We open with a very shaky view of two legs tearing down a road like it’s the end of the world. Possibly because it is. The loud footfalls on the empty street come to an abrupt halt and for a moment, the only thing we hear is the labored breathing of the person holding the camera, as it shakily pans upwards to where an entire forest of legs are standing – and on top of those legs: people. And on top of the people: Amphibians.

These are the same figures that we saw walking out of a coffee-shop on the previous stream. The camera is situated behind the crowd; they all have their backs towards the point of view. They’re also quite some ways away. But despite that, muffled interjections and short yells are still louder than the breathing of the unseen runner. They sound angry.

The world briefly flips upside down while the recording device is flipped around to show the red face of a certain LiviaThan who looks and sounds like she just ran a Marathon.

 

Liv: (whispering into the camera without taking her eyes off the angry mob) Mr. Crowley, where are you?

Voice of the unhelpful frog-fan: We’re not afraid of you, you… fluffy-winged ones!

He seems to be talking to someone off-screen.

Another voice: (cold and disparaging) I’m not surprised. You’ve always been the dim ones. That’s why you lot lost the war.

Liv: Mr. Crowley!! I’m here on the corner of- AH!

She screeches and the camera saltos to the ground. It just managed to pick up a couple of demons turning around to see what kind of breakfast made that sound. (Pretty sure that’s what screaming humans are to them.)
A hand reaches towards the camera and picks it up – it’s not Liv’s; the fingers are too long and the back of the attached arm too hairy. The strange hand thrusts the phone back at the Youtuber.

Crowley: You have one job, and it’s not-losing-that-phone.

Liv: Sorry.

Eric’s voice: (slightly shaky, talking to someone who must be blocked from view by the angry mob) Y-yeah! Exactly what Hastur said! We’re not afraid of you.

Voice of Hastur, the unhelpful frog-fan: Yeah.

Tracy’s voice: Well, some of us are perhaps slightly afraid…

Crowley: (to Liv) Hey, camera-human! Run the plan by me once more. Where exactly did I tell you people to get Aziraphale’s former body caught in the middle of a war?

Liv: (shrugging) You say that as if I’m doing more than pointing a very expensive phone at the action.

Crowley: (sighs) Why did I think getting humans involved was a good idea?

Liv: Speaking of terrible ideas… Mr. Brown is asking on the earbud whether he can be part of the plan and go into the coffee shop.

Crowley: Oh, by all means, I can’t wait to read the headlines tomorrow. “Stuffy old carpet-geezer tragically died tripping on his own shoe laces before being eaten by angry woman in coffee-shop, read more on page 3.”

Liv: (to nobody who is visible) Mr. Crowley says no. …. (She looks at Mr. Crowley again.) Mr. Brown says he can hear and see you and that was very rude. (gesturing with the phone-camera)

Crowley: And I can’t hear or see him, which is why I like this plan so much.

Liv: Alright, so what’s next in your insane plan.

Crowley: Operation magpie.

Liv: Would’ve taken you more for a crow.

Crowley: Shut up and follow me.

They sneak off, behind the cover of a row of park-benches, getting closer to the angry amphibian-conference. Liv films the crowd: Before a tarred road stands the same assortment of sinister shapes that we have already seen in the coffee-shop – in the lead an overly made-up Madame Tracy who is wearing several leather belts with metal spikes as fashion accessories.

Opposite them, separated by the road, another row of park-benches, and a small, black metal-fence, stands a bunch of people clad in the full bridal-gown-shop-rainbow of white, eggshell and cream. Some of them are freckled with gold, some have too-bright eye-colors, but all of them have something very unsettling about them. Maybe it’s the pristine suits they’re sporting in the middle of a muddy park, as if they’ve just escaped from a financial advisory conference.

Liv: (whispering) Are those…?

Crowley: (with something akin to disgust) Angels.

Liv: Why the hostility? I thought you liked angels?

Crowley: I don’t.

