Etiamsi Omnes, Ego Non

“{J}ust saying swear words and random pop-cultural references doesn't make it adult humor. If anything, it makes it more childish.”

-Nostalgia Critic, Casper review

The nervous ranks of the new order's soldiers and guards had been buzzing for some time with whispered reports of happenings in the land. They had to be whispered, as the actions were under active investigation and it would not do to too loudly trade what amounted to gossip. Guards and soldiers did not gossip, even if the concept of scuttlebutt had come of fighting forces. It was improper for the hyper-masculine new order guards to whisper fantastic tales. But they had to.

“Did you hear? He killed a thousand guards in one day, and never left even a hoofprint. And they were in damp ground!”

“I heard it was two thousand and that he did it while a general watched but he never noticed until one of their heads fell off.”

“I heard it was only one hundred, but he beheaded all of them with one move, and castrated them all at the exact same time.”

“Never mind a bunch of dead guys without balls, I heard he talked three separate assassination squads into defecting. And that it took one minute for each one.”

“It was three minutes, but they never actually found him. No one has ever found him. It was a note he left. Not like the note he leaves with the dead bodies, it was one that talked about defection.”

“I heard that when he raided a re-ed facility he removed more mares from there than the records indicated were within. He actually found stragglers in the paperwork!”

“According to this stallion from second sector he actually marched a hundred mares in front of a search party and got them to salute while he went by.”

The whispers hissed, like claws on a blackboard, across the ears of a fellow who truly felt disdain for weaknesses such as rumormongering. “Chattering mares!” The lesser General of Canterlot, Swagger Stick, was an imposing military stallion. His buff brown body was wrapped in the finest of steel plate armor, and he bore with him a large hand-and-a-half sword, as well as a spear strapped to his back, both without any difficulty. His icy blue eyes glared out at the guards he had found whispering. “You miserable fools! Talking about this traitor in hushed and giddy voices. I can't tell if that's fear... or admiration.”

“Fear, sir! Fear!” One of the guards cried out, unthinkingly, trying only to avoid the appearance of heretical thought.

General Swagger snarled deep in his throat. “Dismissed! Get out of here before I have your genders reassigned!” He was left alone with the desperate clatter of hoofbeats and rattle of armor. The idiots were hardly elite but they were what he had.

General Swagger had the unenviable task of hunting down a ghost. The rebels were easy fodder, most of the time, though occasionally their capture did more harm than good if facilities could be simultaneously raided or infiltrators brought into spaces where they could work harm. But the Phantom... that ghost was only just less impressive than his rumors made him out to be. No new order guard had even seen him, never mind laid a hand on him. They didn't even have a rumor of a name, just whatever moniker was convenient.

After the first dead guard and the first strange note there had been little interest. Rampant, kinky sex could dull the senses and reorganize priorities. But as time went on, folks noticed. Important ones. Then the Stag King noticed. Once he noticed, everyone noted, by necessity.

Re-education facilities raided, breeding facilities liberated, prisons opened. Surely it was not actually an army of one affecting the bottom line of the new order. But the Phantom had to be pulling all the strings, leading the rebels around like some grand puppetmaster. None of the captured rebels had ever said as much, even after weeks of 'creative' interrogation. Their orders had come through various channels, almost none of them the same, a testament to the creativity of the Phantom.

From the moment the matter had been shown to be serious, General Swagger had been gathering data on the Phantom, correlating every trace, every rumor that came form official sources. His extensive charts and serious focus had earned him admiration, which was good. It had also earned the attention of the Stag King, which had been a double-edged sword. Praise for his dedication was good. Being assigned to catch the ghost was anything but.

Pressure, scrutiny, constant oversight of officious drones reporting every twitch, wince or moment of rest directly to the Stag King. The bean counters ticked off every second of sleep, every moment spent having a meal, even sexual violations of prisoners, which were required, were timed for efficiency and speed. General Swagger had not entirely stopped eating and sleeping but he hardly would have noticed if he had.

