The crowd cheered as their mistress, the grim Madam Guillotine welcomed another terrified lover into her arms. It was said that the guillotine was painless, but even if that were the case the path to that hungry Delilah through the crowds of outraged citizens and those nightmarish prisons compensated in sheer terror. In the Place de la Barri�re du Tr�ne, women sat, knitting, gossiping, and shouting down the helpless human chattel in the arriving tumbrils. Children danced and shouted, and men spat. These people appeared more like demons than human beings. This was the produce of the Revolution.

From the window of an apartment above the melee, Jean-Claude Leroux watched the chaos below. Not the countless stream of men, women, and children waiting to lie in the arms of that bloody lady, but watching the crowds, scanning the faces of those screaming for blood. How had men succumb to this savagery? Of this Citoyen Leroux could write volumes, for had it not been the work of men of evil intent that created the man that he was? His cold blue eyes scanned the crowd like a hawk in search of prey, his lip drawn thin - one could easily image that those lips had never broke into a smile, his skin was pale save for a gruesome scar at his left temple - a token of a painful experiences, and a scarlet cap pulled low over his brow.

Those cold eyes hovered then fixed on a face, a chance encounter? perhaps, but then luck had always favored Citoyen Leroux to be in the right place at the right time. Leroux recognized the face, it had been a few years since last he had gazed upon that face. In a heartbeat, Leroux was out of the apartment and down the stairs, he weaved quickly through the crowds founding his prey. He was close, the quarry hadn't seen, but some uncanny instinct to survive must have warned him of approaching danger for he quickly broke away from the crowd and slipped down the street and into a lonely alley. Leroux followed - quick, silent, predatory. He found the citizen sitting on a step before a boarded door, head in his hands. The man looked up startled by the man who seemed to have come from no where.

"You look most unwell, citoyen," Leroux said in tones that sent chills down the other man's spine.

"Do I know you, citoyen?"

"Have I changed so much, citoyen?" Leroux replied, his eyes flashing dangerously, his voice filled with rage and hatred. "It shocks me that you would not recognize your own handy work!"

"Of what do you speak?" the other man asked, but truth appeared to be dawning on his face even as he spoke.

Leroux came ever nearer, "Did you think no one would recognize you, citoyen? Your kind are worse than most of those souls being hauled to the guillotine for their heiritage. How many people did you torture?"

The other man stood and pressed himself against the wall inching away from his accuser. "What do you want?"

"What do the people want? Justice, citoyen, justice!" Leroux followed driving the back into the crowd. "But it is important that you know who it is that brings this justice down upon you, do you not recognize me yet? Or were there so many?" They were among the crowd now.

"You wouldn't do anything here," the man whispered.

Leroux sneered, then cried out in a booming voice to the savage crowd around them, "Citoyenes! Look before you! A traitor attempts to slip from your grasp! Here before you stands a guard for the ci-devant Capet! A prison guard who tormented our people in the name of a murderous king! Shall you let this traitor go free? Or will you show him the justice of the people?" The crowd, already incensed by the spectacle before them, turned upon Leroux's quarry and seized him, pummelling him, tearing him; he was engulfed in a sea of demonic faces. He could see Leroux standing a short distance away watching, unmoved before he disappeared under that blood-thirsty mob he recognized that face and gasped.

Leroux slipped away, slightly sick to his stomach at the display, but he acted for justice and for honor even if it was his own. It was all he had left. Men like that had stripped him of everything... it was only right that they died by the violence they lived by.

Citoyen Leroux found a small tavern nearby and entered, ordering the strongest beverage they offered and tried to forget the events that had made him what he was.