ANDROMEDA Name: Laurel Gander [a.k.a. Laurel Gand]
Hair: Platinum blond
Eyes: Blue
Height: 6' 2"
History: Laurel Gander hailed from a Canadian/US military outpost called 'Rock Reef Point' in the desolate Canadian shield where there were potential deposits of an ore that could produce an indestructible alloy dubbed 'Inertron'. This attracted the attention of Zander Roxxas and his terrorist organization White Triangle, who stormed the compound and stole the samples of Inertron. None of the occupants survived - save for Laurel, who activated the self-destruct of the base, which destroyed the Inertron samples and half of Roxxas' raiding party.
The shock of seeing her parents killed activated Laurel's latent meta-gene that gave her powers very similar to the fictional hero "Superman". Her only living relative Elton had her placed in the orphanage for her own safety.
There, super-powers did nothing to stop bullies verbally ripping her to shreds. Indeed, some of the worst taunting came from people who caught her practising her powers when she thought no-one was around. They could see her trying to restrain herself, and the knowledge that she'd basically have to ignore them or kill them seemed to embolden them rather than the reverse. Over time, this caused Laurel to force herself to learn not to react, or to show when she was scared or nervous, putting on an unshakeable veneer of confidence and certainty, no matter what.
Then, on the day after her sixteenth birthday, she was feeling especially depressed, when a discarded newspaper caught her eye. The announcement of the Legion of Super-Heroes by the billionaire R.J. Brande. Tired of staying put, too old to be adopted and too young to be released, Laurel grabbed her few belongings and snuck out of the orphanage, to seek out R.J. Brande and the Legion of Super-Heroes.
It was not to be. After she had been flying for hours, she began to lose hope. She didn't want to go through officialdom to get to the team - that would be begging for a rejection and for someone to try and send her back to the orphanage, but she didn't know where they were, and even with her speed and sight, she needed some idea of where to look to find them. The announcement hadn't said where their first mission was, only that they were "setting out." Still, she had time - she didn't actually need to eat, and she was flying high and fast enough not to be spotted. Or so she thought.
A McCauley "metahuman recruitment van" had been returning to base, four of it's five stasis pods full, when it caught a glimpse of her on their radar, and they managed to bring her down, knocking her unconscious with their laser cannon. They bundled her into the last free stasis pod, and returned to base.
The "base" was one of McCauley's metahuman storage facilities, where she stayed, in stasis, for around a week. In that time, McCauley chose her. as possibly the most photogenic of his captives, to be the leader of his public "Workforce." And this decision would genuinely change her life forever.
Because she was still, technically, a minor, she wouldn't be able to participate in all the activities McCauley desired for her. His solution to this was brutal.
First, she received a more intense brainwashing than any of the other Workforcers. Now, although her personality was essentially unchanged apart from the standard McCauley-loyalty inserts, she was the "nineteen years old" Laurel "Gand", with birth certificates and a new US citizenship under that name, obtained by McCauley through various bribes and blackmails.
Next, McCauley arranged for a young female subject of his program of experimentation, with uncontrolled pyrokinetic abilities to be adopted by the orphanage Laurel had escaped from. As expected, within a day, the building was ablaze. Between the fire itself, and McCauley men equipped with fireproof suits and flamethrowers, the only survivor was the girl who had unintentionally stated the blaze, who was immune to her own flame, and was retrieved in a near-catatonic state by the men in question. As the home had been tardy in reporting Laurel's disappearance, Laurel Gander was presumed to have died in the blaze.
Finally, McCauley arranged for Elton to be assassinated in an apparently random shooting, along with a few others in the same town to disguise the reasoning. His existence had been blocked from Laurel's mind in the brainwashing.
Now, with all those likely to recognise her dead, McCauley was free to announce Andromeda to the world as leader of the Workforce, and direct her as he would. In the end, she proved to be a capable, if slightly nervous leader of the team (although she hides it well), and a stabilising influence.
One thing that was not blocked from her mind, however, was what Roxxas' organisation (which remains active and headed by Roxxas himself) did to her, and the years in the orphanage this caused. Something else else which both McCauley and Laurel herself may have cause to regret eventually, as it remains the most traumatic event of her life, with a recent attack by the Triangle on a US Army depot causing her to cry for the first time in over five years at the memory of what happened and it's effects on her life.
Eventually, under orders from McCauley, she posed semi-naked for a men's magazine. Profoundly embarrassed by the event, and disturbed at herself for having done it, it led Spark to dare her to go to the comic-book superhero-themed Legion Hallowe'en party in a costume with a large cleavage hole to confront it - which she eventually succeeded in jostling her into doing after she said "you wear that [costume], and I wear a costume you pick for me, no questions asked. I back off, you can back off". Laurel chose a red leather with spikes for her, knowing Spark would hate it and hoping that it would cause her to "back off." While Spark indeed didn't want to wear it, she refused to back down, and the deal was sealed. Despite her embarrassment at the costume, however, the party passed without any great incident for Andromeda, save for a minor issue between Reflecto and Quislet.
