March 27

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There’s a common myth that buildings in Washington D.C. aren’t allowed to be built taller than the U.S. Capitol building. And it’s true that there are no buildings that exceed that famed dome in height, but it’s due to an archaic fire code, not because of a desire to keep the city’s most prominent structures unobscured.

The upshot of all of this is that you can see the towering Washington Monument rising above the skyline from many different parts of the city. And, today, you could see something else as well: an enormous red dragon, prowling the national mall with apparent ill intent.

Crowds of people poured through the streets, running as fast as they could away from the looming beast, everyone hoping to put as much distance as possible between them and the behemoth before it turned its attention to other parts of the city.

Everyone… except for a snow leopard, who stood in the middle of the street gawking up at the colossal dragon.

A month ago, perhaps Glove would’ve thought the appearance of a giant dragon in the distance was part of a film shoot, or maybe a political stunt. But all month, there had been reports of giants popping up all over the world. One eventually showing up in D.C. seemed inevitable.

But while he knew he should be scared and fleeing like everyone else, Glove was simply fascinated with the huge monster. The scale, the power, how everything around him shook every time the titan took a step…

Glove’s heart was beating faster and faster, making the snow leopard begin to feel dizzy and lightheaded. Suddenly, he found himself two or three feet higher off the ground. He looked down at his hands, confused. Then another burst of size hit him — and this time he saw it happen. There was no doubt about it: Glove was growing.

The growth came in fits and starts, occurring at irregular enough intervals that Glove barely had time to catch his breath before he was surging upward again. He just kept going and going — growing and growing — until he towered high above Washington’s height-challenged skyline.

In a way, Glove felt like he was growing into the size he was supposed to be. It was as if he had always thought he should be this tall, but his body had never realized it was physically possible until he saw the similarly-sized dragon in the distance.

The crowds below him now had something else to try to escape. One giant in the city was bad enough, but two seemed downright hopeless. Glove, however, didn’t care too much about the fleeing tinies yet — he had somewhere else he wanted to go first.

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Inside the U.S. Capitol, news of the giant dragon had spread rather fast, and the senators, congresspeople and their staffers scrambled to execute their evacuation protocols as quickly as possible. But nothing could have prepared them for a second behemoth, a snow leopard, taking the ornate dome of the Capitol building right off and peering in with a hungry look!

To Glove, it was like he was opening a cookie jar and looking for treats. Granted, the people inside were mere crumbs by comparison. But Glove didn’t mind. He scooped up pawfuls of dozens if not hundreds of people, greedily tossing them into his maw and gulping them down without a second thought. Within moments, the Capitol was empty — everyone inside either having made it to their evacuation bunker… or sliding down the snow leopard’s long esophagus into his eager belly.

Glove still wanted more, however. He turned around to survey his surroundings and find his next target, only to duck reflexively out of the way as something zipped past his face.

The military had scrambled fighter jets when the dragon had first appeared, but Glove’s feeding frenzy at the Capitol had made him the more immediate threat to national security. A strafing run peppered the snow leopard with missiles, but he was pleasantly surprised to find that the ammunition merely tickled his fur, causing no meaningful damage.

The look of surprise on the big cat’s muzzle quickly turned to one of smug superiority, a change that chilled the pilots of the fighter jets to the bone. “Now, now,” he said. “That’s not how you should be treating one of your fellow citizens.”

Glove suddenly reached a paw out and snagged one of the planes using his feline reflexes, popping it into his maw like a piece of candy. Most of the other pilots abandoned their mission at this point — their ammo clearly wasn’t doing anything, and they had little desire to become kitty chow.

That suited Glove just fine. The ambush had given him an idea for his next meal, anyway, and he began to walk southeast toward the Potomac, squashing everything in his path under heavy snep paws without a second thought.

The nation’s highest military leaders watched, frozen in fear, as the titanic snow leopard, marched directly toward the Pentagon. And then, to their horror, Glove began to grow again…