You're Welcome Here

Summary: The Marquis had no parahuman lieutenants, but he had people he trusted. More importantly, he had an old friend that he respected and trusted enough to entrust the care of his most precious treasure to. Thus, Amelia Lavere became Amy Hebert.

"Shame about the New Wave girl," someone said.

Amy's ears perked. She was always up for news about the exploits of Brockton Bay's only independant hero team. More importantly, she was always looking to hear news on Victoria Dallon, also known as Glory Girl.

"What happened?" the other man asked, in between pulls of his cigarette.

"Heard she nearly killed a couple of gang members. Dumbass threw a dumpster at them, thinking it was like the movies or something. One guy got mangled pretty bad."

"Sheesh. I'm not sympathetic to the fuckers," one of the medics said, "but you can never be sure that you're not gonna wind up on the wrong end of her temper."

"Yeah, so, the Protectorate cracked down on New Wave and told them that since they obviously can't reign the flying brick in," the first one explained, but he was interrupted when the other spoke over him.

"It's rein, you dumbass."

"I'm a doctor not a linguist," he argued, "anyway, point is, they said that the girl is an idiot and can't be trusted not to wreck everything, so she's been conscripted. The only other choice she had was Juvie, from what I hear."

"Real shame. Brockton could use its own Alexandria, for sure," the smoker said, dropping his cigarette and stepping on it. "The Protectorate will probably curb her property damage but she'll never fight bad guys again, at least until she's Protectorate-age."

"Shouldn't take too long. She's, what 17?"

Amy frowned, but sighed and began the trip back to her place of origin, Brockton Bay General. Much as she liked Glory Girl's ass in those tight jeans that she tended to wear at school, she too agreed - the girl was an airheaded moron at the worst of times, and an arrogant showboater at the best. Besides, it probably wouldn't take long for the fuckers to show up for her to put them back together.

She grabbed at her cellphone and quickly dialed her home number. "Mom? Yeah, it's Amy," she said, "no, mom, I'm not with- you know I'm- yes, yes, I know. I'm being discrete, I promise, no, I'm not smoking," she said, sighing. It was just the one time, she had just tried a cigarette and hadn't even liked it. "Okay, yeah, sure. I'll pick you up a chocolate bar from the vending machine."

Finally doing what she had stepped out to do, she placed the phone back in its place, put her mask back on and was quickly received by a nurse who would lead her for her patients of the day. Sure, volunteering at the hospital kinda sucked sometimes, but hey, it was at least enough to keep people off her case about the fact that she also sold her services.

No matter how much dad protested, she knew the family wouldn't keep afloat given the ever-worsening economic situation of Brockton Bay's laborer class. Fortunately, a healer who could do as much as she did could demand outrageous prices for their services. She didn't even have to feel bad about healing criminals, since her biggest client was the Protectorate itself.

"Oh, hey, Taylor, Emma," Amy said as she yawned.

"Long night, sis?" Taylor asked, as she absent mindedly played a smartphone game. Which she seemed to be losing badly at. Emma, meanwhile, was copying off of Taylor's notes furiously.

"Yeah," Amy said, stiffling a second yawn. "I thought she stayed here last night to study?"

Both girls blushed bright red.

"Okay," Amy said, "shutting up now," she said. "Anyway, what's for breakfast?"

Amy Hebert had quite a few secrets.

There was one, however, that was not her own, and perhaps one she kept more preciously than any other. In all the world, there were many who knew she was a parahuman, that she had powers. Hell, she knew she was on the President of the United States' personal phonebook, and she knew because she had been the one who had made the cosmetic touchups that resulted in the man being known as the most handsome president in years.

But there was only one person in the entire world, as far as Amy knew, who knew that Taylor Hebert had powers as well.

More importantly, she knew that Taylor had one of the scariest powersets ever known. Taylor possessed the ability to control lower lifeforms. Insects, rodents and birds, mostly, but there was also the odd sea creature as well. Nothing too complex, and when you just thought about it, it didn't seem that scary.

The problem was that Taylor also possessed the ability to control an unlimited number of those creatures, and she also had the ability to turn them into monsters. Amy knew it was similar to how her own abilities worked, and she reckoned she could reproduce what Taylor created with her powers, perhaps with a greater degree of ease and significantly faster... but Taylor didn't need to touch the creatures she controlled to fuse them into an amalgam chimeric monstrosity.

And while she was limited to pigeons, rats and most insects, that didn't really mean much when you can combine a thousand rats into a humongous monstrosity that could toss cars like toys.

It was absolutely imperative that no one, absolutely no one, learn of what Taylor could do. Amy knew it was a one way ticket to the birdcage for her little sister if anybody found out.

There was no realistic way to stop Leviathan. Amy knew that hundreds if not thousands would die within seconds. She knew that heroes would be dropping like flies.

She had not expected the forty foot tall Frankenstein's Monster made out of the pests of the city, sporting the chitinous armor of an insec, to tackle Leviathan into its own tidal wave.

The monster fought valiantly, but ultimately, it was defeated by the Endbringer. Amy was torn between extremelly proud of her sister being the one who had arguably done the most to delay Leviathan's attacks, pinning the beast down and keeping it contained, and terrified for what this meant.

"No more heals," Amy said. "My sister is in the Birdcage through no fault of her own. She has harmed nobody. She was caged because a bunch of people are terrified of her scary power. I am never healing anybody ever again until she is released."

The press launched into a million questions, but she answered none of them.

Alexandria was sitting on her couch.

"Amelia," the heroine said. "Sit down, please."

She was only being polite to keep up appearances. Amy knew Alexandria could kill her before she even got a shot at decaying the heroine's flesh.

So Amy sat down.

"I trust you understand that we cannot have you not heal anyone ever again," Alexandria explained.

"Well, push to get my sister out of the Birdcage and I'll heal again," Amy said, simply.

"Speaking about that," Alexandria said, a bright smile on her face, "your sister never was birdcaged. She can't be released from a prison she is not being held in."

Amy frowned, then her eyes narrowed.

"Amelia... what do you know about Cauldron?"

So everything goes better because Amelia is with a family that loves her instead of being stuck with Carol 'I Have More Mental Issues Than My Super Depressed Husband' Dallon.

Taylor triggers with a stupidly OP power because the Administrator Shard pinged off of Amy's shard. Also, no, she doesn't have full control over the biology of the monsters her power creates - she can give general directions to her shard, like "humanoid, armored, strong" but everything else is done by the QA based on its own settings. Also the entities she creates are much like Atlas in that they can't survive on their own and the Queen Administrator deliberately makes them unable to actually continue living without Taylor constantly feeding them more biomass.

Plus, the one she made against Leviathan is about her total limit in size - she was then using every other 'pest' animal she gathered from wandering around the city to keep it living while Leviathan was tearing it apart. She does still wind up pulling a Khepri in the end, and Amy is consumed with guilt because she was the one who turned her sister into the Vegetable that effectively killed Zion.