HEATHCLIFF STUDIOS - STUDIO 2B - SAME MORNING

The house lights were up on Inferno's arena set. Classical music played. Baby Mozart? And hunkered down in audience seating, Crowley's a-team of henchmen was assembled.

Butcher and Legion. Dolly and Mog. Shipley and Lydecker. Moeko and Keiko.

They'd all been studying copies of what should be a familiar paperback: 'Two Minutes to Midnight' by Carver Edlund. In front of them, on stage, was a whiteboard with the words "DUMMY SCHOOL" scrawled in fun, colorful letters. Crowley paced in front of it, looking at his watch. He was dressed, finally, in the sort of tarty Ted Baker suit we're accustomed to seeing him in. Le Garb de War.

"Alright," he said cheerily. "Time's up, my little pig droppings. Books closed."

They let out a collective noise of relief. Thank whatever ungodly power, no more dime-store drivel.

"Now it's time to play, 'What Have We Learned?' To wit." He reached back and turned over the whiteboard; the other side had three columns labeled, 'Dummies,' 'Us,' and 'WTF'. "Show of hands, what and who do we know the Winchesters have in their pantry?"

Shipley raised his hand and got called on. "Angel blades," he said flatly.

"Good!" Crowley said, as he turned and wrote 'blades' on the board. "What else?"

Dolly raised her hand and answered without being called on, "Oh, the dummy angel and the old man?"

"Correct!" Crowley wrote 'George + Lennie' on the board. "Keep going."

Legion raised his and was called on. "The Colt?"

"Ahhh." Crowley turned and wrote 'The Colt,' but under WTF. "We don't know where the Colt is, we just know it isn't here. But good. There's always a chance they have it, and if that's the case, we have to be ready. They probably also have...?"

"A scant army o' half-wits," Mog said, in her usual piratey way.

He wrote 'more dummies' under the Colt.

Lydecker raised his hand, "Good hair?"

You'd think Crowley would be annoyed with that answer, but he mulled it with a thoughtful expression and then wrote, 'Cute, et al' next. "But we have..."

He started scribbling under the 'Us' column and came up with, 'The Horsemen's Rings,' 'Armory,' 'Battle Arena,' 'Legion of the Damned,' 'Nigh Unkillable Trolls,' 'Werewolf House Band,' 'Angel-Killing WMD,' and 'Live Studio Audience'.

"And one more thing," he said.

Butcher answered back without being called on, all smug, "Your boyfriend?" That got a few snickers from the group.

Crowley gave him the driest look. "Yes. My 'boyfriend'. Very cute. Anything else?" Getting nothing from the group but blank stares, "The element of...? My tone implies you finish the sentence...?" And when he continued to get nothing, he shouted back, "Suprise! Do I have to-."

He cut himself off and closed his eyes, quietly fuming. Took a breath. Calmed himself down. He was getting better at that.

"Never mind. We don't know when they'll show up but we do know they need to get into the studio when it's open to outsiders and full of human camouflage. So we need to be ready to shake what momma gave us by tomorrow night. So this is how it's gonna lay out..."

"The nerd got in," Butcher said. "We're just pretending-."

Crowley began to seethe. He leaned toward Butcher, hands clasped behind his back. He was smiling. Strangely. Looking... happily deranged. And cut him off midsentence, "No more questions."

"That wasn't a question."

"No more comments. It's early, and you all know I don't feel like kinging even the slightest bit of Hell until I've had my morning carbs. So let's call brekkie and then it's tickety-boo, back to school."

Full of disdain, Butcher pressed on, "Your 'majesty'?"

But Crowley turned away, not taking the bait, and instead addressing the group at large. "I don't like repeating myself, children. Especially not when I've just said 'tickety-boo'. Clear out."