[Attention Sherlocks and Tonies! There's a critical mass of you forming over by the dessert end of the buffet, and you should all gather and figure out a nickname system once and for all!]

[I don't eat food and I have a distinguishing nickname already; can I sit this one out?]

[Not a chance,] says Plus, and he locates Minus and drags him to the buffet.

[Your nickname's out of date,] Juliet says. Just to her own. She wants to see if the others can figure it out. She drifts thataway to supervise.

[But I'm so fond of it.]

[Why?] laughs Juliet.

[Because it is mine.]

[It's cute, it just has the disadvantage of not making sense anymore. But you can help the others with theirs, maybe, and meet them all, even if you insist on keeping "Minus" for yourself. Look, Strat's converging, he's got a nickname already too.]

[Ah, and there is—Iron Man, apparently.]

"Amariah killed one of those for me," volunteers Shell Bell. "He had a different name in my world, though."

"Good for Amariah," says Iron Man.

"I killed one too," volunteers Minus. "Do I get a prize?"

"If we do, you can put me down for it as well."

"Yeah, I'm not handing out any prizes," Iron Man snorts.

"Am I the only one here fortunate enough not to have met this individual?" wonders Strat.

"We could conjure up little trophies? Or, I know, T-shirts, 'I killed a Stane and all I got was this lousy -' no, that's tacky."

"You don't seem to be very template-y, even though you're clearly an alt," says Shell Bell to Strat. "So it makes sense that you might not have one. Maybe they're attached to Tonies instead of to Sherlocks, and you don't have a Tony so that's why?"

"That would make sense," says Iron Man, "because I have one and he doesn't. Well, had. Except you guys took over the afterlife, so I guess he'll be popping up like a weed any day now."

"Oh, no," says Shell Bell. "We don't have to let him come back. That's only for people who aren't dangerous and haven't annoyed us. He can just stay Downside."

"Anybody else who belongs on the no-fly list?" inquires Juliet.

Shell Bell taps her ring.

[You got it,] Jane broadcasts to the convocation.

"So," says Juliet. "Nicknames. Many of you are nigh-indistinguishable - at least to those of us who aren't Sherlocks - and not having different names doesn't help."

"It's the Sherlocks who seem to vary," says one of same. "Vampire, different vampire, human, different human, and then..." he waves a hand vaguely at Strat, "you. The attached Tonies are not so easily distinguished."

Shell Bell clearly has a favorite Sherlock. There may be some leaning and gazing going on between moments when she's not addressing the group.

"Whistles usually just get outright named by their attached Bells, but half of you don't have attached Bells," says Juliet. "Besides, I can't think of anything good."

"Yes," says Sherlock, patting Bell fondly on the shoulder, "that is the trouble. No one can think of anything good."

"Oh, I don't know," says another Sherlock. "'Plus and Minus' wasn't bad. But the rest of you can't describe yourselves easily by your formative soul status."

"And three of the sets come from eerily similar worlds, so there's no playing on that theme. And I don't think my Sherlock and Tony want to pick up on any of the titles the media invented for them."

"I'm beginning to see why Jarvis was so tempted to just outright number the eerily similar worlds."

"Let's all take a moment to be thankful that we don't have to assign distinguishing nicknames to the Jarvises."

"Unless at least two of them start being capable of showing up to parties and getting mixed up, yeah," says Juliet, "not a priority."

"How did you settle on 'Strat'?" Shell Bell asks Strat.

"A friend gave it to me, after the guitar." He snorts. "Yes, there's a plan: let's all give ourselves Downsider nicknames."

Shell Bell shrugs minutely. "They do have a certain aesthetic to them. Although I think I would have kept Bell instead of Shell if it hadn't been for my special circumstances."

"...Those being...?"

"I knew - well, strongly suspected - that my Sherlock had resurrected me. So Shell decided that she was Shell and the live one was Bell. Now I'm both again, of course."

"I see."

"Maybe insofar as you don't have your own characteristics you could come up with a shared short list of things that you'd be able to put up with as nicknames, then pick them out of a hat. Except my Sherlock, who doesn't seem to want a new one."

"Why are you singling him out? Plus and Strat also seem satisfied with theirs."

"Mine mentioned it specifically on the way over," Juliet says. "I guess 'insofar as you lack distinguishing characteristics' is mostly for the quartet of non-Iron-Man Tonies anyway, although yours doesn't seem to have yielded a nickname."

"We probably shouldn't just call you 'girl', should we," says Shell Bell to her Sherlock who is thusly distinguished. "I dunno. Victoria," she tosses out. "And our Tony could be Victor. Or is that as bad an idea as the Panem media's idea of cute things to call you would be?"

"That is a terrible idea," she says fondly.

"And don't call her 'girl', we have lots of distinguishing characteristics that aren't that one, we're the farthest pair from the middle here."

"Not very namey characteristics, though. Or ones with particularly nice associations."

"Does no one like my shortlist-and-a-hat idea?"

"Could play on the names themselves. Shell Bell's Sherlock can be, what's a variant there, Shirley? Or, doesn't it mean something - 'fair haired' - I'm just brainstorming at this point - and "Tony", what've we got to work with there, Jane, help me out."

["Anthony", or in the Atlantis case "Antony", means priceless, flourishing, or praiseworthy. Variants include Antoine, Anton, Antonello, Antonio, and assorted spellings of same.]

"Oh, so you're already an odd one out if you just go by full name," Juliet says to Tony-which-is-short-for-Antony. "So there's that. And have you got middle names, maybe? There's options."

"The rest of you are An-thon-y? With a th - huh, weird," says Shell Bell.

"No Antons," says Iron Man. "I put a veto on Antons."

