Sprint for Leoroc
	
“Oy Vey…” the thin, lanky leopard said, looking over the warzone that had become of the peaceful daycare that he had arrived at that morning. The cubs, about twenty of them in all, were running amok like a herd of angry elephants, and had about the same effect on all semblance of organization. Leoroc rubbed the sides of his head, groaning, knowing that it was his job, as it stood, to keep this web of balls of mad energy in order. The daycare had been meant for older children, most of them between the ages of four and five, and, grateful as he was for the job, the leopard questioned the manager’s decision to hire him, of all the people who had applied. He said he had been good with kids, and, to his knowledge, he was, but, with his slight frame of somewhere in the neighborhood of just under a hundred pounds, he couldn’t really force his will upon them, considering any two of them were a match for him in weight. 
As it stood, the current chaos, annoying as it was to Leoroc, was tolerable. The kids were meant to play. What they were not meant to do, however, was throw compressed wooden letter blocks at one another, and, when the leopard saw a five year old male lion cub doing exactly that, he knew that he had to intervene. 
“Hey, Mikey!” Leoroc said, getting up and speed-walking over to the lion, “no throwing blocks. Do you understand me? That’s ten minutes corner time, now scoot,” he said, doing his best to look as ferocious as possible, but, as usual, the cub completely ignored him. 
“My mom tells me I can do whatever I want!” the cub shouted, and Leoroc couldn’t help but bury his face in his palm.
“Well, what she says doesn’t apply here, Mikey. Throw one more block, and it’s an hour in the corner. Understand?” the leopard said, seeing now that he would need to use what force he could, and took the five year old by the wrist.
“No!” Mikey shouted, trying to pull away and shouting for all the world to hear, “you can’t make me! I’m too big for the corner!”
“I am making you, Mikey,” Leoroc hissed, dragging the lion cub across the room, “you stop this right now or I’ll…” the leopard stopped in mid-sentence, looking down and into the lion’s grinning face. There was a cup in his hand, a green one that he had snatched from the table in the middle of the room. The first thing he noticed was that the cup, usually full of warm water or juice, was empty, then he realized where the juice had gone: Mikey had pulled the waistband of Leoroc’s standard issue uniform grey trousers out a half foot, and poured the contents down his pants. The dark, blackish stain spread instantly along his crotch and down the inside of both his legs to the cuffs of his shoes. “Oh, no… no, no, no,” Leoroc said. He had let go of Mikey and now the lion was out of his reach, the leopard now watching helplessly from afar as the five year old cupped his hands to his muzzle and shouted.
“Leoroc wet himself!” the lion roared with the full voice of a five year old child, his words laced with all the inherent sadism that was harbored in someone of such tender years.
There was sudden hysteria in the room. Everyone turned to look, and the main playroom of the daycare burst into hysteric laughter, many of the cubs trying to draw attention to themselves or win the respect of their peers by taking mocking jabs at Leoroc, who, surrounded, tried, in vain, to get to the employee’s locker room in the back where he had stashed his spare pants.
“Leoroc wet himself! Leoroc wet himself!” went up the chant, slowly growing as all the cubs chimed in, getting as much merriment from his misery as possible. By the time he had almost reached the back, the leopard was blushing bright crimson across his cheeks, under his eyes and right along his short, spotty muzzle. This was an abject humiliation, the worst he had suffered since he had started at the daycare, and that was saying something. One minute he was consoling himself about how he would take an early lunch, get changed, and hope that this would all blow over, and the next minute he felt someone, or something, hit him from behind. In reality it was not one thing, but many things. Three of the cubs, he soon realized, had taken the opportunity of his distraction to kick out his knees and trip him. One of them was Mikey.
“Awww, is the widdle baby running away?” Mikey mocked, two or three more of the cubs joining in, hopping on top of Leoroc’s thin arms and legs, pinning them.
“Mikey…” Leoroc hissed, “Get off me or you’ll regr…” Leoroc said, or, rather, tried to say, but his words were arrested as one of the younger children, beaming in the face, pushed a forest green pacifier into the leopard’s mouth and held it there. He thrashed back and forth, tried to spit it out, but, for all he could do, without his arms to use in defense, he could not force it out. 
