A.S.P.

The Agency for Special People exists to be a privatized buffer between the governments of the world and the population of “supers”. It is funded by a private council of civically minded billionaires.

In order to avoid the passage of laws that would require “supers” to register themselves or that would make “supers” into a separate class of citizen, the Agency for Special People, or A.S.P., has negotiated special arrangements with the major governments of the Earth.

A.S.P. promises, for its part, to organize a self-policing team of “supers” that will contain and control “supers” incidents. The goal is to minimize those incidents to an extent that the majority non-super population does not rise up and demand that the official governments crack down and take totalitarian control of the “supers” within their borders.

Thus, in the Smerdiverse (at least on Earth), “supers”, even those who would be heroes, live in a constant state of probation. The major governments are always watching and waiting for A.S.P. to slip up or to run into a problem that it cannot solve.

There are those who fear that without A.S.P., “supers” would be hunted like wild animals and/or confined to detention camps. Those too powerful to be restrained at detention camps would be killed.

A.S.P. agents and operatives have saved countless lives and even saved the world from all sorts of threats, both public threats and classified threats.

A.S.P. recruits both non-”supers” (known as Agents) and “supers” (known as Operatives) to form field teams. Once a “super” who has been portraying themselves in public as a costumed hero becomes a member of an A.S.P. field team, he or she is given a voice-changing device (in the form of a necklace) so that voiceprinting technology will not reveal their secret identity either to villains or to governments.

Velocity Girl is given such a device in Velocity Girl 4: Velocity Girl and the New Texas Space Rangers.

A.S.P. also provides any medical care an Operative or Agent might need as long as they are members of A.S.P.

A.S.P. has headquarters in various countries throughout the world. One of the reasons for this is political strategy. If any one nation, or even a group of nations, should turn against “supers” and A.S.P. completely, then A.S.P. would still be able to conduct operations and to lobby for the repeal of anti-”super” policies in the suddenly unfriendly countries.

One exotic (and secret) A.S.P. location recently visited by the heroes of the Smerdiverse exists inside a hollowed out mountain in the Andes.

A.S.P. was recently and successfully persuaded to fund the the MARS Institute.