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It's probably not a good thing when the local cops have a betting pool for how old you'll be when you're arrested for the first time. It's really no surprise though, when you consider Dylan's home and childhood. Dylan didn't exactly have what you would call a stable or healthy home. His mother left when he was seven years old, in the care of his abusive, alcoholic father, who was a petty criminal. Micky, Dylan's older brother, was not much better than their father. Micky was, as they say, just born bad - the type that delighted in torturing small animals as a child. The fact that Dylan managed to come out of it with any sense of morals or ethics is amazing in itself.
After Dylan's mother left, he spent most of his time hanging around his older brother, idolizing and learning to steal from him, or at his father's mechanic shop after school. While he never did well at school - in fact, he spent nearly as much time in the principal's office than he did in class, he had a knack for cars. Maybe it was that he was desperate for positive attention from his father and so he tried harder. By the time he was twelve years old, he had stolen his first car and working breaking and entering jobs with his older brother. Of course, that was around the same time that he was expelled from school for running a craps game during recess. Dylan still claims that he only got in trouble because he won nearly fifty dollars off of his history teacher, who didn't want to pay up. Ironically, it was on one of Dylan's confiscated dice that Mister Simmons slipped, fell, and broke his arm. The school system failed him as much as his family did, because like nearly everyone else, they believed that he had nothing on his horizon but a life of crime, prison, and most likely an early grave, that he wasn't worth their effort trying to make a difference, since it wouldn't do any good, and Dylan bought into that hook, line, and sinker.
Yet despite the fact that his father, brother, and his "adopted uncles" taught him how to lie, cheat, and steal, Dylan somehow managed to a slight sliver of a kind streak. It wasn't uncommon for him to steal a package of meat or a handful of pieces of fruit, just to give it to one of the old ladies on his street that was barely surviving on governmental support. And while Dylan has been in more than his share of fights, violence for the sake of brutality has never been his thing. He would much rather pick someone's pocket than to beat them up and mug them - that was much more his brother's thing. Then again, most of Dylan's black eyes and busted lips came from either his brother or father. %r%rBy the time that Dylan was fourteen, school was mainly just for pretense. He was working for his dad's chop shop, boosting cars, and breaking them down afterwards. Often Micky would bring him along to act as a lookout or a driver for some of the bigger jobs. None of Micky's "crew" ever said anything, cause they knew that Dylan was one of them. However, Dylan's life got a major wake-up call when he was fifteen years old.
He was supposed to go with Micky on a job. It was going to be an easy, sure-fire thing - in and out, nobody the wiser. A couple hours before they were going to be leaving the house, Dylan slipped and twisted his ankle - bad enough that he couldn't walk. He ended up in the emergency room, stuck waiting so long that Micky went on without him. Things went south, and Micky ended up getting caught by a guard, who he beat nearly to death. Micky and the two other guys with him were arrested and sent to prison. For five months, Dylan made a weekly trip to the prison to visit his big brother - and to put money in Micky's account so that he could get smokes and other niceties. Unfortunately, Micky mouthed off to the wrong guy and was attacked and killed in the yard one day.
After Micky went to prison, Danny - Dylan's dad - expected Dylan to pick up the slack that Micky's absence had caused. But after Micky died, Dylan became more reckless. He took greater chances, and somehow managed to not get himself nabbed or killed. So the universe gave him a wake-up call, and he hit the cosmic snooze button. This went on for several more months, and as each month passed Dylan became more moody and the chip on his shoulder grew greater and greater. Until finally the second round of that wake-up call resounded again, and this time Dylan wasn't so lucky.
Dylan had the misfortune of running into one of Micky's rival crews, who was moving into the neighborhood. After one of the guys mouthing off about how Micky had gotten his in prison, Dylan flipped him off and told him what he could do to himself. The guy took a swing at Dylan, but stepped on his own shoelace and fell face first to the sidewalk, shattering his nose. Of course, Dylan laughed at him and mocked him. This only ticked the guy off more. After that, the crew chased after Dylan. The run was epic, through shops, through crowds, the chaos and mayhem was practically out of a movie. But Dylan's luck ran out, and he found himself trapped in an alley. The gang worked Dylan over and left him a bloody mess. They probably would have killed him, had a cat in the apartment three stories up not bumped a flower pot off the window ledge, sending it crashing down onto sidewalk, just as a police car was passing by the alley, getting the officers' attention.