Tenacity did not automatically equal success. It was a slow process, a careful one that required drawing together threads inch by inch, pulling the net tighter and tighter around the neck of one who had never even been seen, touched or indicated in any way other than hindsight.

Because of the pressure and the need to produce results, he had taken a large ready room and converted it into the epicenter of his universe. The walls were papered with maps which had been drawn on, wiped out and re-drawn on, as information changed to be more accurate or to wipe out what came out to be mere rumor. Images of what may have been the Phantom were arranged all around, not even giving up a hint of a race, let alone any feature. Cabinets bulged with reports, from facilities, guard stations, every city that was allowed to stand, all about the successes of the invisible enemy. All of it was muddled and muddied by his status as a grand manipulator, every activity potentially actions by rebels at the behest of the Phantom.

The noose was drawing tighter around the neck of the Phantom, General Swagger was sure. He had to be sure, because the noose was drawing tighter on his own neck. The Stag King, as was appropriate for a childishly greedy tyrant, was a creature without patience, who could not understand intellectual matters or the slow speed of complex situations. He wanted results, or else.

The pattern of the Phantom's attacks and successful activities seemed to be spiraling in slowly towards the capital city. A bold move but a necessary one. The Phantom would be filled with his hubris and ego, flushed with success and the seeming inability for anypony to stop him. He would need to strike at the capital as a strategic necessity as well. Small strikes elsewhere would never mean anything without stabbing at the heart of the new order.

General Swagger had calculated the probabilities for weeks, charting the strikes, measuring the distance traveled and time taken between each outrage against the new order. The last five days had passed in a flurry of magical injections of stimulants, gallons of coffee, a few nips of booze and the ever-present threat of the Stag King's unblinking toadies looming over him. He needed results. He had them at last.

“Tell his Supreme and Pitiless Invincible Majesty that I have the answer,” General Swagger rasped out, looking with burning red eyes on the small army of functionaries. They may have been a hundred, there may have been two. He could not tell and it did not matter. “He will be here, in the city, tonight. Give me as many detachments as possible. Blanket the place secretly, enforce the curfew more harshly, issue execution-on-sight orders for any suspicious ponies. Let us end this.”

The city was covered as required. Guard detachments filtered out into the buildings and discreetly onto the streets, attempting to look like simple, regular patrols. Curfew was pushed earlier and said to be even more inflexible than usual. General Swagger himself was given command of an elite unit, loyal ponies who had all served a turn as executioners of the innocent, who had proven they could be ruthless monsters. He needed all the monsters he could get to slay the Phantom.

The city was also covered in fog. Though the weather schedule had made mention of patchy fog, because there was more sex and debauchery the efficient functions of the prior regime had given way to stupid errors and snafus. The fog was like soup, swallowing up every patrol and turning them into the sole occupants of a white and clammy world.

General Swagger and his force were not immune. He plowed through the labyrinth of streets, half-blind and mostly mad, eager to end the game of cat-and-invisible-mouse. He knew what the Phantom wanted. To enter the palace and wreak havoc of some sort, either to slay important figures or capture valuable intelligence. He remained near the grand edifice, in theory. The streets twisted, the world twisted, his mind twisted. Reality was turning in on itself. But at least the Stag King would have no cause to destroy him.

Some figure struck him in the fog, some solid figure that moved to the side and said, “General, you almost caught me.”

“I have caught you!” General Swagger cried, whipping the great spear from his back and stabbing where the figure had moved. He heard a loud grunt and felt the impact of the tip on flesh. On the end of the spear was a shocked soldier, the pegasus coughing up blood while his wings flailed. “Of course... you're in a disguise! Dressed like a soldier! That's it!”

“You missed...” The voice mocked, from another location just far enough away that no thrust could reach it.

“Not this time,” General Swagger growled, yanking the spear from his murdered squad member and hurling it into the fog. A scream of agony answered the throw, and a unicorn came staggering into view, impaled on the great weapon.

