Well, it was a fine time, Sousa was busying himself with the task of remember the entire tune to 'Boy Scouts of America' by the one and only John Phillip Sousa, when cruel lady luck decided to kick him in the crotch.

I never liked that lady luck...

There, slumped against a particularly fine dumster, was a body! Oh boy, what lavish rewards. He narrowed his eyes and looked toward the sky glaring.
"Du doo du doo..." He was humming the brief begining of the song, trying to comprehend what to do. It wasn't an old body, no signs of gang green or visible decay...just little glassy eyes on a little glassy waitress in a little glassy dress.

He shivered...corpses gave him the creeps. Biting down on the serpent tongue in a look of disgust he muttered

"I wish people would learn to pick up their trash."

"You're not the only one."

Odd that one hadn't noticed him before-- then again, considering who he isnt... it's not really that odd.

He's tall and pale, sleletally thin and grinning like he knows all the secrets of the universe and isn't telling. He's dressed simply in a black t-shirt with the logo of an unknown band on the front and tight bellbottom jeans, also black. He's kneeling beside the body.

Actually, no, he's rising from a kneeling position and slipping something suspiciously luminscent into a pocket.

His eyes land levelly on Sousa. They're pure mountain-snow white.

With a tilt of one doe brown eyebrow and the finishing chorus to his song he was ready to respond.

"Yeah, litter-ers are a bitch...'specially with such biodegradable trash..." It was close enough to a casual remark, given the fact that he was completely freaked out not only by the body, but by the white-eyed stranger playing with the body.

He looked around subconsciencly, flicking orange snake eyes around like most people flip coins.

"You, didn't happen to be the one discarding IHOP waitresses, are you?"

"No." He grins.

"You might call me... the clean-up crew."

The white-eyed stranger pats the pocket where he'd slippped... something, earlier.

"So..what? You just grave...opposite of rob?" Had this beena more nonchalant meeting, two friends graciously exchanging words, the orange-eyed snake-boy might have been able to create more beautiful words, also known as words with more than three syllables. He did envy the guy's contacts, he liked the smiley face ones better though.

"Not exactly."

Annoyingly mysterious? Oh yeah. Cliched conversation? Probably. This is a god, after all-- subject to the beliefs and expectations of mortals. More or less.

"And what about you? The unwitting Finder of Bodies?"

He shook his fists angerly and glared at the sky

"Lady L's been setting a lot more "Unwittingly" (making quotation marks with his middle and index finger) setting a lot more corpses in my way lately..."

Sousa hummed the first few bars of 'El Capitan' absently, yunwrapping a swiss cake roll and gnawing on it with random glances in random directions, then at the body, and then at the grave-opposite of robber.

The stranger's eyebrows lift.

"Really? I'm sure the police are getting suspicious. You might want to leave before someone sees you."

Of course, he, the stranger, isn't worried...

Using long, thin white fingers he began peeling the chocolate cakeapart, or unrolling, the cake. He licked his fingers and shrugged, finishing the Jolly part in the tune while still sucking the syrup from his middle finger

"I don't really worry about that" out word tongue flick, you know, the obligatory 'hiss' thing with the forked tongue

If possible, the stranger's eyebrows lift further.

"You might be able to slip through bars, but you wouldn't be able to show your human face around here after a stunt like that," he asserts.

Ah, so he's innish. Or maybe just really wierd...

"...i could throw sticks at them..." Well, it was always a possibility, a lot of people these days under estimate the power of hurling projectile objects.

"Besides...i doubt the police even show up while im still chatting with you, even if they did couldn't you, like, part the tides or somethin'?"

Azrael grins. Is that a stab at naming him a god? Hmmn, interesting.

"That's really not my thing," he replies with a casual shrug.

Taking a few steps forward, he pulls a cake roll out of a pocket that was previously empty and hands it to Sousa.

It was tempting, chocolate cake wrapped around white creamy goodness, but the giver had just touched the clothing of a dead persona...that was like eating out of the trash and he wasn't going to do that in public again...

He crouched down to the body's level, literally not morality wise or anything. "No thank you...er....when i have my C section i don't want the docter's to have to do with a mess..." There we go, that almost sounded smart. "Whaddya think got 'er anyway? Maybe, divine intervention? "

Hintful, hintful. He doesn't react.

"You'd be surprised of how few people die of divine intervention..." The stranger crouches, as well, resting one thin hand supportively on the ground.

"But it's always a possibility."

Nod. Nod. He pulled down his coat, smoothing out the collar trying to get a more regal look, which harder in duct tape covered shoes and a internet cartoon character's face on your bag.

