents had learned the hard way ─ Ensley always gets her way!