The Arcobaleno were cursed 'for over thirty years', so I am assuming this means that by 2000 in the NGDGU 'verse, they had been cursed for an even thirty, meaning that they were cursed in 1969, which puts Viper being born circa 1945, which makes her a Post-WWII-celebration-GI-baby in my headcannon.

Also, this entire backstory is dedicated to InsaneScriptist who has been a huge help an inspiration as of late, especially as I go off on tangents and leave out about half the information that I intended to include, but they still manage to follow anyways, so thanks IS!

Everyone just take a moment to bask in the awesomeness that is IS's existence, alright?

Ok then!

This is also written in a slightly different format, just because.

Viper, Esper, and Mammon- none of them are her original name, but no amount of money would ever bring the moniker those feccia called her to spill forth from her lips.

When she was a baby she cried all the time, too small and little to fully comprehend the world around her.

She cried and screamed and wailed as the people around her began to whisper about the 'little devil child' and the 'monster baby' and all their negative thoughts spiraled through her tiny baby mind and made her cry harder and louder.

(She was just a fragile little baby.)

Too fragile to handle the flawless truth of the reality that exists behind the polite smiles and pretty words of the world around her.

Envy

Viper, as she referred to herself then, huddled in the corner of her dismal room as everyone else ran around reveling in the Christmas Spirit.

She couldn't see them in this dismal, windowless room, where she was kept by the people who had paid her parents money in exchange for her, but she could feel their excitement, even if her skills weren't quite sharp enough yet to read their thoughts from this far away.

What a perpetuated myth. She thought angrily, ignoring the way her eyes stung and her body trembled as the little girl in her still ached to believe in fairy tales and happy endings and goodness in the hearts and minds of people even as the Esper in her coldly, flatly stated that she knew better because she could read their minds- and weren't parents supposed to embody love?

Hadn't her parents traded her for money?

As she huddled in the corner of the room and she heard the heavy thumps that signaled that one of her so-called caretakers was here to 'train' her, Viper remembered the looks on the other children's faces as Christmas came closer or they talked about knights and princesses and heroes and she wishes-

I wish I could have been able to know what that sort of innocence felt like.

And this is when Viper begins to truly understand the sin of Envy.

Sloth

Viper is nearly six when she finally begins to see the way out of her captors clutches.

They have grown dependent on her and what they know she can do, they have grown lazy and careless and she will use that to her advantage as they have been using her all these years.

The people of this 'hospital' use her like a weapon and treat her like a rabid dog, both afraid of her and jealous of anyone else having her.

She belongs to them. They tell her this over and over. Sometimes they tell her nicely with good food and days in the lush park and ice cream, and yet sometimes with blood and needles and screams. Other times they coo about how pretty she is, and though they don't physically touch her she can feel their sick intent just as heavily though the drugs that they put in her to keep her compliant, and sometimes when she looks back she wonders if that was the plan all along as those drugs were specifically designed to both enhance her gift and strip her defenses.

It takes nearly a year, but she has been working on making her psychic powers grip things instead of just push them, and in the end their progressively lackadaisical attitude towards her is their undoing as she kills them without remorse after she tears all the information she wants out of their minds- especially the parts about where they kept all the money they'd been making off of her talents.

The world had never allowed her to dream of a prince or a castle or a heaven, so she'd take their precious money and make her own.

And that is when Viper begins to truly understand the sin of Sloth.

Gluttony

Viper is ten and dodging just about every government in the world when she decides to dress like a boy for the first time. It isn't easy, and early malnutrition and trauma will always make her far shorter and lither than average, but she is determined.

The year is 1959, the 'Great Smog' has hit London and killed many with heart and lung-related illnesses as a result of all the resent emissions from wars and factories and the like while the Vatican has forbidden voting for Communists and released a report of the French torturing Algerians even as the Swiss have decided to deny women the right to vote and the Japanese-Americans are finally being allowed to regain their lost citizenship after nearly fifteen years of being strangers in their own country and Tibet has just announced that it is abolishing serfdom.

In the midst of all this, all of their highest agencies want her- by hook or by crook- and they do not care that she is a ten-year-old girl simply trying to live her life, they want more and they are never satisfied with enough.

As she walks down the street with her blue hair, confident, masculine gait, and dressed in boy's clothes she feels truly in control for the first time.

And that is when Viper begins to truly understand the sin of Gluttony.

Wrath

Viper is fifteen and running for her life when she is hit by enemy fire and she goes down with a bullet in her torso.

If we can't have you, no one can. The mind of the man leading the people chasing her rang loudly through her own, bouncing off the shards left behind from a lifetime of being used, abused, and discarded.

No. She thinks savagely as she tries to slow her decent to the ground, I won't let it end here. I am Viper, the Esper. I reject this ending for my life. Nothing so plebian will be my end.

Then she was on fire.

Literally.

It didn't seem like the idiots could see the beautiful Indigo Flames that surrounded her, but she could feel them pulsing excitedly on her hands as they wrapped around her like a shroud, and after a lifetime of being different, strange, and the Devil's Child, she knew exactly what she wanted to do with this beautiful fire.

She raised her hand towards them and smirked, low and dark and lethal, as she pushed and monsters burst forth and devoured the stupid trash who though that they could take her life just because she refused to be controlled.

After the Flames flickered out and she suddenly realized that there is still a bullet in her torso and she needed medical attention, she looked around at the charred bodies and the devastation she's caused and she feels exactly nothing because she knows exactly what these people had done, were doing, and were planning to do, so she simply wishes that she could hide her wound and smiles with delight when those Indigo Flames shimmer and the wound and the blood disappear, though she can still feel it, and she walks away from the scene just as she hears the siren in the distance.

