Andi Lassiter

Profile
"Friends are what matter. Everything else can wait."

Andrea is a scientist who gave up her EDC job to 'truly live life', and currently works at a local children's center. Her free-thinking attitude allows her to view the world without prejudice or malice, looking for only the best in those she meets. This almost hippy-like demeanor gives her the appearance of a somewhat airheaded and flighty individual, but her sharp intelligence and knowledge of specific scientific fields is still there, waiting for a puzzle to pique her intellectual curiosity. Then she could surprise people with her intensity and focus on the new challenge, though she will still not allow her curiosity to interfere with what she thinks is more important: her friends and acquaintances. She knows about the Transformers, but has had VERY little exposure to them and is insatiably curious, wanting to learn everything she can about them. She knows there are 'evil' ones out and about, but being ignorant of how to tell them apart, is likely to greet a Decepticon in as friendly a manner as she would an Autobot.

History
Andrea Elizabeth Lassiter was born in a Bay Area suburb on August 5, 1970 to a modestly well to do familiy. Her childhood was for the most part a normal, uneventful one except for her 5th grade year, when she was ill with measles and had to spend the entire summer indoors. It was during this time that she started gaining an interest in math, physics, and the like from a second cousin who was babysitting her for her parents and studying at CalTech. Andrea's remaining school years primarily focused on this interest, and she graduated with sufficient honors to win a scholarship in math and physics from CalTech.

Her college years were much like the rest of her education, practically all of her time and attention focused on her studies, earning her the reputation of 'the ghost of the math department'. She gained her doctorate in Mathematics with a masters in Theoretical Physics by the year 1996, and was hired to do research for a corporation which would in the following years become the research and development division of the EDC. She was completely dedicated to her work and would spend every waking moment in her laboratory conducting experiments and testing theorems, to the exclusion of all else. When the EDC started researching technology shared with Earth by the Transformers, she was one of the main researchers and completely fascinated by the inpouring of new theorems and figures to explore, despite knowing surprisingly little about the sources of information. In fact, in the years she spent studying the wealth of new technology, she only once or twice came into contact with any Transformer, and then she was so intrigued by her work that she dismissed all but the most basic facts about these new friends of humankind.

She continued in this manner, living basically in the little tunnel vision realm of her laboratory until the winter of 2007, when she was preparing an experiment to track and quantify the techniques used by the Transformers to transform raw materials into their special form of energy. She of course had not paid any attention to the weather conditions outside her research facility, which were quickly building into a nasty winter storm. With the experiment ready to start Andrea was excited beyond imagining at the possibility that /this/ time she would finally understand the principles involved in creating energon. She started the experiment and was tracking the influx of data when the storm outside knocked out the power to her research facility. Cursing the terrible timing, she proceeded to manually abort the equipment, forgetting to discharge the static buildup on her person before touching the machinery. The tiny but sudden addition of the static electricity was enough to catalyze the energon creation that had been interrupted by the power loss, and without the safeties the machinery would normally have had, the energon expended all of its recently converted energy in a small but violent explosion. Andrea was nearly killed in this explosion, and despite superior medical technology spent several months in a coma.

When she finally emerged from her coma she spent the ensuing year or more in physical therapy to recover from the ordeal, during which she gave her life, past, and current situation a great deal of thought. These thoughts and being brought into her physical therapist's circle of friends brought her to the realization that her life had been very narrow before the accident, merely existance and not truly living. She decided to not return to such an existence, and informed her superiors at the EDC of such. They understood that she had been through a traumatic experience and probably needed time to evaluate her position, so they granted her indefinite leave from her duties on the condition that if an extreme enough need arose, she could be called in to resume her duties and assist with the emergency. She agreed to the condition and left the EDC, in most respects for good.

Andrea took advantage of the changes in her career to effect more changes in her lifestyle. She moved out of her spartan little living quarters near the EDC complex and started renting a quaint little home on the outskirts of the city, just far enough to enjoy nature yet still close enough to the city to not be considered remote. She took a parttime job assisting at a children's center somewhat local to her home to pay the bills, and to start interacting with people, something she had done only infrequently before. It is in this job that several of the younger children she works with gave her the nickname 'Andi', after she told them about her parents naming her after an uncle. So now she spends her days in a simple and somewhat carefree manner, enjoying each day as it arrives, and making the best of everything she can.