vs a team that no longer exists at a place that isn’t there anymore.

Once, about 13 years ago, there was a man, and he made a little baby lion by pleasuring an older she-lion with his sperm, and despite what you may think you know about genetics, the little baby lion didn’t come out as half man-half lion, it came out to be all lion. Now the man, as men were want to do back in those days, went about his business without much regard to for the baby lion, but the she-lion, as mothers have been want to do throughout the ages, cared for her little baby lion. As the little baby lion lay suckling at the hairy teat of the she-lion she whispered in it’s little baby lion ears; “As the product of both Man & Lion you are destined for greatness for you will possess the finest attributes of each of them. You will have the strength and savagery of Lion and the wisdom and guile of Man, but you must also be wary for the worst attributes are want to manifest as well.”

Sure enough the little baby lion grew great and powerful. Those who saw him coming feared him, for his jaws were gleaming razors attached to titanium vices, his paws were spiked clubs attached to hydraulic wrecking arms, and his roar shattered the bowels of those who would stand in his way. As he aged he became more powerful, he fought and slew creatures much more powerful than he. He bested foes against whom he had no realistic chance. His legend was total and all bowed before him and called him sire for he was Old King Lion.

Then the man who fathered the Lion felt a stirring in his loins. He thought of his progeny, he wondered what had become of him, he had heard stories from far off lands of the mighty Old King Lion, and he was curious whether Old King Lion might be his offspring. So he journeyed far, seeking Old King Lion, looking for a mighty warrior, a fighter afraid of no-one, besting all who he came up against, but there was no sign of such a beast. The man thought many times of giving up, but the desire to see his scion burned strong within him, so he traveled further and further eventually crossing the river that divided the lands to the South Side. A side where depravity and vice were strong; where hedonistic pleasures were routinely taken at the expense of other less fortunate beings; where sickness and perversion were so pervasive as to be more present than the air being breathed; where moral turpitude festered upon souls of the inhabitants like a cancerous bile duct spurting gangrenous pus onto a duendena; a place lousy with licentiousness, lechery, prurience, and obscenity. There he found what had once been Old King Lion.

He found what had once been Old King Lion camped out in a puddle of his own piss gumming off prostitutes. Old King Lion had hit rock bottom, he was a hooker’s hooker. His fur was mangy and bescabbled, with rancid bits of indeterminate matter coated around his rectal area. His johnston had been rubbed raw in some sort of onanistic dementia, as though in some part of his mind he was still the king and he was getting some. But he wasn’t, and he wasn’t. He was nothing. Opponents who used to fear him in battle barely even bothered fighting him, they’d just rock up and take a shit on his head and laugh at him, or make him drink petrol for cigarette butts, or watch him while he self harmed his own testicles with mouse traps and car jacks, or bend him over and have their way with him, cracking him across the back of the head with a bit of old 4 by 2 with a nail hanging out of it while what had once been Old King Lion maniacally laughed green snot bubbles out the hole where his septum used to be, wailing ‘still the king’ repeatedly in an out of key falsetto.

The man cradled the broken Old King Lion in his arms as a creamy discharge from one of the broken Old King Lion’s pustulant sores slowly wept into the man’s brown cardigan. “I’m getting you out of here,” said the man as a tear rolled down his cheek, “I’m taking you Northside, where you can be king again.” And parts of the Old King Lion were like: “Hmmm, I dunno maybe”, and other parts were whiny like: “But this is the only place we know”, and one particularly recalcitrant part was like: “its a bit harder for me to catch a train from there”. And the man said: “For fuck’s sake! There’s Hampton shit in your hair, and a mousetrap on your nuts. Pack up your kit right now we’re going!” And so they went.

And went they did, deep Northside, further north than any of the parts of Old King Lion believed was possible to go. And as they traveled Old King Lion’s strength returned, his sores healed and his mind sharpened. He knew he would have to fight again, for real this time, no back down, no surrender. And when he stepped into the ring he saw a fearful looking opponent from the east, but pretty much 30 seconds into the fight it turned out it was just a tiny little puppy dog in a bow tie with a pink ballon with kitten on it. The Old King Lion roared and the tiny little puppy dog fouled itself, and the Old King Lion raised his once again mighty paw and brought it down upon the tiny little puppy dogs head with the maximum power available and thereupon repeated the action until the little puppy dog was just a stain on the court.

The man smiled, Old King Lion was back.