Chapter Text
"That's not a code name, is it?" asks the girl with the ferret-shaped soul, when Adam introduces himself. "Because I'm Eve -- that's a code name, not my real one -- but I en't in the market for another boyfriend."
"It's the name my parents gave me," Adam assures her. "Well, it was originally suggested by an evil nun, but they approved it, so I reckon it still counts."
Most of the guests are already there when he shows them in, and the room is close to full up, but it's not going to overflow. It's exactly the right size it needs to be, and with comfortable seats in the right size for every shape and species, too. Even with all that space, nobody will have trouble hearing everybody else, because the acoustics? Heavenly.
It's the best clubhouse in the multiverse.
Once the seats are full, Aziraphale calls things to order with a calming angelic glow, and gives a stirring recap of the shared purpose that brought the Pan-Universal Eternal and Corporeal Alliance to Defend the Best Interests of Humanity together.
"Although," he adds, after a moment's hesitation, "I understand there's some discontent about the name?"
He looks surprised, then miffed, when a murmur of agreement goes up around the room. Crowley pats him consolingly on the shoulder. They're good for each other, those two. Adam approves.
"It is rather unwieldy," says Sir Integra, who is, in Adam's estimation, the coolest person there. She has an eyepatch, and she's a knight and a vampire slayer. Not a pirate, sadly, but you can't have everything. "A name that long only works if it's a tortured backronym for something short and elegant."
"Well, if anyone has a shorter idea to nominate, now's the time," says Crowley, while most of the humans are still visibly working out the acronym in their heads. (Adam already did. It's not great.)
Eleanor -- she grew up in America, but since then she's been to a place that had a thousand ice-cream flavors, which Adam has got to ask her about some time -- raises her hand, in spite of the winces of the humans on either side of her. "We've been going by Team Cockroach."
"I'm sure we can come up with something better than that," says Chidi, the desperate-sounding human on her right. "I mean, we probably can. I mean, can't we?"
Will, the boyfriend, who has a cat-shaped soul and hasn't let go of his Eve's hand this entire visit, speaks up for the first time. "After our war, we all decided to fight in the name of the Republic of Heaven."
"That seems a bit...insensitive, to those of us who have been forcibly ejected from the Silver City," says Lucifer in a polite hiss. (He's the Lucifer who's not Adam's dad, but in a different way that the other Lucifer isn't Adam's dad. More importantly, he's got no interest in fighting for the spot.)
"I don't care what we're called," huffs Asuka. "As long as I get to punch more angels." The pale one sitting on her left coughs, and she adds, grudgingly, "Present company excepted."
Smaller debates break out all around the room. Pepper, next to Adam, says under her breath, "This is just like when we were kids, and ended up being called The Them because we couldn't settle on anything. Maybe, for this group, we'll end up being The Us?"
It does have a ring to it. But then again, it might get people confusing them for a group of Americans. At least, people from the universes that have an America...which is probably a lot of them.
Adam stands up. Everyone else quiets down, without him having to say so.
"Seems to me," he says, "we need a short, simple name that gets across right where we stand. Seems to me we ought to go by Team Humanity."
There's a bit more discussion, just for the sake of it, but when they get around to voting it isn't even close. Adam always did have the best ideas. And he's really gotten the hang of giving things names.