Shortly afterward, Ultraboy was left comatose by an attack on the Workforce training ground, which disturbed her somewhat. Next, after being briefly introduced to his replacement, Inferno; she went to visit her parents' graves on the anniversary of their deaths, reminding her of how alone she felt, while her team threatened to fall apart as Spark and Polarity fell out as Enrapture preyed on Paul, Inferno didn't fit in and Dragonmage remained aloof. Then, a couple of days after giving Inferno a flying lesson, her own feelings came to a head explosively.
While scanning an arms depot with Enrapture for potential spy devices and infiltrators, she saw a White Triangle pendant around the neck of someone, who was immune to Enrapture's power and about to kill her. Before he made his move, Andromeda had punched through his head at a speed which shattered it into a million pieces. Mortified at her own actions, she left as soon as Dragonmage arrived to replace her at the scene, and heard as soon as she arrived back at Workforce HQ that any charges against her had been ruled out. She then sealed herself in her room, and curled up on her bed.
The next morning, Spark was sent to fetch her, and found her still cowering on her bed in her blood-stained costume. She forced her to wash and change to a fresh costume, and suggested she ask for a holiday. When they arrived downstairs, McCauley refused; even as her voice grew more frantic with each request. The mental strain led to her programming abruptly breaking. As soon as McCauley realised this, he had Blink send her away - to which Blink, guilty at her unwilling part in what had happened to Trinity, sent her to Legion HQ.
Her crash-landing into their lobby caused some disconcertion, with Leviathan almost ordering an attack before Cosmic Boy, seeing Laurel's confusion at her change of surroundings, stopped him. After Laurel told them what had happened from her perspective, Tela warned Cosmic Boy that while Andromeda was telling the truth, she was so angry that she would probably "kill McCauley and then herself", and Cos thus had Tela put Laurel to sleep for a while while he put together an unofficial team - including Livewire, Spark's twin brother, and Trinity, another McCauley victim - to save Spark, Polarity and any others they could.
When Andromeda awoke, she immediately realised what had happened, and started heading for Workforce HQ at high speed. There, she arrived just as McCauley was about to kill Gates. She immediately picked McCauley up by the neck, forcing him to drop the insect-like hero, and would have killed him, had Gates not talked her down by pointing out how she could hardly deal with what she'd already done. After knocking him out instead, she heard the ongoing fight between a great green monster and a group formed from Gates' friends and some of Cos' group just as the battle began to turn against the Legionnaires and their allies, and proceeded to take her frustration out on the "Hulk", knocking him for miles with a full-strength blow, before bursting into tears in the wreckage of the fight.
Thereafter, she chose to leave Earth for some time; only to crash back to the planet from lack of air and overexertion within a day. Sitting half-conscious in the crater of her own making, she was interrupted by a stranger. Her angry order to leave as she flew up to him was belied by her weakened condition from the crash, and she quickly fainted.
She awoke on board his time machine, where he'd scanned her and pronounced her fit to go, pointing toward the door. Still weak, she limped over to it, before one look at the crater caused her to slump down as she realised that she had nowhere to go. "The Doctor", as he called himself, then offered her the chance to travel with him for a while - albeit with some seeming reluctance - and she accepted.
She continued travelling for some months, during which time she healed from what had happened - both physically from her crash-induced weakened state, and mentally from the traumas of the Workforce. Then, finally, he brought her - much to her surprise - to meet and say goodbye to her young mother. Angry, she ended up bumping into her mum, and the quick scan she did to ensure she hadn't injured her mother led to a surprising revelation for her - her mother had been pregnant over half a decade before Laurel had been conceived, and almost two years before her parents had even met. They followed the trail for some time, discovering that her half-sister had been named Catherine, and adopted by a family called Masters. Over the years, they had ultimately moved across the border, to the town of Cathingham in the northern USA. There, only weeks after her crash, but after months of travel from her perspective, she and the Doctor said their goodbyes.
Laurel first made a base in Cathingham, finding a job with rich solar recluse Lydia Grath (who, unknown to Laurel, was the vigilante "Nightwatchman") and managing to find an apartment share with silver-skinned model Toni, who had plasma-generating powers of her own. Even after this, however, she continued dithering about contacting the person who had led her to the town to begin with, fearing rejection, until one day Toni had had enough and forced her to make the call. She arranged to meet Catherine in a public place, only to find that Catherine was a fan of hers from her Workforce days, and had super-powers of her own. After calming her down by going for a flight with her, they talked for some time, and agreed to keep in touch.
Powers/Abilities/Paraphernalia: Andromeda has Superman-category powers - notably flight, significantly enhanced speed, strength & durability, "heat vision," telescopic, microscopic & "X-ray" vision and super-hearing. However, she needs to concentrate a little to dampen her super-hearing at all times, as unrestrained, she can hear and comprehend every conversation in a ten-mile radius, but can't deal with such a sensory overload any better than any other human.
Her characteristic star-shaped earrings are lockets, each containing a picture of her parents.