<div class="floatright">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/8/81/Superheroine-2.jpg)</div>Name: Ace the Wonder-Girl<br/>Where: New New Newgate Prison, Temporary Housing Complex<br/>Milestones: Peeling the Onion and Silver Age Sensibilities<br/>1 PP | 0 Physical | 0 Mental | 0 Emotional | 6 xp<br/>Assets: None | Complications: None | Resources: None<br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Mechanics</div><div class="spoiler_body"></div></div><hr/><br/>Silver Spider's response to Ace's offer...  Well, Silvia would get to see the light fade from Ace's eyes as she spoke, as she not only turned the offer down, but gave a very excellent set of reasons for why she was turning the offer down.  And listening to those reasons called up Darclight's insistence earlier that any villain they took on would have to be genuinely repentant in order to be accepted, and now she understood why he had been so caught up on that point.  Having a long and colorful career as a supervillain meant having a long list of relationships and obligations that she would have to turn her back on, and while Ace was a firm believer in the idea that all it took to turn one's life around was the willingness to do so, finding that will could be difficult when one was required to give up things that were important to them.<br/><br/>Still, she wasn't one to give up easily, and when Ms. Atel asked her a question, her voice was softer, but still just as earnest as when she'd made her offer.<br/><br/>"I've never really thought of it as having to follow a lot of rules.  For me, it's always just been the one rule: Do what you think is right."  Her eyes had drifted down earlier, the girl having some difficulty looking the woman who was speaking to her in the eye while hearing her words, but now her eyes snapped back up again, Ace meeting Silvia's gaze.  "I suppose that's what the big appeal was for me, when I first started.  I think you'll sympathize when I say that I came from a place with a lot of rules, a place run by people who were very, very controlling.  We were only allowed to eat from a set of approved meal rations that were doled out to us, only allowed to view art and entertainment that had passed through strict censorship guidelines, only allowed to gather in groups of two or three people at most, with anything larger than that drawing the attention of the authorities.  It was an oppressive, totalitarian regime, on a distant world.<br/><br/>"As I was growing up, though, there was one bright spot in that dull and barren time in my life.  A cousin of mine had been sent to Earth as a spy, and he used to send me letters.  Letters about how he was disobeying his orders, lying to the High Command, protecting this world from our rulers' ambitions...  And also how he had found inspiration from this world's masked adventurers and had become one of them.  I grew up reading the tales he sent me of his adventures, hearing about the fantastical abilities our people could gain when we left the oppressive atmosphere of our homeworld, and of how he would use them to foil alien armadas, fight strange monsters and duel with insane criminal geniuses.  And I dreamed of joining him on those adventures, of escaping from our planet and of what I would do with my powers once I got them.<br/><br/>"Did you have any bright spots like that, during the rough times in your life?"  She could see how it would have been easy to fall into a life of crime if it turned out that Silvia hadn't.  "If it weren't for my cousin's letters... I don't think our Youth Education Centers would have turned me into an indoctrinated little puppet, but I probably wouldn't have been able to find the strength within myself to take my own life back.  But instead, thanks to everything my cousin taught me through those letters, I actually wound up being the one to rescue him when our rulers finally caught on to the tricks he'd been pulling.  And then my dreams actually came true and I got to join my cousin on Earth, and become a hero just like him.<br/><br/>"I'm sure you know from your own experiences that that sort of appeal doesn't last, though.  Reality never quite matches up with our expectations and dreams don't always come true in the ways that we want them to.  So thinking about what the appeal is for me now, it's more a question of why I've kept doing it, instead.  And if I might answer that question with a question of my own, why do you keep doing it?  You've talked about friends that you have, debts that you owe, but those are things keeping you from backing out, not things driving you forward.  And you've talked about aspects of the hero's life that don't appeal to you, but I don't buy that it's always a carefree life of constant excitement and thrills on the opposite side of the law.  Why does Silvia Atel choose to keep being the Silver Spider, Professional Criminal?"