“General... what..?” The soldier fell, his voice not that of the Phantom.

With a scrape of metal-on-metal the General pulled his sword, bleary and burning eyes watching the swirls of fog. “Come to me, Phantom! Come here in disguise. I know you wear the clothes of a soldier. Let me have at you...”

“General, we heard...” Another pegasus stopped in mid-sentence as the sword's blade whipped around, cleaving off his head with the same ease that it carved through the fog.

“Come to me! Face me! I tracked you! I fixed you here! I learned your little secrets! Now I will break you!” General Swagger became a whirlwind of steel, bellowing inarticulate shouts of hate and rage into the concealing fog. He hacked at walls, at poles, at anything. Including his own soldiers, who pulled in to see to him and to try and stop his mindless rampage.

All through the night blows rang off steel armor, and bellows echoed around the city. In the blanketing fog, with squads moving to subdue the insane Swagger Stick, none could be bothered to notice creeping shadows moving along alleyways and side-streets, bearing away papers, goods and unconscious figures.

Two guards walked through the halls of the army command building, which had so recently housed Swagger Stick's collection of papers on the Phantom. The paper had all been burned with the body of the former general. Both of the guards were of the honor guard detachment, in full plate with visored helmets. “I can't believe the General went crazy and started fighting the army. The Phantom must have made him defect,” the first one noted, quietly.

“I know. It was a complete shock. And the Stag King put so much trust in him. His Invincible Majesty was not wrong, of course. He was right to put that trust and just as right to take it away. General Swagger's execution this morning was another triumph for his Majesty. How right, beheaded and burned with all his failed plans and papers,” The second said.

“And now our assignment. It will be a real privilege to escort General Iron Fist to his new assignment. I hear that he's found a way to turn that failure into success,” the first said.

The two reached the double doors to a chamber and opened them up wide. The general was waiting within, his body propped up against the far wall, his head sitting in a pool of blood, dead eyes staring blankly at the doorway. Clutched tightly in his mouth was a piece of paper.

“G-guards!” the first one called out, looking desperately around for a trace of others.

The second rushed in and pulled out the paper, examining it carefully. “The Phantom...” He showed it to the other guard. Inscribed in blood were the words, Etiamsi Omnes, Ego Non. “This is what he puts on all his actions. 'Even if all others, I never will.'”

“Impossible... in the middle of headquarters... he even got the drop on the General...” The first noted rather helplessly.

“He'll just never be caught...” The second said quietly, letting the paper flutter to the ground.

“How can you even say something as heretical as that? The Stag King is almighty. He will find this monster,” The first insisted, pacing around.

“I know he won't get caught, because I know the fellow well,” the second said, in a dark voice. He drew a hidden blade from the belt of his attire and moved swifter than most could in heavy armor. The blade looked like it was made of silver, but glowed with the force of mana. Two insignia shone on the blade. The first, the dancing figures of Celestia and Luna, the sign of old Equestria; the second, a golden wheel of fortune with a mare dancing inside. The blade pulled smoothly across the throat of the first guard, right under the helmet and above his neck armor, his only noise being a wet splutter.

The knife was wiped clean with a single swipe through the dying guard's tail and hidden away again. Hoofbeats and clattering armor announced the arrival of further soldiers, who looked on the scene with fear. “What is the meaning of this?” The head guard asked.

“Quickly!” The Phantom cried, voice heavy with panic and fear, “He's heading west! He's killed the General and my fellow honor guard! I was surveying another hall! Go!”

The detachment scrambled, crying for reinforcements. While the guards of the halls marched west, chasing the ghost of a rumor, the real Phantom shed his bloodstained armor to free his limbs and ran off to the east.

“Con artists and spies are both professional liars. Cons do it for the money, and spies do it for the flag, but it's mostly the same gig. They run operations, they follow security procedures, they recruit support staff and issue orders.”

-Michael Westen, Burn Notice