Lauren Drake

Vanguard: 2003 - Present
There was a week long crisis in 2003 where Dinah Lance had gone missing while on patrol. Bruce and Oliver were especially worried and finally came out to the "Super Friends" as being former members of the League of Assassins. They feared the League had kidnapped Dinah, intent of torturing her and by extension, Oliver. So worried were they that Bruce made me, Dick and Alfred spent the rest of the week in the Secret Sanctuary while the "big capes" continued the search. Eventually, she was found by Oliver in some warehouse lab and by the time the others had arrived, there was no one left to question about why they kidnapped Dinah. Dinah herself wasn't very helpful as she was heavily sedated the entire time.

Turns out, the League was behind it. Nyssa al Ghul had ordered Dinah's capture and used some goons hired through Oswald Cobblepot to handle it. Once Dinah was captured and sedated, they brought her to the warehouse, and there Nyssa and the League's resident mad scientist El Penitente took a variety of DNA samples. Supposedly they were going to clone her right then and there and replace with a replicant by Ollie's tenacity forced their retreat, leaving Dinah and the goons behind to ensure their own escape with the samples.

Vanguard is the product of these samples. Created in the lab sometime after the kidnapping, but put on ice when the clone turned out to not be a perfect match. Not wanting to flush the efforts. El Penitente continued to experiment on the clone, intending to use her as a Horsemen in Gotham's reckoning, but her brainwashing proved to be more difficult than expected. In 2013, she was training with the League when Tim Drake was undercover. When she was exactly put into active rotation is unknown, but sometime after meeting Tim she was put into service as the head of Nyssa al Ghul's personal guard and given the name 'Vanguard'. But even then, she did not please her master and this clone was returned to ice until she managed an escape during a covert raid on a League camp by The Team in spring of 2017. Having pierced fragmented memories together, she found her way to Star City where she had a very awkward reception, mistaking Connor Hawke for a young Oliver.

Given a chance at a better life, she joined Team Arrow and grew close to Cerberus. He later recruited her to join the Monitor's Artifacts and became the leader of the Bravo Squad. She's also developed an attraction to Hank.

Trivia and Notes

 * Vanguard is an original character created by MS225.
 * Lauren's red hair is the result of a genetic abnormality due to her cloning. Her green eyes are the result of El Penitente's experiments on her with the Lazarus Pit.
 * Vangaurd is based on Black Siren from Arrow.
 * Lauren is biologically twenty-seven years old.
 * Lauren would lose in a fight against Dinah.
 * Vanguard's civilian identity of Lauren Drake is a reference to the name of Dinah's mother, Laurel Drake.

Links and References

 * Appearances of Vanguard
 * Character Gallery: Lauren Drake