- Born in Atlantic City to a Showgirl and a Casino Dealer with ties to organized crime in Greece. Lived in lower middle class, rather neglected by her parents and left to fend for herself. She fell in with a bad crowd as early as middle school and by Junior High, the bad crowd had become a gang.
- When her powers manifested, Jenny's gang was surprisingly accepting: having a mutant was weird, sure, but a mutant who could control the gang's luck wasn't exactly a bad thing. Jenny had practice using her powers and became rather good with them, using her abilities to help her gang win fights and escape the police.
- Eventually, her luck ran out: Jenny and the gang were busted by the police and Jenny was sitting in a holding cell when Emma Frost walked in and suddenly, Jenny's luck was turning around.
- Emma took Jenny to Massachusetts and enrolled her at her Massachusetts Academy. She did her best at school, but she REALLY excelled at using her abilities and appreciated the classes where she was encouraged to do so. She also befriended a number of other mutant students with a similar 'It's us or them' philosophy of using their powers to better themselves, no matter the cost to bystanders. She and the other Hellions began bullying the 'normal' students at the Academy, feeling like they were invincible. They weren't.
- Eventually, the anti-mutant groups stepped in and Jenny was arrested for an incident that resulted in some minor property damage. She was sitting in a holding cell and waiting for Miss Frost to step in like she'd done before and bust Jenny out of there. But Miss Frost never came.
- Jenny spent 3 years in MRD holding, being poked and prodded by scientists. On a good day, the guards neglected and ignored her. On a bad day, they sometimes vented their anti mutant frustrations on her. Jenny had nothing to do but think about her life and what had happened to lead her to this point, and she placed her blame squarely on the shoulders of Emma Frost: both for bringing her out of New Jersey and for abandoning her when she was arrested.
- The fact that her power wasn't destructive or really flashy was something she'd often lamented during gang squabbles, but it was actually what saved her life: the guards tended to pay less attention to her, thinking that she couldn't do much harm. When her unit was being transferred to a different facility on the east coast, Jenny was able to slip away thanks to creative (and liberal) use of bad luck discs on her captors.
- It was after she escaped that she learned that her incarceration might have actually been a good thing, in a roundabout way. The night Jenny spent in a holding cell in Boston was the same night that the Massachusetts Academy was attacked by anti-mutant activists. Had she been there, it's likely that Jenny would have been injured or even killed in the attack. Of course, had she escaped injury or death, she probably still would have been captured.
- Jenny kept a low profile and returned to New Jersey. She found that her gang had since disbanded and that those who remained blamed HER for what happened to the others. They'd since taken on a decidedly anti-mutant sentiment and Jenny got out of Dodge as fast as she could and made her way to New York City, hoping to lose herself.
- She's spent the last few months scraping by by hustling pool and using the skills she learned on the streets. For now, that's enough. Soon, though, she's going to want more: she's going to want revenge. And she'll throw her lot in with the first group that looks like it can help her get her hands on Emma Frost.
Self-Preservation - Jenny is, first and foremost, a survivor. Years of looking after herself have taught her that no one else is going to help her and no one else can be counted on. Her belief that everyone will eventually betray her prevents her from really getting close to anyone: she doesn't have 'friends' so much as she has 'allies' and when push inevitably comes to shove? She'll cut and run and leave everyone in the dust if it means she escapes.
Joiner - While Jenny doesn't like to have close friends who could ultimately betray her, she's also someone who longs to be in a group. Jenny has spent so many years identifying as part of a group - her gang, the Hellions, the MRD inmates - that being on her own is a frightening prospect. Jenny feels safer in a group of people, both where people might have her back and where she won't necessarily have to think for herself. Jenny's not really the brains of any operation, but she's content to just go along for the ride - no matter where that ride may be headed.
