PLEASE I need viper headcanons with the younger agents like ajshfh and in your opinion how would she view nanobomb like their relationship within the protocol and allat ykyk since shes older
anyways pls go to sleep earlier im always seeing you post late at night (for you) lmao
Listennnn. My active hours just happen to fall between 8pm and 6am and there's nothing wrong with that. I've been getting over 7 hours of sleep which, many of you know, is a massive improvement from the meager 3-5 I was getting earlier this year, so. It could be worse ☝️
She views all relationships between agents the same way: with a detached mix of melancholy, bitterness, and gratitude. On some level she's glad that they've formed such attachments between one another—the agents would get lost in the unforgiving cruelty of war otherwise. But she also dreads the day they learn what those attachments may cost them, and she'll do all she can to prevent that day from coming.
Building off the last point: beyond those general thoughts, she doesn't care much. Some agents have bets on who Phoenix will end up with (Jett and Yoru are the most popular picks), but she genuinely could not care less. She just hopes they don't start a bunch of drama trying to figure it out.
She definitely has her favorites among the younger agents. She's generally good at being subtle about it, but when her emotions are high you can tell where someone stands with her based on how quickly she loses her patience with them. Over time the agents have picked up on this, and they have an ongoing competition on who can get her to like them enough to let them get away with hugging her first.
Viper is aware of the aforementioned competition. She'll never admit it, but the entire thing has collectively endeared them to her a bit.
Viper has a "bad" habit of looking out for the younger agents specifically. There's moments like in the "In My Zone" MV, of course, where she covers their backs even at great risk to herself, but it's also little and seemingly insignificant things. She keeps an ear open to their conversations when they think she's absorbed in her work—if someone like Neon happens to be feeling a bit anxious about their capabilities, well, it's lucky coincidence that Sage or another respected figure reassures them about it within a day or two. If someone whines about craving a particular dish from home, the ingredients to make it miraculously appear in the community kitchen's pantry within the week. If someone's performance isn't as good as usual during mandatory VP-wide training, Sage, Skye, or now Miks always manage to corner them somehow; more often than not the agent had been neglecting themself in some way. Every time she tells herself she'll start treating them like real adults soon...and she's been telling herself that for the past 5 years.
On one occasion not long after the VP switched to a more involved team rather than lone individuals, Killjoy told Viper that watching her work was calming due to how gracefully and methodically she moves. Viper had been miffed at being watched so closely—but she also told KJ not to let her catch KJ in the act. Her subtle way of saying it was okay, so long as KJ wasn't too obvious about it. It becomes something of a rite of passage among the younger agents; if a new (young) agent is really stressed or actively panicking, another will drag them into the observation room next to Viper's lab until they calm down. Depending on the agent, sometimes they talk with Viper and her experiments as a mere backdrop, sometimes they sit in silence watching her work together. Viper claims she doesn't know a thing, and to an extent she's being truthful—she has no idea how much it's spread among the younger agents to the point that even a few of the older ones do it too. But she knows that at least a few agents tend to watch her work, and she keeps the observation room unlocked most of the time for that very purpose. Her rule, however, still stands. She always checks the room after she's done working for the day, and if she catches someone, they'll get an icy glare and extra paperwork for their troubles. The agents have gotten very creative at avoiding being found out in such cases.
Continuing the last point: the only time this little indulgence backfires is when the other agents either find the door locked, there happens to be witnesses when Viper gets angry/upset, or the one(s) watching realize she hasn't eaten, drank, or slept for too long. Whenever that happens, Viper gets to deal with two agents—at minimum—trying to drop off food for her or coax her out of her lab. On particularly worrying occasiond, Sage gets sent in as a last resort. Viper despises this part the most, or so she claims.
Viper has built a camaraderie of sorts with the other insomniacs (willing or not) in the Protocol. They don't acknowledge it much most of the time, but if she runs into a younger agent in the kitchen late at night—or more accurately, early in the morning—then she always lends them an ear if they want to talk about what's keeping them up. If absolutely necessary to get the other(s) to open up, she might even offer a fragment of explanation as to why she's awake herself. The truth, that is; not the bullshit reasons she sometimes tells to Brim, Vyse, Omen, or Sage.