"I'd hate it too, if anyone ever had," the Antony chips in.

"No one is permitted to call me Shirley," says Sherlock.

"Sheesh, you guys are tricky. ...Do you all have the same favorite color? Bells don't seem to, I'm rocking an indigo theme and so on, no two of our Jane-gems match straight across, our coin colors are all different."

"None of the Tonies are mints," Shell Bell points out, "and only two Sherlocks are. Could we find out coin colors without actually just minting them all?"

"If this looks like a fruitful avenue we can find out," says Juliet.

Shell Bell designs a power that will let her see hypothetical coin colors even on non-mints. It doesn't have to last long, so she only spends a pentagon on it, then peers around.

The other human Sherlock is likewise grey, but his is bright and pale and flatly opaque, like an overcast sky at noon.

Plus is another grey, not foggy-smoky like Minus's but almost transparent, with darker tendrils curling through it like the smoke from a snuffed candle.

Strat is a much darker grey, soft around the edges, like deep fog.

Shell Bell conjures up associated illusions of squares in front of each for everyone to look at as she looks at each one.

Among the Tonies, one is bright red, like a sports car or a fire truck; one is a brilliant blue-white that seems like it should be glowing, although it gives off no light; and one is a blue so dark it's almost black, with enough reflective gloss to obscure the underlying shade almost completely.

And Shell Bell's Tony has a faintly bluish brushed aluminum.

"So, Pearl," Shell Bell says to her Sherlock. "And... Aluminum? Is that aluminum?"

"Is that your fucking McLaren?" says the stray human Sherlock to his Tony.

"Okay, so turning all this into names isn't perfectly straightforward, but 'Arc' is totally in keeping with how nicknaming has been going on, and 'McLaren' isn't far off, and I guess mine can just be Red unless this also represents some iconic object I don't recognize?" She peers at the undead Tony's square. "And Shell Bell's is Aluminum. And we should name some worlds while we're at it - there's kind of a sun theme for the ones that are oddly like Sunshine. Jarvis named the world he was copied in from Helios. Plus, did you ever decide between Apollo and Ra?"

"I don't remotely care."

"Picky, picky," snorts Juliet. "Fusion's fine. As for you," she says to the one with the car-colored coin, "I'm out of other ideas."

"...I think it's your screwdriver, from your Games," Shell Bell realizes aloud to her Tony, frowning at his illusion square.

"...You know what," he says, "Screwdriver's better than Aluminum. I'll take it."

The car-coloured Tony shrugs. "Let's put the pressure on somebody else for a minute," he suggests. "Like, say, my Sherry." He points at the one with the sky-grey square.

"...Looks like a cloud to me," says Juliet. "How's Cloud? I'm starting to find it kind of miraculous that I kept the nickname my Sherlock gave me considering that there's so little overlap in taste, though, so I won't be stunned if you reject it."

Shell Bell glances at Iron Man. "D'you want to name your world? Or should I talk to Darcy about that instead?"

"Talk to Darcy," he says, "I have no idea."

"...So little overlap?" he asks. "How do you mean?"

[Darcy, wanna name your world?]

"My ideas are not meeting with much approval here. Of course no one should start going by a nickname they hate just to soothe my ego, but meanwhile I am... hmm... yeah, the only Bell known who didn't pick her own nickname, except Golden who was named by other Bells, and I like being Juliet just fine. Asymmetrical." She shrugs. "Not a big deal. Cloud or not Cloud?"

"It is the Tonies who have been rejecting your naming suggestions thus far."

[...Nine Realms?] says Darcy. [It's what the Asgardians call it.]

"And Pearl over there," Juliet says. "It's not a big deal."

[Is there a less - plural - word for it? That's kind of a weird name for one of many worlds.]

"Well, 'Cloud' makes me sound like a pony, but I don't have a better option, so Cloud it is."

[Not really. Asgard, Midgard - that's Earth - Jotunheim, Muspellheim, Vanaheim, Niflheim, Alfheim, Svartalfheim, and Hel. Nine realms, one universe.]

"The best Darcy can do for your world is 'Nine Realms'," Shell Bell tells Iron Man.

[How about Yggdrasil?] suggests Jane, to Shell Bell, Iron Man, and Darcy.

"So, so tempted to call you Pony now," Juliet tells Cloud.

[...It would be kind of like calling the solar system 'Gravity',] says Darcy. [I mean, to an Asgardian. But I guess if there's no Yggdrasil in the rest of the worlds, it's actually pretty good.]

"Bite your tongue," he snorts.

She sticks out her tongue at him in the course of biting it. "Cloud it is," she says. "And now you're the last one," she adds to Car-Color Tony.

[Let it be so,] giggles Shell Bell.

[World number eighty is now marked down as Yggdrasil in my godly records of such things,] Jane intones.

"...This actual paint colour is called 'Sapphire Black'," says Car-Color Tony. "I'm not sure I can deal with people calling me Sapphire, but it's marginally better than my other options."

"As you like," says Juliet.

"I think it's cute," says Shell Bell.

'Sapphire' snorts.

"You can always change it if you come up with a better idea," Shell Bell points out.

"Yeah," he sighs, "but I bet I won't."

"Now I'm trying to figure out what I would've gone with if I hadn't already been answering to Juliet by the time the need for a nickname manifested, and if I'd found Milliways before Minus here did," muses Juliet. "I'd have considered 'Slayer', I guess, but I dunno, too on the nose. Maybe 'Crucifix' or 'Arbalist'."

"I feel really lucky that I've had my nickname since I was eight," giggles Shell Bell.

"I think Juliet suits you," says Minus to Juliet.

"I like it. Thank you for it," she says, pecking him on the cheek.

He grins and hugs her.