Bully - Jenny is mean, there's no nicer way to put it. She was raised in a world where you were either tough or dead, and so she became tough. She needed to be viewed as strong at all times, and sometimes the easiest way to make yourself look good is to make someone else look bad. Jenny is a bully, both in the 'fist to the face' sense and the 'make your best friend cry' sense. She can cut someone down physically or emotionally and she feels no real regret: that's just the way the world works.
Party Animal - Had Jenny continued her education, it's likely she would have spent most of her college years either drunk or hungover. She's the kind of girl who likes to have a good time and will party hard whenever she can. Being on her own and with limited funds has curtailed this instinct somewhat, but there are still times when she's keen on drowning her sorrows and dancing her cares away in an effort to make herself feel better.
Gentler Side - Jenny does have a softer side, but it's severely atrophied. Over the years, the good girl she was has been disappearing, replaced by a hard woman who learned that she can't get hurt if she isn't vulnerable. Jenny's seen (and inflicted) so much cruelty in her young life that 'compassion' and 'remorse' are like atrophied muscles to her. If she continues down her current path, it's likely that she may never recover and will be a true Bad Guy forever.
PROBABILITY MANIPULATION: Roulette has the ability to alter probability on a small scale. Her power manifests in the ability to form discs of energy that will alter the luck of whoever they come in contact with. These discs are roughly the size of poker chips and come in red or black. Red 'chips' will give someone good luck and black chips will give them bad luck. The severity of the luck depends on how much energy Jenny focuses into each of them: instantly generated chips are fairly weak (i.e.: 'you trip on an untied shoelace' or 'you find five bucks on the floor of the cab when you get in') but if she focuses for several seconds, the luck can be stronger (i.e.: 'the bullet that might have otherwise hit your lung instead just grazes your ribs' or 'you mistime your jump and instead of landing safely on the rooftop, you hit the fire escape hard and sprain your ankle').
The chips have no physical mass, and will be absorbed on contact. It should be noted that Jenny has no direct control over what will happen to someone, just whether it will be good or bad. If a chip is absorbed by someone, they will generally experience the luck almost immediately. If the energy is absorbed by an object, (for example, if Jenny puts a bunch of bad luck on an old catwalk as she's running over it) then the luck will affect the next person who comes into contact with it (for example, the catwalk might give way unexpectedly under the weight of whoever is on it).
IMMUNITY: It should be noted that Roulette is generally immune to her own powers. Her body will not absorb the energy created by her chips, and the best Jenny can do in any given situation is give a lot of good luck to the people around her and hope she gets it by proxy - though this isn't always beneficial. After all, if she's the only person in a small area WITHOUT a good luck boost, then whatever bad thing might have happened to them is just MORE likely to happen to her.
Jenny does, however, benefit from a slight 'Lady Luck' field around herself, which isn't always a good thing. Perhaps because of the nature of Jenny's abilities being both positive and negative, Jenny's luck tends to run both ways: something that seems (and is) bad will eventually turn out to have a positive outcome, just as a run of good luck will usually end in disaster for her. Jenny has literally no control over this ability and in fact isn't even aware that it exists at all.
PICKPOCKETING: One of the skills Jenny learned with her gang for fun and which she honed in her time on the streets out of necessity, pickpocketing is just how Jenny gets by. She can spot an easy mark and palm a wallet on the subway or a crowded street and will usually be able to get away with it if her subject isn't too paranoid or watching too closely. Part of the skill involves knowing who she can and can't get away with the trick on, though she's made a few mistakes in the past which have almost cost her dearly. The sleight of hand involved in picking someone's pocket is also enough to help her palm cards and cheat both in actual games and at three card Monte.
GAMBLING: Jenny was raised with Casinos and as such she is very familiar with gambling - not just the way the games are played, but the way you should play the game at a Casino. She can bluff with the best of them and she knows enough about Casino security to know what she can and can't get away with in terms of her abilities. Outside of Casinos, she knows enough about betting to be a fairly successful bookie and could likely find work as a dealer in a Casino if she had a fake ID.