The police saw the assault in the alley and broke it up. The four guys were arrested for assault and battery. Being a minor, the cops insisted on Dylan being checked out. Everything would have worked out, had a stolen wallet not dropped out of Dylan's pocket. He was arrested, after the paramedics finished checking him out. So he sat in a jail cell, not fifteen feet from the guys who were now swearing that they weren't finished with him and that by the time that they were, he'd wish they had killed him, when a man walked up with a proposal for him - either he could face jail for theft and destruction of private property, or he could go back to school? a special school for special kids like him.
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Luck Manipulation - Dylan has the ability to create luck - both good and bad. Unfortunately for him, he does not always have an exact control of exactly how his luck manifests. Sometimes, it is as if the planets aligns so that things just happen. He is at the right place, at the right time for everything to go right; or at other times, he is at the wrong place at the right time, and something goes wrong for all the right reasons. Dylan is the kind of guy that nearly always wins raffles, happens to be the lucky customer who makes the ten thousandth purchase at a local grocery store and wins a gift certificate, gets the best hands in a card game, or always seems to roll lucky 7's in craps.
Like most mutants, Dylan's powers first manifested with the onset of puberty. For the first several years, he was completely unaware of his mutation or his power. He just considered himself extremely lucky, when he even noticed. Dylan is constantly surrounded by an ambient luck field at all times. This manifestation of his power most commonly shows itself with him finding something that he might need or bumping into someone on the street that he just needed to see. The greater the manifestation of luck, the greater the consequence - creating a sort of cosmic balance. When he was fifteen years old, his luck kept him from being part of his brother's job that went south, by nearly breaking his ankle and sending him to the hospital, or being rescued by the cop when he was being beaten by the rival gang, only to have a stolen wallet fall out of his pocket in front of the same cop, getting him busted.
Dylan can't make the impossible happen, just the improbable. He can't make a gun blow up in someone's hand, but he can increase the likelihood of a bullet jamming or misfiring. Dylan cannot use his luck to knock someone down, but he can jinx them so that they trip and fall. Just as he can jinx someone, Dylan can also extend his good luck to someone. He can only affect someone's luck - good or bad - if he can see them. Dylan can affect someone if he can see their reflection, but seeing them over a live feed video camera is not enough. He can only affect one person's luck at a given time. Occasionally someone else might get caught as collateral damage. An example of this would be like Dylan jinxes someone so that a ventilation duct falls and hits them. The person standing next to that person might get hit by the duct or the person being hit just because they happened to be standing right next to that person. There is a distance limit to how far Dylan can affect someone's luck. At most, he can affect someone about a hundred yards away. The closer someone is, the less concentration is required; the further, the greater. At a hundred yards, it requires nearly one hundred precent of Dylan's concentration. So, if he is distracted or hurt, it becomes more difficult for him to affect someone, making it near impossible to affect someone's luck at a distance if he is so distracted.
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Stealth - From working with his brother and for his father, Dylan is exceptionally skilled at sneaking and hiding.
Sleight of Hand - Dylan has spent most of his youth learning to pick pockets, shoplifting, and stealing small things out of plain sight.
Lock Picking - Micky, Dylan's brother, taught him how to pick locks.
Auto-mechanics - Dylan has always had a knack for fixing cars, granted part of it came from working in a chop shop, but that's beside the point.
Driving - Dylan likes cars and motorcycles. He's by the time he was thirteen years old, he was already a getaway driver.
Unarmed Combat - Dylan has been in many fights throughout his life. While he isn't bad at delivering blows, he excels at avoiding them - from many, many years of practice.
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