Liv: But-

Crowley: No but. I like one rebellious, funny, smart bastard who happens to be an angel. Which I can assure you is far from his best quality.

Liv: But you keep calling him ‘angel’ like it’s a good thing.

Crowley: I don’t mean that literally. Not anymore, anyway.

Uptight looking angel by the fence, who has long, reddish brown hair: What do you think you’re doing here, anyway?

Liv freezes for a second, until she realizes that the angel is talking to the siege they’re under.

Furfur: Shax will destroy you. We’re just here to watch. Isn’t that right?

Tracy: Oh. I was rather thinking we could maybe talk about this whole… (gesturing wildly to everything around her) disagreement over a nice, hot cup of tea.

Annoyed looking angel with a short brown bob and a wheelchair: Michael might not be the brightest halo above the sun-

Uptight looking angel who is apparently called Michael: (shoots them a withering look)

Annoyed looking angel with a short brown bob and a wheelchair: -but I doubt your threats of torture do much.

Michael: Saraqael is correct.

Hastur: That you’re not very bright?

Liv: We should get Mrs. Tracy out of there before her army can provoke the other ones to throw punches. (Suddenly, she winces.) Yeah, alright. Her boyfriend-husband-hybrid is very loud about it, too.

Crowley: Non-literal angel first.

During the conversation, they have sneaked past the fronts and farther into the park proper. Just when they’re about to reach a bulky tree, some leaves start falling out of it and slight rustling can be heard.

In front of the camera, a man drops out of the foliage and lands with ostentatious flourish.

Locksley: Ta-daaa!

Liv and Crowley shush him in unison.

Locksley: (sad) But’s been so long since I could do that!

Muriel: (stepping out from behind the tree) Hello! (excitedly) I don’t know if you can tell but Mr Locksley taught me how to “hide”!

Crowley: I don’t suppose you’ve found something useful during your little hide-and-seek game.

Muriel: No… I was upstairs almost the entire time. But Locksley had a look around here. If it is here, the other angels must have had an even better hiding-instructor!

Locksley: It’s a big park. And I don’t think a book’s gonna be that useful anyway to find your fella.

Crowley: (mumbling to himself) You’d be surprised…

Muriel: What if it’s still in Heaven?

Crowley: Then we march in there and get it. Would be easier than snatching it up underneath their noses, seeing as upstairs must be empty with all the idiots down here.

Locksley: That probably means they’ve got it with them, if it’s really that valuable.

Liv: So what do we do now? Do you have a plan B for when you can’t find the doodad?

Crowley: Course I do. Who’d’you take me for? Turn the other phone to speaker.

Liv: Are you sure they (gesturing wildly at the angels and demons behind them) won’t hear?

Hastur, from back there: (audibly disgusted) You’re so clean!

Saraqael: (deadpan) Thank you.

Crowley: Oh, trust me, they’re not the most observant, even if they aren’t preoccupied with their favourite hobby of gloating over each other. This is exactly why we needed a legion of demons to cause a diversion.

Liv: Alright. But if I get un-corpsed or whatever-

Muriel: Discorporated!

Liv: That! -then I’m gonna send you the funeral bill.

The camera becomes very unsteady while Liv is rummaging for something in her pockets.

Crowley: Don’t worry, you can’t get discorporated. You’re human. You’d just die.

Liv: You should really work on your rallying leader-speeches.

She holds another phone that is barely in sight of the recording. A live-stream seems to be playing on it.

Crowley: I refuse to be your-

Liv taps the screen of the new phone and two voices start yelling over each other at the same time.

Brown: … -telling you, I could have solved this conflict already if you would just let me!

Shadwell: … -ye dinnae get her back, A swear ye'll wish ye haed niver been born!

Crowley: (scrunching up his face) Turn it off again!

She taps the phone again and there is immediate silence.

Liv: I warned you.

Crowley: Has that ruckus been on your earphones the entire time?! How are you even still hearing what is going on in the real world?

Liv: (shrugging) You’ve obviously never been to VidCon.

