BIOGRAPHY - page 1
Named after her grandmother, the person who taught her that the future could be seen in a deck of cards, Marie-Ange Colbert was blessed, or perhaps cursed, with the ability to see fragments of the future as one of her mutant powers. Good natured, she was raised at a convent school in Lyons, France. Due to her ability to foretell the future, she knew that one day Emma Frost, the White Queen of the Hellfire Club, would come to take to her to America.
She also knew that she would become inextricably bound to Christopher Aaronson, whom she soon met while at Emma Frost's Massachusetts Academy. Even though she had apparently not 
known him for long, Marie-Ange was incredibly saddened when she had to say goodbye to this young man five months later. Unfortunately for her, Aaronson had refused to accept Emma Frost's offer for him to become one of her “Hellions” and he thus no longer had any place among her students. Marie-Ange told Christopher that she had known he would not stay, but that she had hoped he would. Christopher tried to convince Marie-Ange to leave with him, but she told him it was her destiny to remain. Christopher promised Marie-Ange that he would return for her. [X-Force (1st series) #87]
Like the other Hellions, Marie-Ange was to use a codename and, based on the nature of her powers, took the name of Tarot. Shortly thereafter, she and her teammates would meet the team of young mutants called the New Mutants, who would become their natural rivals. Though students of the Massachusetts Academy, the Hellions were in fact the wards of the Hellfire Club, a group of wealthy mutants who had already had many altercations with the heroic X-Men, of whom the New Mutants were wards. Their first encounter between the two groups occurred when the New Mutants snuck into the Hellfire Club to rescue Kitty Pryde, whom the White Queen was holding prisoner.
During the battle, Tarot displayed her ability to animate images from her tarot cards and command them to do her biding, as when she used the devil card against Mirage and summoned an actual demon. To her surprise, however, the devil was destroyed when Magik used her Soulsword to cut 
through it. Already startled by the move, Marie- Ange became afraid as Magik then lunged for her, so she responded by summoning the knight of swords. The battle came to an end when Magik teleported herself and Mirage away. [New Mutants (1st series) #16]
Summoned to a meeting with the rest of the Hellions afterwards, Tarot was thinking of the New Mutants when the lover card fell from her tarot deck. Seeing this, the White Queen grew concerned, knowing how Tarot ran her life by her cards. Worried that the cards would affect Tarot's loyalty to the Hellions, the White Queen decided to keep a watch on her young charge. The concern was possibly not without merit. Already kinder than some of her teammates, Marie-Ange hung back from the subsequent confrontation with the New Mutants. [New Mutants (1st series) #17]
When the New Mutants were killed and resurrected by the Beyonder, the White Queen had Tarot's teammate, the cruel Empath, manipulate the emotions of the New Mutants' headmaster, Magneto, into enrolling the Hellions' rivals into the Massachusetts Academy. Under this manipulation, Magneto came to believe that Emma Frosts' telepathic abilities could help the New Mutants deal with the traumatic experience. However, Tarot's cards told her that there was more to the New Mutants' arrival at the Massachusetts Academy than she and her teammates were told. Indeed, the ruse was eventually discovered by Magneto and the New Mutants returned to the Xavier School. [New Mutants (1st series) #39-40]
After the Hellfire Club and the X-Men began an uneasy alliance, the New Mutants and Hellions found themselves in contact again when the New Mutants attended a ball at the Hellfire Club. Tarot found Cypher looking uncomfortable and approached him, asking him if he wanted to dance. Thinking that she was put up to this by the White Queen. Cypher responded rudely to Tarot, who walked away clearly upset by his comments.
Marie-Ange kept to herself throughout the remainder of the party while some of her teammates and the New Mutants caused a bit of trouble. At the center of the argument were Cypher and Roulette, who were quite intoxicated, and each team blamed the other for influencing their own teammates. Rather than face the wrath of Magneto and the White Queen, the two teams agreed to settle the score via a contest in which each team would track down the crook who had sold the Hellfire Club a forged statue. Tarot consulted her cards and learned that the Hellions' prospects were favorable. Indeed, the Hellions did win the competition against the New Mutants. [New Mutants (1st series) #53-54]
The Hellions were having a weekend away at the Hellfire Club in New York when they learned of the mysterious creature dubbed the Bird-Boy. When the Hellions discovered the New Mutants were going to find Bird Boy, the Hellions wanted to find him as well. By this time, many of the Hellions, including Tarot, had become somewhat fed up with their teammate Empath's attitude. Tarot listened in on his conversation with the White Queen, in which she told Empath that he had better get “the prize” for her. Tarot misunderstood what the White Queen meant – she was 
referring to the New Mutant Magma, in whom Empath happened to have developed an interest. When Tarot told Empath that he was unlikeable, he used his power over emotions to manipulate her, until their teammate Thunderbird interrupted and warned Marie-Ange to stop baiting Empath. Needing transport to start hunting down the Bird-Boy, Tarot produced the lover card and conjured up a projection of the lover to carry them across the city.