CRIME: While she's no criminal mastermind, Jenny has been rather involved in crime in the past. Pickpocketing, vandalism, graffiti, minor breaking and entering, minor assault, carjacking and even a mugging are all things under Jenny's belt. More often than not, these crimes are perpetrated in the company of others - her gang - and Jenny almost never was in charge of any of the events. Generally speaking she tended to be a lookout, but she knows her way around criminal activities and knows how to hot wire a car, even if she would be completely outsmarted by an alarm.
BRAWLING: Jenny is not a finessed fighter by any means. She doesn't know Krav Maga or Kung Fu or how to use a bo staff. What she does know is how to throw a decent punch and what targets to aim at in order to take someone down quickly. While she can't exactly do tricks with a butterfly knife, she could cause some serious damage with a pocketknife - though she's just as likely to wield a broken bottle if it's more convenient. Jenny doesn't usually fight to take someone down permanently: she fights to buy herself enough time and/or distance to escape and live to fight another day.
POWER_USE: Jenny has been using her powers longer than most unaffiliated mutants. Emma Frost trained her Hellions to be able to use their abilities to the BEST of their abilities, and even though the kids may not have had the best intentions, they certainly could put their money where their mouths were. Jenny understands her limits and can think creatively when it comes to using her powers in practical situations. And while she's not actually very good at being a team player, Jenny knows how to exploit the abilities of others and can react quickly to being in a situation with another mutant where they must use their abilities together in order to achieve a higher end.
MATH: Though it's probably more a result of her love of gambling than anything else, Jenny has a knack for numbers. It's nothing really savant like, but she's quick to do math in her head, especially when it involves money or gambling. Odds, interest, tip… the stuff that most people need to break out their cell phone calculator to figure out, Jenny can do with relative ease. She's not enrolling in MIT anytime soon, though: calculus, geometry and trig are all still pretty beyond her scope, though she could probably pick them up, given the opportunity and inclination.
SAVINGS: Back before the gangs, before the Hellions and before the MRD… Back when Roulette was just Jennifer Lynn Stavros and she was am adorable little blonde girl, she was the very first granddaughter that Pappou Stavros ever had. Jenny's grandfather opened a savings account for his granddaughter in her name and placed two thousand dollars into it. He told Jenny about it when she was ten years old, and said that it was their secret, afraid that her parents would empty it out to cover expenses. The money, he'd said, was to give Jenny a future. Now it was all the money she had in the world. The savings account was high yield, and there's a little under four thousand dollars in it now - which is all the money Jenny has to her name. Certainly not enough to pay rent in a New York City apartment, but enough to keep her fed and clothed and sleeping in shelters.
CARDS: Playing cards are cheap to come by, but it should be noted that Jenny keeps a few decks on her at all times - they're useful if she needs to hustle a little three card Monte. One of her few possessions in the world is a full poker set complete with chips and two decks of cards.
WANTED: Jennifer Stavros is a fugitive wanted by the New Jersey Police Department for a number of crimes committed while she was a minor. Now that it's been established that she is a mutant, her case has been handed over to the MRD. She has managed to escape from their custody, and while she's not considered dangerous enough to devote a lot of resources to, it's understood that if she pops up again, the MRD will try to apprehend her. Jenny has managed to acquire a fake ID, but without a social security card, she will be unable to hold any sort of legitimate job or hope of a normal life.
FIGHTER: This has nothing to do with Jenny's ability to throw a bunch but rather with her Inability to keep her mouth shut. Jenny is the sort of girl who likes to push people: she can't just let things go, she has to push boundaries and test people. She isn't content to just win an argument, she has to find someone's weakness and keep pushing it until she finds their breaking point. She is stubborn to a fault and she won't back down even when common sense says she should. The fact is that she goes looking for trouble and if she can't find it? She just may start it.
MUTANT: Jenny's lucky that her mutation is easy to hide because it's not exactly a good time to have messed up genes. Mutants are viewed as monsters, and as a result, Jenny has to keep her mutation hidden for fear of being turned into the MRD or worse.