Muriel: That is pretty close to how it sounds in my own head. Am I at “VidCon”, too?

Liv: Uh…

Crowley: We’ll get you some methylphenidate when we’re finished here.

He snatches the silenced phone from Liv (which thankfully makes it easier to see on camera) and starts barking orders into it.

Crowley: Okay, whoever is still in the bookshop and has half a braincell left, get the phone away from the two geezers and to the backroom.

For a second, Newton Pulsifer appears on screen, reaching towards its camera. Before he can touch it, Anathema Device slaps his hand away and takes it.

Crowley: That was not an invitation to shut off your last remaining braincell, too.

He taps the screen and the voices from the stream are audible again.

Anathema: Don’t be so mean to him. He just wanted to help.

Crowley: So does carpet-mustache.

Anathema: Don’t compare Newt to Mr. Brown!

Crowley: Your boyfriend almost broke our only means of communication.

Anathema: Almost.

Crowley: That is not the ringing endorsement you seem to think it is.

Anathema: Mr Brown broke the front door ten minutes ago, because he needed to check if the hinges were up to code for a fire escape route.

Mr. Crowley removes his sunglasses to pinch the bridge of his nose and sigh heavily.

Muriel: I thought we didn’t allow him to be part of the plan.

Locksley: I don’t think breaking the door was part of the plan.

Crowley: (mumbling to himself with his eyes closed) Those doors were demon-proof. Not idiot-proof. (He takes a deep breath and looks at the phone again.) I sincerely hope that means it has gotten a tad drafty in the bookshop and you’re enjoying the fresh spring smog.

Anathema: Nope.

Crowley: (defeated) It’s stuck closed, isn’t it?

Anathema: Yupp. We’re all locked in.

Crowley: Brilliant.

Muriel: Really? I don’t think it is. I think that’s bad for the plan because they need to-

Crowley: Yes, Muriel, thank you for reminding me.

Anathema: Stop worrying. We’re handling it.

Crowley: (rudely sceptical) How?!

Anathema: Turns out we have a professional carpenter at our disposal.

A mop of shaggy, dark brown hair appears behind Anathema’s shoulder. The attached face is wearing a pair of rainbow-coloured shutter-shades and a leather necklace with a badly whittled skateboard-charm that has the name “Jezzy” is engraved on it. He flashes the camera a peace-sign.

Jezzy: Thought you said it’s been 2000 years! This’ some awesome oak ‘n’ all, but why haven’t you invented new doors that open by themselves or somethin’?

Muriel: They actually have those in-

Crowley: You’ve been asking so many damn questions since your friend Peter watched Star Trek with you, I’m regretting taking you in.

Jezzy: I keep tellin’ you to stop calling him Peter. His name’s Si.

Crowley: Yes, yes, whatever. I don’t care about Peter.

Liv: What happened to your philosophy from my last visit? “Asking questions will get you thrown out without answers”?

Muriel: Crowley would never throw someone out without answers. He hates that!

Crowley: We’re in the middle of a park full of bloodthirsty demons and hoity-toity angels that cannot under any circumstances see us before we get Aziraphale’s location. Can we maybe queue our game of “20 questions about Crowley’s unprocessed trauma” and get back to trying not to die?

Anathema: I wasn’t gonna say anything but yeah.

Crowley: Cross-kid, can you fix the door?

Jezzy: (frowning) Bruh! Talk about trauma, can you put a content warning on that one?

Anathema: You don’t like crosses? People are wearing and putting them everywhere to commemorate you, actually.

Jezzy: Yeah, ’s unsettlin’ as heck, ‘s what it is. Can’t they wear, like, bread or something? I did this rad thing with bread that was all the rage ‘n’ also didn’t involve me dying slowly ‘n’ painfully.

Crowley: (very slow and measured) Can you. Fix. The door?

Jezzy: Yeah, no sweat, bro! ‘s how I bring home the bacon.

Crowley: Good. Now give me the angel.

Liv: I thought that’s who we’re trying to find with the weird thingamajig we’re stealing.