Still looking over the body, then over at the skinny guy with, what he thought, was a very convincing just-out-of-curiosity face "Whad you put on 'er?"

The stranger counters it with his own version of a beguilingly innocent look.

"Put what? Where?" he asks.

He pulls himself up a bit straighter. For a skinny guy in a band t-shirt and bellbottoms, he's awfully good at looking regal.

"In 'er pocket, didn't you put something there?"

It took every pit of his free will not to roll those orange eyes, The stupid almost slitted pupils hid nothing of the eye rolling nature.

"In my pocket?" It had been his pocket he'd slipped something into.

"No..." But he's not about the admit it.

He seems vaguely amused by it.

(er...must learn to read poster-sizes better)

"Ah...then what brings you to the scene of the crime, Johnny?" Sousa was readjusting, trying to keep his unstable knees from creaking.

"Johnny?" He grins. "I like that. I like that a lot."

The stranger reaches into a pocket-- the one he'd slipped that something into, before. He's pulling it out, now, and holding it out for Sousa to see.

It's small, about as big around and a dollar coin but smoothly spherical. It's white, misty, and faintly glowing in the night. Its hovering about an inch off of the stranger's palm.

"I'm here for this."

Befor seeing the object he chuckled, Johnny like Jhonen Vasquezes "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac"

Then he peered down at the object. "Er...what is that...?"

"It's her." He closes his fingers around the orb and jerks a thumb in the direction of the corpse.

"Or, it was."

Leaning farther away, from the body and from the skinny, he was almost quite sure, god. "Like...what, her soul or somthin'?"

The body was starting to smell like almonds...Sousa stood up and straighted, bending and unbending his long, long legs.

"More or less," he says, standing as well. The 'soul' is slipped back into his pocket.

"You wanna get out of here?"

It sounds like an offer.

He grimiced back at the corpse.

Nod. Nod.

"I bet you a swiss cake roll we see sirens as soon as we turn our backs."

It sounds like a bet.

Things starting with 'i bet you' usually do.

Glancing heavenwards, the stranger nods.

"It's a bet."

The thing to remember about death is: he cheats.

Sarcasm and mocking usually sound like anything.

He grinned boyishly and stepped around the dead IHOP waitress, hoping to see flashing red lights reflected on the walls. Lady Luck owed him after all.

Ten dollars at least...that could buy a lotta cake rolls.

Not too far away, the wail of sirens and flashing lights suddenly cut out as a circuit fries. The police cars continue, now completely silent-- the officers are complexed, but don't have time to stop and investigate.

Azrael grins at the naga-boy.

"So, where to?" he asks, moving out from the alleyway.

Over his shoulder, lady luck or a certain Deity, had taken the swiss cake rolls right out of his pockets. He glared ahead, lightly. Humming, in an almost angry way the ending of "Boy Scouts of America"

"I wish i had a human chess board...i wonder if there are any around here..."

"A human chessboard? What, like, a guy with differently-coloured squares tattooed on his chest?" Death suggests, turning left down the street.

"You owe me cake."

Gah...he rummaged through his bag pulling out several sheets of 'El Capitan' tuba music, disks and commemerative pez dispensers,

"No...like a checker board big enough to fit people dressed up as chess pieces..."

finally two packadged Swiss cake rolls, he held them out, reluctantly...

How many cake rolls can you get for a kidney?

The stranger snatches the cake rolls and slides this into his pockets which, logically, should not be able to hold the desserts. Said pockets don't even bulge.

"That would be interesting. What would you do with it?"

Sousa was staring at the pocket his beloved cake was in...did gods even eat?

"Well, in theory you'd tell the human chess pieces what to do and they'd follow your every command..."

Maybe he could sell his hair to the french and then he could buy more...

"Or...you could steal the bricks from the piece's houses, one by one until they gave up their job and the chess board was yours to rule over..."

side ways glance.

"Or just regular chess..."

"I've never been a fan of chess."

Tradition dictates that he be good at it, but it's really not his kind of game.

"Where are we headed, anyway?"

He shrugged.

"Away from any dead bodies..." Now, he was shaking his fist angerly at the sky again...Lady L.'d better not cross him again.

"You're just tempting fate."

Not the small 'l'.

He's tempted himself, actually, to just drop another dead body in their path.

He shuddered, dimly scratching a patch of dry skin on his arm...ah flakey skin, the curse of the naga

"Whaddya gunna do with that soul deeley, anyway?"