When the Hellions and New Mutants caught up with each other on their scavenger hunt for the Bird-Boy, Tarot set several projections against the New Mutants to distract the rival team. However, when Magma burned Tarot's cards, all of the projections she had generated with them, including the lover, faded away and the Hellions plummeted towards the city below. Fortunately, one card was restored by Roulette's luck power and Tarot conjured up a projection of the devil, to which the team was able to cling for safety. Unfortunately for the Hellions, this one remaining card was later destroyed by Magma as well. As the two teams clashed, Thunderbird was manipulated by Empath into taking Mirage as a hostage, while Empath attempted to use his power on Magma. To his surprise, Magma was able to shake off his emotional manipulation and responded by starting an earthquake and demanding that Mirage be freed. When the outmatched Empath was forced by Thunderbird to hand Mirage over, Tarot pointed out that it was Empath who had lost the battle for them. To this, Empath hinted at there being more at stake here than Marie-Ange was aware and then asked Tarot what she would give him when she saw how he had won. [New Mutants (1st series) #56]
When Magma transferred to the Massachusetts Academy to be closer to Empath, she joined the Hellions. Tarot initially appeared to dislike the new member of the team and, during a training session, baited Empath about Magma being his girlfriend. Empath accused Tarot of being jealous, as he believed that it was Tarot herself who wanted to be his girlfriend, and even used his power to manipulate her. Despite her previous animosity towards her, Magma came to Tarot's defense. However this was not the end and Empath later told the White Queen that Tarot was weak. [New Mutants (1st series) #62]
When the White Queen discovered someone had accessed her personal files on Firestar, she traced the hack to the headquarters of the New Warriors. Tarot and the Hellions accompanied their headmistress, who negotiated with the New Warriors' housekeeper into a wager that whichever team won the battle would lay claim to Firestar. As the New Warriors and 
Hellions battled, Tarot found herself up against the telekinetic Marvel Boy. Marie-Ange conjured several projections at once and kept her opponent busy, but Marvel Boy eventually overpowered them all. When Tarot responded by producing the death card, Marvel Boy used a powerful psychokinetic blast to knock Marie-Ange out. Ironically, Marvel Boy himself was suffering from an earlier injury and the use of his power knocked himself out as well, leading to a draw between the two. In the end, the Hellions lost the overall battle and departed without Firestar, though the White Queen warned the New Warriors to stay out of her way. [New Warriors (1st series) #9-10]
When it became clear to her that she was being targeted for assassination, the White Queen invited the X-Men to a party to discuss. Tarot and her teammates were present when the White Queen brought in the latest would-be assassin and used her telepathy to cruelly interrogate the individual before the X-Men. When Storm moved to intervene, unwilling to watch what she deemed torture, the Hellions advanced to defend their headmistress and a skirmish broke out between the two teams. Ultimately, it was Jean Grey who stopped the battle, suggesting that the two teams should work together instead of leaving themselves open to attack.
That attack came sooner than expected, beginning with the arrival of Trevor Fitzroy, a member of a team of homicidal mutants called the Upstarts, who had targeted the Hellfire Club and were ultimately behind the assassination attempts. Fitzroy had already taken out two of Tarot's 
teammates when the danger intensified with the arrival of Donald Pierce, who was being chased by several of Fitzroy’s Sentinels. Though she found herself one of their first targets, Tarot was saved when the X-Man Colossus came to her aid. However, Colossus too fell to the Sentinels and Tarot only had time to conjure a witch from the few cards she had not dropped in the confusion. Unfortunately for her, a Sentinel fired a blast that passed effortlessly through the witch and struck Tarot, who screamed as she was struck.
Though Fitzroy was ultimately defeated, the victory was not without its cost. The Hellions were decimated not only by the Sentinels but by Fitzroy himself, who drained the life-force of several Hellions, including Tarot. The death of Tarot and her other students haunted the White Queen in the years that followed, the tragedy shaping her psyche and actions as much as anything before. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #281-282]