Crowley: The other angel.

Anathema: Ah. I was starting to wonder since when you’re the kind of person to just check in on your friends.

Crowley: Tsss, “friends”. You’re squatters at best. Can’t wait to put the world to rights and get you out of my place.

Anathema: What would you do without us as an excuse to do good and save the world…

The live-stream on the phone that was showing Anathema and the others starts to bob up and down as its camera is being carried past shelves stacked with books and antique looking knick-knacks. For a second, there is a sculpture of Laocoön in frame, being harassed by a giant snake with a weirdly familiar face.

Anathema’s voice off screen: Hey, nothingarian nightmare! There’s a call for you.

The secondary camera is turned to a person with short, black locks and golden specks on her face. She is standing rigidly in a corner with her arms crossed, beside a perfectly comfortable looking reading chair.

Clearly pissed off person: Have you come to gloat about your prisoner, human?

Muriel: (waving at the phone with the live-streamed people on it) Hello Uriel!

Anathema: I told you, you’re welcome to leave at any time. Crowley even tried to get you to leave by pretending there’s a sinner you need to taunt behind the whale blocking the street.

Uriel: I have never been treated this inhospitable.

Anathema: And I don’t know why the concept of chairs is offending you. Anyway. Talk to an actual sinner, will you?

It looks like she is lifting up the camera for Uriel better to see what is on the attached screen.

Crowley: Wow, thanks for the smooth transition, book-girl.

Uriel: Demon, what do you want from me?

Crowley: We’re in St. James Park. Have been looking around as much as we could before camera-girl got here. Where do you keep the book?

Uriel: Why would we have taken it all the way down here, where the likes of you could sully it!

Crowley: Because Muriel here-

Muriel: (still furiously waving, and increasing their waving-speed and smile-power when called on) Hi!!

Crowley: -has taken a trip upstairs while we waited for the distraction to march all the way up here. Demons are not known for their hiking prowess – the smarter ones much prefer a car. Anyway, we had plenty of time.

Muriel: There was absolutely no one in Heaven! Not even in the Metatron’s office! And nobody was guarding the room with the book-stand either! And the whole stand was gone!

Uriel: Why should I help you? You’re my enemy who has tried to torture me.

Anathema: Again: You could just sit down and your feet would probably stop hurting from being up for three days straight.

Uriel: That is not what I meant.

Crowley: For someone’s sake, they were scones, not thumbscrews.

Uriel: You will not get me to debase myself with those things.

Crowley: I heard angels with taste like them.

Uriel: He is a disgrace to all of Heaven.

Crowley: Oh, yes. And he is your boss. Chosen to be, actually, while you were perfectly available the entire time.

Uriel: (visibly grinding her teeth) I will not help you.

Crowley: (shrugging) Alright, but it would help get you over here…

Uriel: You can’t tempt me.

Crowley: That’s a shame. Because in your absence, they found a new leader…

Uriel: What are you talking about?

Crowley: Haven’t you heard? Michael is in charge now.

Mr. Crowley grabs the camera from Liv and turns it around to zoom in on the two unlikely armies facing each other over a small iron fence.

Crowley: I hear they’ve made a lot of changes they’ve been dying to make for a long time.

Uriel: We’ve discussed their ideas! Michael wouldn’t dare…!

Crowley: The other angels were probably a bit surprised when they heard about the sprint-meetings being moved to Thursdays.

Uriel: (shocked) No!

Crowley: But Sandalphon must be proud to be appointed the new Scrum Master!

Uriel: (very measuredly outraged) Sandalphon?! He hung up the Scrum Board upside down, twice!

Crowley: But I think you’re right. It’s better for you if we don’t find Aziraphale. He would probably do things like introduce chairs to the stand-up-meetings. Much better to have Michael in charge! They have such great ideas – like forwarding all the complicated prayers directly to the archangels!

Uriel is clenching her fists at her side.

Crowley: Or writing less heavenly missives and have more face-to-face meetings!