And that is when Viper begins to truly understand the sin of Wrath.

Pride

Viper is afflicted with the Arcobaleno Curse through a series of circumstances that brought forth a sense of pride that she hadn't realized held so tightly. She knew that she was proud of her skills in outmaneuvering governments and making them fight over her and then swooping in and taking all their money and messing with their tiny, insignificant brains as punishment for thinking that they could entrap her, but she hadn't thought that it was so bad that she would fall for a rather transparent trap and be cursed to live in the body of a toddler for the rest of her life.

Though the added bonus of having an animal partner almost made up for such an indignity, as Fantasma was the first friend she'd every truly had, as being bonded to her meant that he wouldn't betray her and his alternate form helps her float around like a Queen-or King, as most would think- which was nice.

Her fellow Arcobaleno could be dealt with in the same manner that she dealt with everyone else, but she could admit to having a soft spot for the hopelessly clumsy Skull.

The purple haired teen-turned-toddler took a lot of shit from the others, but he was a genuine person inside and out and those types were so rare that Viper secretly hoped that Renato, (whom she had worked with on several occasions and had found to be a decent mission partner though not her favorite person), and that blonde idiot would toughen him up without stamping out that bit of genuineness.

Skull bounces towards her and gives her a ridiculously goofy grin and asks if he can pet Fantasma, and she lets him then demands he pay for the service and his reaction is hilarious as she makes him wash her dishes to pay his debt, but as much as this form irritates her she finds that it's not as bad as she thought it would be when she first woke up to find herself cursed.

And that is when Viper begins to truly understand the sin of Pride.

Lust

It's her Reprieve and she's just finished with the jobs she already had planned before it was sprung on her, when she see her.

Elegant, dark, seductive, lethal.

(Mammon has known of the existence of the magical world since she was five, and this woman was one of them but different.)

Mammon sucks in a sharp breath as she reads the woman's story- Occlumency means nothing to an Esper, and even the Eastern method will break under enough force from her, though it is far more annoying. The woman had fortunately been educated at Hogwarts even though she was Italian so while her Occlumency was good it wasn't Eastern. Since a woman cannot inherit she was married off by the old men left in charge of the estate after the suspicious death of her Grandfather, but she refused to be controlled and killed the man before he could take her as his wife in the literal sense, claiming foul play on the part of her advisors and Abdicating her position as Heiress-Apparent, thereby locking the estate until such a time as she bore a male Heir. Since they couldn't prove that she was responsible for the death of their coconspirator, there was nothing the people who wanted to control could do in response without looking greedy or desperate.

Well, she needed an heir, a male heir preferably, and they were sending men to the woman in droves because she was a prize in every sense of the word even though she was not especially tall or well-endowed there was a beauty to her that was undeniable and intoxicating.

Mist Flames were something that Mammon knew intimately, and she had always been more comfortable in encounters as a male even though she was perfectly comfortable as a female otherwise. Her body twisted and warped to fit her new requirements, as half the reason Mists failed at things was that they got caught up on the aspect of rejecting reality and substituting it with their own, but Mammon was very, very good at that game.

The woman watched this happen, and Mammon saw from the thoughts that flittered through the woman's mind that she knew exactly what had happened, "Hello." Mammon hadn't bothered to change her voice.

The woman lips curled into a smile, and something shadowy and dangerous played in her eyes, "Hello." She purred as she reached a hand towards Mammon in invitation, "Come, I've had a long evening and could use some...company."

They shared a crimson smile and fell into step with one another.

And that is when Mammon began to truly understand the sin of Lust.

Greed

Esper Mammon- Esper to most, and Mammon to the upper echelon of the Varia- joins the Varia because they are just about the only group in the Mafia who respect her rules and refer to her properly. While she is comfortable being female, enjoys it in fact, she likes for everyone to think of her as a male as it makes business transactions go smoother.

It only stands to reason that she- the miser midget who makes you pay for everything- takes the spot of the sin of greed. This actually pleases her greatly, as personally she has always found greed to be one of the more palatable sins, and it encompasses her reasons for loving money as much as she does quite neatly while also being entirely misleading at the same time.

(She has long outgrown the need for a castle or a prince, but perhaps she can make her own heaven.)

Mammon finds it vastly amusing that this group embodies the greatest lessons she's learned over her lifetime, but it isn't until Xanxus takes over that she decides that she is actually part of the Varia instead of just loosely allied with them.

When Boss is hit by the Zero Point Breakthrough- couldn't Nono see that the Varia were just doing their job? His actions of late were going to get Massimo and Federico killed! Massimo didn't really matter, but Federico was the Tenth! This whole assault was to prove Vongola's power so that the enemies would back off enough to give the Varia enough time to get to them, because they were too small to handle them all right now! They had planned it as a coup and let Ottabio go running off like the two-faced scum he was to give Nono a valid excuse to clean house! There were traitors in the Vongola and now the Boss is on ice because you can't see past the end of your fucking nose, of course we couldn't bring this information directly to you, idiot, the problem starts in your office!- Mammon and the rest of the Varia are sent back to HQ defeated and unheeded.

Mammon looks at Squalo's prosthetic hand fisted in his dirty hair, Lussuria's glasses-free eyes over non-smiling lips, Bel's too-wide Cheshire grin and his unsteady hands as he flips his knives, and Levi's broken frown as he considers the wall and he just wants to go back twenty-four hours and tell Boss that Vongola isn't worth it- isn't worth this.

And that is when Mammon begins to truly understand the sin of Greed.

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