The call went up for more cubs to join in, and they did. Nothing draws a crowd like a crowd, and that is especially true around cubs. Leoroc could hear tearing, and felt someone’s claw running up his bare fur. He angled his head for a better look, and whimpered into his pacifier. Mikey had used a claw to tear up the soaked seams of Leoroc’s pants and underwear, leaving him naked. They all went silent for a moment, and, terrified, Leoroc couldn’t see why. When he did, however, he went totally stern, all the breath suddenly sucked out of his lungs: Mikey was holding a diaper. It wasn’t a baby diaper, the ones for the daycare’s youngest guests, but a toddler’s sleep diaper. Leoroc had long known with disdain that he could fit into many of the young children’s clothes, given how small he was for his age, but he had never imagined that would ever happen! But now it was happening. Taking their cue from Mikey, several of the cubs went off in all different directions to gather things to put on him: kindergartner sized pants printed with characters Sesame Street, a Barney T-shirt, a pair of small, white velcro shoes. All the while Mikey gloated over his victory, forcing the unfolded diaper, the front tape printed with letter blocks and crawling cubs, and slipped it under the skinny leopard’s rear. It felt thick under Leoroc’s rear, like a pillow of some kind, and it crinkled like nothing else. The whole group of leoroc’s tormentors were electric with energy as they watched their caretaker, or, rather, in their eyes, tormentor, join their ranks, helpless to stop them, as he was diapered up like the smallest of them. The younger cubs always squirmed during a diaper change. Even if they had accidents, they saw diapers as something for babies, something that they were too big for, and this reaction was full and true for Leoroc, too. With absolutely no delay, Mikey pulled the front of the big pamper up around Leoroc’s waist and taped it securely, not even bothering with the powder or lotion. The leopard whimpered through his pacifier, whimpering in his humiliation and shame at how easily they had restrained him, diapered him, it was role reversal of the most embarrassing type!
For all his squirming and struggling, the cubs continued with a level of concentration and efficiency that only a cub at play could achieve. The childish pants came next, the cubs maneuvering him one leg at a time to make sure he couldn’t kick as they pulled them up. He screamed into the pacifier, but it was no use. Two more kids had come over and tied a skipping rope around his snout as a makeshift muzzle: it worked annoyingly well. 
Mute and immobile, the leopard could only watch in powerlessness as the cubs pulled the pants up over his diaper and belted it in place. They didn’t even really cover all of it, considering they were made for someone shorter than him, but the cubs all saw this as a plus, seeing as now he couldn’t even hide how diapered he was. Next came the shirt, the cubs pressing on with the same drive and cohesion that seemed marvelously like ants to him. Mikey tore up the remainders of his uniform with just as much ease, admiring the power of his claws, and then the small, short, tight purple T-shirt with Barney on it was slowly pulled over his head. 
Leoroc could only groan in anger and shame as he looked down onto himself, shaking his head slowly in denial. His manager would be back from the store, soon… and if she found him like this, who knows what would happen? The cubs didn’t let up for an instant. One of them, a squirrel whom Leoroc knew as a knot expert, started winding a rubberized skipping rope several times around his wrists, then around the door knob. He tied them in several short knots, the leopard trying his best to get some slack in the ropes, and then left him dangling, hands over his head, from the doorknob to the staff room pacified, muzzled, diapered, and dressed up like he might have been on his first day of kindergarten. His ankles came next, the squirrel working under Mikey’s direction to tie Leoroc at the ankles and knees, then to add a second rope that went to the table in the middle of the room, which he clearly knew was bolted into the floor.
The cubs gathered around the leopard, now nearly at the point of tears, and snickered to each-other. They teased him, calling him, “baby butt,” and, “piddle pants,” with all the creativity and spite of children who wanted nothing more than to play around forever, and knowing full well that, if Leoroc was in charge, play time would have ended within the next ten minutes or so, and have led the way to nap-time: the worst time of the day. 
As though the fates had something out against Leoroc, that day, the leopard soon felt that which would make a bad situation into an intolerable situation. He had never had the strongest or largest bladder for teens his age, not by a long shot. In fact he had been known in his family for his frequent need for potty breaks, especially on long trips, for the majority of his life. Maybe it had something to do with his small size, he didn’t know. At any rate, clearly having no pity, his bladder had chosen that exact moment, now tied up and nearly immobile, to tell him that he needed one of his oh so common potty breaks. Oh, the irony. 
Leoroc started squirming almost instantly, knowing full well that his time window to get out of this trap was somewhere in the neighborhood of five minutes before he wound up in a wet diaper. The leopard whimpered into his muzzle and gag, looking out at the horde of little kids who had long since lost interest in him, and whined, shaking his head in denial of the situation. He wouldn’t wet the diaper! He couldn’t… he couldn’t…
“Leoroc, is that you?” came a high, feminine, adult voice. Leoroc’s eyes went wide, and his bladder, always strained, failed. As the leopard’s eyes slowly drifted up to look into the startled and awed face of his boss, a middle-aged motherly bear of great size, he swallowed hard, feeling the front of his heavily padded toddler’s sleep diaper grow warm and wet between his legs.