Uriel: (in a single rush of breath, as if she had trouble holding the words in) I don’t know where Aziraphale is, but he is officially in charge, not Michael!

Crowley: (grinning like a snake hypnotising its prey) Oh, the book could tell us where he is.

Uriel: We lost the book around the same time we lost Aziraphale and the Metatron.

The smile is instantly wiped off Mr. Crowley’s face.

Crowley: You lost the Book of Life? You lost Azirphale and you lost the Metatron?!

Uriel: It shouldn’t be possible! Nobody can take the Book of Life from its stand! And the Metatron is not normally something we misplace. Usually he un-misplaces himself very quickly… as soon as someone complains about his policies around the holy water cooler.

Crowley: And your excuse for Aziraphale?

Uriel: (shrugging one shoulder) Eh.

It looks like Mr. Crowley is just about to say something – judging from his face – scathing, when Uriel adds:

Uriel: I mean, we misplaced him for half a millennium there, around the middle ages, and the situation on Earth was unchanged when we found him again.

Mr. Crowley opens his mouth. Closes it again. Blinks rapidly.

Crowley: You lost control over Aziraphale for 500 years?!

Uriel: It hadn’t seemed like he noticed, so we decided to not punish him, in order to not clue him in.

Crowley: 500 years! We could have- … I could have just-

Liv: Yeah, yeah, this is riveting, but can we get back to- … Wait a second, I just put together that the “greeting card mafia” who put a “bounty” on Jim, that you both worked for, is Heaven!?

Crowley: Glad you caught up over a day after being told. That one girl online has just been yelling this at you and anyone who will listen for almost a year.

Liv: TheTravellersJester was right? About everything?!

Crowley: (shrugging) Pretty much.

Locksley: Can we get back to the heist now? I want to steal things!

Crowley: Not sure there is anything to heist if they lost the bloody book. That was our only chance of finding out where Aziraphale is.

Locksley: It says where he is in a book?

Muriel: Oh! Yes, actually! The Book of Life writes and rewrites itself all the time. It either reflects or dictates where everything and everyone in the universe is and what they’re doing at any point in time.

Anathema: Ah. One of those.

Liv: Excuse me?!? “One of those”??? You’re human, what do you mean “one of those”?!

Muriel: It’s nothing much! The Book of Life just tells time.

Anathema: What does that mean?

Muriel: Well, if it is writing, things are progressing. If it stopped writing something, whatever it was writing would stop, too.

Liv: (horrified) What do you mean “stop”?!

Muriel: (still in good spirits) It would just… stop.

Liv: … I do not like knowing this book exists.

Crowley: Weren’t you the human who was thrilled to find the giant skin of what you thought was a Yamakachi?

Liv: Giant monsters are one thing, but this book sounds- …Wait a second, that snake skin still doesn’t make any sense. Angels don’t have snakes.

Crowley: Let’s get back to the problem at hand, shall we?

Liv: But-

Crowley: Aziraphale said “It’s not for crêpes this time”. That was his way of telling me he needs a rescue. But from what and where?

Muriel: That was sweet of him!

Crowley: What?

Muriel: Oh, only that you were trying very hard to not let him speak to you. And he has been in contact with so many people over the last year – which we know because he sent them to us! Like, Anathema and Newt, Madame Tracy and Mr Shadwell, little Warlock, and even Gabriel and the retired Prince of Hell! And he is also in charge of the entire Heavenly Host who basically have to do what he tells them to. And me, of course, who he kept checking in with, to know how you’re doing!

Crowley: He did what?!

Muriel: Oh! Um… I was not supposed to say that!

Crowley: What did he- …why was he… When? How often?

Liv: (waving Mr. Crowley away) You were trying to say, Muriel…?

Muriel: Right! So: He could have asked so many people or angels for help. But he told Maggie, whom he couldn’t reach, to tell Crowley, who was ignoring him and had already refused to help him with Jesus, that he needs his help. I think that was…

Liv: Love?

Mr. Crowley starts sputtering.

