So she was reincarnated -probably dying in the process.
So even death apparently couldn't cure bad eyesight -and now it's only worse.
So even after transcending death she still had the same nightmares.
Well. Harley Lillian Potter was nothing if not adaptable.
She adapted to the Dursleys, to suddenly being dropped on the lap of an unfamiliar world of wonder and magic and unknown fears, to the ever-changing opinions of those around her, to having a monster after her life, to war. She adapted to the aftermath of the War.
She could do this.
(But was it ever so hard.)
The name she was given here... she didn't catch it.
Everything just happened too soon, too fast. Before she knew it, she was well and truly alone. There was no one who would fight for her while she was unable to (that wasn't new, but she'd gotten used to the concept of comrades).
A tiny waif of a little girl with not even her eyes to depend on.
She didn't even have a complete grasp of the language of the country she was born in -Russia, she thought.
For all intents and purposes, someone like that was destined to die.
Fortunately (or unfortunately), Harley was the Girl Who Lived.
Living was her whole shtick.
This world was an in between. A place between other realms. Energies mingled in the air. From the magic she was most familiar with, to what she thought was what people called qi, and to a hundred other strange and equally abstract forms of Life. Once, she'd even glanced a light touch of Death.
She didn't know if she became sensitive to them because of her reincarnation or just because of this body that was now hers, but she made use of that.
She was still stumbling over herself, eyes just barely crossing the line of being a pair of useful eyeballs. She'd wake up every night with a scream stuck in her throat and the loneliness steadily ate at her sanity.
But with magic she was warm, her clothes were the right size and clean, and though malnutrition will forever leave it's mark on her (again) she's eating better than even most households by making do.
When Harley, now calling herself Viper, happened upon the man in the iron hat who introduced himself as Checkerface, it was in a dim Russian bar as a fifteen year old alcoholic.
The thing about reincarnation with your memory intact, was that your memory was intact.
Sometimes, it was even clearer and much more vivid than it had ever been in your previous life.
Eight years to give up living as a normal little girl, two years to stumble into the mafia, two years to rise through the society's upper echelon, three months to slow down, one night to realise that she was on her double digits now so could finally drink (own logic), not too long to become hooked, and even sooner to fall in a state of stagnation.
Healer.
She was good at it. And she could pretend that the screams and blood in her dreams were just from her patients. Just strangers.
Harley Potter never existed. Just Viper.
The man, with the faint whiff of ancient, approached her with a predator-like gait and she just knew he was trouble.
She should've left right then and there.
But it seemed that not even everything she'd gone through could she get rid of her darned Potter luck and darned Potter curiosity -a source of many problems, that one.
"May I help you?"
"Yes indeed." He slid into the seat across from her. She appraised him.
He wasn't any of the beings she was familiar with. Not human. Not even mortal.
"I am here to gather the Seven Strongest. 'I Priscelti Sette'."
"...The selected seven."
"That's correct."
... it wasn't any of her business whatever he was doing. But she had enough self-awareness to know that the fact that he was talking to her right here right now about this particular topic meant that she was counted among these supposed seven.
"You want to hire me?"
His lips curled with a huff. Viper couldn't bring herself to count it as a smile.
"Precisely."
She took a sip of her vodka. "Just so you know, I don't do any fighting. I'm all about healing."
"What about sneaking around?"
"...you said seven. This is a group project then?"
"Yes. Seven of the most powerful beings from all over the eons."
Her eyebrow raised. Well now, if this didn't catch her interest...
"The reward?"
"A very large sum, I assure you."
She downed what's remaining of her drink, "So what else are we waiting for, let's draw a contract yeah?"
A slickness in his aura didn't go unnoticed but Viper easily disregarded it. The Mafia did not lack individuals with ulterior motives.
Better be careful of this man and her future teammates just to be safe though.
They were a... curious bunch. Which is just the polite way to refer to them.
Rodrigo. The man with the cock-sure way of... talking, walking, sleeping, breathing; His Grim Reaper. Or rather, ex-Grim Reaper. As evidenced of his going rogue, his eyes was devoid of all light, so different from the usual luminous ones of his kind.
Ares, God of War- or as he'd now preferred to be called as, 'Skull'. Imagine her surprise to find herself in the same room as one of the Greek Gods. Beings that had long ago supposedly joined the ranks of 'The Slumbering Gods'. A very much not slumbering God.
The man calling himself Verde, Da Vinci's literal reincarnation. Literally.
Sun WoKung, the Monkey King, garbled in bright red apparel and a calming smile pasted on his face.
Ezela of Atlantis, with her armour and hidden blades, one of the famed Atlantian warriors.
Luce of the Giglio Nero, a Seer and an Earthborn descendant -one of the earliest Gods to walk this realm.
And her, Harley Liliana Potter, the girl with too many titles and the era's most powerful witch. The Lost Hero.
The dead Hero.
Very different individuals with very differing ideals, gathered in the same room by an enigmatic man.
For their paths to have crossed, it tickled Viper's curiosity of what their future would lead to.