~~~~~

A girl on the corner is moving her hips like "yeah." She is also moving her head like "yeah." A boy across the intersection is confused, until he hears the infectious tune pouring from the doorway of the drugstore.

As the caustic song comes to a close, the disc jockey's voice rings out from the well worn jukebox.

"THAT WAS THE NEW SINGLE,Captain Skeptic demands The Truth,FROM THE QUICKLY RISING SUPERGROUP, LION CULTURE!"

All of the flowers in the nearby park wilted at that very moment.

~~~~~

Elsewhere in Asia, the members of the band, Black Arches, were contemplating their next move. They found themselves crouching behind a hill, hiding from Chris Martin and his immediate family.

"Good golly miss molly!" said Jayson "Why do I feel like I need a glass of milk?"

Nick looked rather _____________ (adjective), "That's because you just ate several loaves of bread off of the ground. You should probably have a tetanus shot with that milk for good measure."

David seemed rather dour, as he knew that his mouth and throat were filled with poison.

Aaron, sensing David's thoughts, perhaps even his very feelings, sought to council him. "Hmm?"

"Once, I went to a party with tons of snacks. They had every snack I could think of. It was an awesome party, bro."

Aaron was troubled by the singer's use of the word "bro," but nodded for him to continue.

David continued, "There was apparently a cursed Dorito in one of those bags. Perhaps it was a Cheeto. No matter. My mouth is cursed. I'm free to eat whatever I please, but from my throat comes doses of poison and rot at rather regular intervals. It's kind of unpleasant."

Aaron became more troubled than he could remember ever being. His face plunged into a deep sadness, which only reminded him of sweet and juicy METAL. As his head began to slowly bang in time to the music in his head, his frown was transmorphosed from one of trouble, into one of deep rocking.

"Guys." Nick started, "Aren't we supposed to be dealing with...you know...Mr. Coldplay over there?"

Aaron scanned the immediate area like an anxious meerkat. "Where's Jayson?"

The three of them peeked over the hill to a scene that can only be described as Jayson beating the crap out of Chris Martin, using Gwyneth Paltrow as some sort of halberd (which is like the baby of an axe and a spear).

They sprang to action and came charging over the hill. By the time they reached Jayson, a crowd of prison guards had gathered and were considering the scene at hand.

"Wow! Chris has had a pretty rough time here!" said one guard to another.

"He certainly has!" that other guard said to the first.

"I bet he'll never be able to write another Coldplay song!" said the first to the second again.

"Do they write new songs or just copy old ones and add harpsichord to them?" said a third guard overhearing the conversation.

"What about Gwyneth?" Chimed in a female guard who had somehow been allowed a job at the prison despite the fact that she was a woman.

"Oh, I'm quite all right," said Gwyneth cheerily, "I'm rather accustomed to being used as a late medieval weapon for defending turrets and parapets."

"Oh." said everyone.

The guards seemed rather serious.

The first guard began his speech, "If just one of these young men was quarrelsome enough to defeat our strongest guard..."

"And his wife!" interrupted the female guard who would be fired the next day for being a woman and not a man.

"And his wife," continued the first guard, "then these men can definitely not be held in peanut butter prison. They're liable to shake the place to pieces!"

"Agreed!" shouted the Peanut Butter Warden, who had just awoken from a nap in his automobile. "Take them to Vegemite Lockdown, and may they never see the light of a not-yeast-tinted-sun again!"

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" screamed Nick, as he really didn't care for Australian cuisine at all.

The members of Black Arches squirmed and struggled as the guards carried them away from the scene and put them into the back of a armored vehicle.

As the dust cleared from the scene, Chris Martin opened his eyes and shook his head.

"Hey, when did we get a woman guard?" he spoke softly.

~~~~~

Scientists in HAZMAT suits picked and prodded at the dead flora with tweezers. There seemed to be nothing wrong with the plants here. All of their comprising cells seemed to be healthy enough. They were healthy enough seemingly, but dead. There was no motion to be seen in the organelles. This could be determined easily enough with tweezers, assuming you were a well trained scientist in a HAZMAT suit.

Those things are handy you know.

The girl had stopped her gyrating long ago and now watched the scientists' investigation with grim curiosity. She suspected that somehow Lion Culture were responsible for this spreading plague of dead flowers.

Little did she know that their next single was at that moment on its way to the radio station, where an eager fingered disc jockey couldn't wait to set it spinning precariously on theSpindle of Fate