Muriel: Trust!

Uriel: An entirely misguided sense of trust.

Mr. Crowley glares at her in the live-stream.

Locksley: A temporary lapse in judgement?

Anathema: Or maybe just necessity.

Crowley: Or maybe he’s just used to being rescued by me.

Anathema: Or maybe you’re the only one who can rescue him.

Crowley: How do you mean?

Anathema: I don’t know. You’re a demon. Maybe he needed a demon.

Muriel: Then he could’ve asked the Beelzebub. We know he was in contact with them.

Anathema: Again, I don’t know. Maybe this Beelzebub doesn’t know where he is.

Crowley: Neither do I!

Anathema: No, but you had a plan to figure it out, up until you heard that the book – which thankfully was not written by an ancestor of mine for once – is missing.

For a second, Crowley seems to lose himself in thought. He furrows his brows. And then, a moment later, something settles on his face. With new-found urgency, he turns back to the live-streaming phone that shows Uriel and has Anathema’s voice chiming in from behind the camera.

Crowley: Arsehole-angel! You said it’s not possible to remove the Book of Life from its stand!

Uriel: What did you just call me?!

Crowley: Don’t know your name, don’t care! (He turns towards the others with him.) Muriel, what did you say about the book-stand?

Muriel: It wasn’t in Heaven; that’s how I knew the book wasn’t there.

Crowley: Where is that stand right now!?

Uriel: We brought it with us when we came down here. Michael kept rolling their eyes as if it doesn’t matter, but I didn’t want to leave it unattended when we already lost the book.

Crowley: Where did you bring it?

Uriel: If I show you the way, can you guarantee me that Michael’s policy changes will be reverted?

Muriel: I don’t think we can-

Crowley: Yes.

Uriel: Fine. But this does not mean I’m on your side.

Crowley: (flashing his teeth in an unsettling way that is not smiling) Oh no, I know. You’re just an angel who goes along with Michael as far as she can.

Uriel: Be silent and follow the path in the direction of those tall buildings.

Mr. Crowley, Muriel, Locksley and Liv (who is still holding the camera) start sneaking off farther into the greenery of the park, following directions from the angelic navigation system that the live-stream on Crowley’s phone has turned into. They’re mostly quiet as they pass a World War II memorial – a short, broad obelisk with several bronze soldiers on it – and a peninsula that is ominously quacking. They eventually curve towards a large pond to reveal it being inhabited by a myriad of ducks. Some of them seem to clock the unlikely troupe and start swimming, flying and running towards them like a sentinel-NPC hearing a noise in a stealth-based video game.

Crowley: (stage-whispering and whacking his entire arm towards the ducks) No! Go away! I don’t have any peas on me today!

Uriel: (a crease forming between her brows) The feathered creatures didn’t do that when we entered the area.

Muriel: They seem to like Crowley.

Anathema: I wonder why…

The quacking gets louder as the horde approaches.

Crowley: Shut it! Go back!

The angel/human-group is unwillingly accelerated by the honking rout as they follow the foot-path that leads them towards some trees sheltering them from the water. The ducks don’t seem to care.

Uriel: There should be a roofed platform somewhere along that path. That’s where we brought it.

Crowley: Yes, I know the bandstand. (He shoves a duck that managed to cut him off out of his face.) I will curse the entire park so that no one ever feeds you greedy-guts ever again!

Liv: (completely unbothered by the ducks because they seem to leave the rest of them alone) There! That must be it!

She turns the (extremely shaky) camera around until a white pavilion comes into view. Underneath its roof is a person clad in a dark beige coat – and a book-stand so white, it makes the building around it look grey.

Anathema: Is that him?

Crowley: No. (through clenched teeth) But I’ve seen that wanker before.

Uriel: Sandalphon.

Sandalphon: (turning towards the group) What is that infernal noise?

The camera is sent onto a rollercoaster ride, feathers everywhere, as it is knocked out of Liv’s hand by a stray duck and goes flying off into the woods.

The stream ends abruptly.