Awesome / Small Favor

• The first time the Gruffs attack, they attack the Carpenter children knowing that Harry would be distracted and they might even get a lucky shot via him Taking the Bullet for them. And repeated attacks In the Back and Death from Above. Needless to say, it worked in cornering Harry.
  • One of them spots Molly under the veil via Mundane Solution - checking for footprints in the snow.
• Charity gets her own pretty quick. After hiding away her children, she drops right back into the fight Dual Wielding a nail-gun and a carpenter's hammer. She unloads the nail gun onto one Gruff holding down Harry, turning him into a Human Pincushion, before splattering his head via hammer. The rest of them bolt pretty quick.
  • Michael's Amazon Chaser moment when he hears the above with a huge grin is part CMOA, part CMOF. At which Charity blushes.
    My nail gun? (grins)
• How Harry escapes the second set of Gruffs. They chase him into an office building, so he goes up to the roof, and then climbs down the outside of the building, without magic. One of the three Gruffs try to emulate this, and fails. He lands on the iron shavings, nails, and staples Harry had collected as he moved through the building, then scattered on the ground.
• Fix getting the drop on Harry and Thomas, and Thomas drawing and holding Fix at gunpoint the instant Fix drops his guard.
  • Fix manages to work around his orders and the Queen's geas, using a mix of half-assed threats and curly talking to give Harry clues he isn't able to say out loud.
• Murphy facing down Tiny Gruff in Mac's bar. Which both Mac himself agrees is pretty awesome, as he then gives her one of the best beers he's ever made in recognition of the fact that she just saw off several tons of supernatural hitman. And she did it while keeping with the rules that the supernatural community uses! Tiny is on neutral ground, but Officer Murphy of the Chicago Police Department isn't bound by the same laws to not shoot Tiny in the face right there (with a steel-jacketed bullet, which would really hurt a creature of the Faerie) in the middle of Mac's pub. She is however bound to defend Harry, a citizen of Chicago, if Tiny keeps acting aggressive.
  • Tiny himself shows quite a bit of Villain Respect for her then
  • And at the end of the book, Murphy drives off Deidre by drawing the Sword of Faith one inch out of its scabbard.
• Michael Dual Wielding a broadsword and a katana against an ancient demonic entity and almost winning. And let's not forget his fight scene against the vampires in Grave Peril.
  "I don't call him the Fist of God as a pet name, folks."
• The entirety of the subway train station battle. No exceptions.
  • Harry and Michael visit the station for getting some stuff from Gard's locker there since Gard is injured. Only when they reach there the entire station goes dark. Harry tries to create light with magic, and when he can't, he realises to his horror that the entire place is covered with Myrk, an otherworldly darkness inducing substance from Nevernever which absorbs light, used by a group of light-sensitive Winter Fae while hunting. Realizing subway station is now a large buffet table, Harry despairs not being able to help people, Michael just pulls out his sword and prays for light. Lo behold, Amorachius glows with holy light powerful enough to push away the substance in a 20 foot radius.
  • Harry activating the sprinkler system to wash away the Myrk.
  • Michael singlehandedly cleans out an entire subway terminal filled with more than a hundred hobs.
    Michael: Lava quod est sordium! In nomine Dei, sana quod est saucium!^Translation Lord, wash away of the filth! In the name of God, heal that which is wounded!
  • "Tiny" aka Elder Gruff's Big Entrance by walking through one of the walls.
  • Harry takes him out by using his momentum to throw him into a pack of Hobs, then tricking him into getting caught in Gard's locker's magic security system, crippling him. Then spares his life, throughly confusing Tiny with the concept of a Winter Emissary showing mercy.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome Kincaid, Archive and Luccio slaughtering enough of those monsters to be soaking in their blood and coming out without a scratch.
• Harry risking near fatal hypothermia to protect Ivy and Luccio from it, knowing that their much smaller mass would result in the cold being fatal to them.
• The Archive fighting 8 Denarians at once, after disintegrating one of them. Oh, and she's a twelve-year-old girl. Little Miss Badass indeed.
  • And, because of an enemy spell, she's cut off from all magic except for that in the immediate area. Yes, she has almost nothing to work with, yet she uses what's lying around to kick ass.
    • To put that into further perspective, a spell is used to cut off all access to magic outside of a room barely big enough for several people (most of whom are wizards possessed by fallen angels) and she can only tap into magic in the air around her. AND SHE OWNS.
    • Don't forget that said spell is literally cast by Lucifer himself!
  • In a moment mixed with CMOF, Ivy dispatches The Brute Magog with a magical hamster wheel.
  • Not to mention her initial strategy: throwing up a quick veil and then just remaining still and hidden, forcing the Denarians to spend the very limited time they can keep the magic cut off hunting her down. If it hadn't been for Tessa threatening Harry and forcing Ivy to reveal herself, it very probably would have worked.
• Rosanna is able to compete with Nicodemus for most skilled Manipulative Bastard in the Order. She's so skilled that her Wounded Gazelle Gambit even fools Sanya, who knows she's not the scared girl in over her head that she pretends to be, into thinking there's some truth to the act. Harry, however, doesn't buy it for a second.
• Gard, an honest-to-god Valkyrie with a capital V, flying a Huey helicopter into battle while blasting Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" from externally-mounted speakers. Even her boss is impressed.
  • And along with that, Hendricks riding shotgun minigun.
• After being tortured by Fallen Angels and their psychotic hosts for an entire week, John Marcone flat-out refuses to leave his island prison first. Instead, he points to his fellow prisoner, the Archive—a twelve-year-old girl—and silently indicates that he wants her to be freed first.
• Eldest Gruff has personally killed three Senior Council Members (he wears their stoles as trophies). For reference, the weakest (or at least, the youngest and least skilled) council member currently around is Ebenezar, wielder of the Colony Drop, see Death Masks. Harry defeats him by asking him for a doughnut. Hilarious, too.
  • Its also worth pointing out that Eldest Gruff obliterates the Fallen Magog, as Harry puts it, "like an uppity pixie." Not only that, but he uses an absolutely painless attack that causes beautiful flowers to grow in the wounds, which can give the impression that Eldest kills Magog using Love and Peace.
  • It's a particular testament to Harry's awesomeness when Eldest Gruff informs Harry that among the Fae, stories of his exploits are their equivalent of the Billy Goats Gruff story.
  • The younger Gruffs also have their moments, particularly the second set of brothers, who reveal they are much more Genre Savvy than most other faeries when they break out the submachine guns to go Wizard-hunting.
• Low-key in comparison, but Kincaid kills two Fallen Angels with the same bullet.
• "Lasciel's shadow doesn't live here anymore." Followed by Harry supremely pwning and almost killing Nicodemus.
  • This Moment of Awesome should really be awarded not to Harry, because all he did was think on his feet, but retroactively to Lash, because it wouldn't have worked if she wasn't not there.
    • He was able to act good enough to fool Nicodemus, that should be something. Plus he’s the sole reason Lash repented.
  • Another addition, according to Word of Jim, Nicodemus is now terrified of Harry. Let me repeat that. Nicodemus, the two thousand year old man who has been fighting Holy Knights and the various supernatural entities in the world for literally thousands of years, is now terrified of a wizard less than forty years old.
• After the Denarian Tessa shoots his friend Michael with a machine gun as he's escaping, leaving Harry thinking that he’s dead, Harry quickly realizes that if he uses fire magic, the Summer Court would track him down in heartbeat, and that without his blasting rod, he would probably be unable to generate the power and precision needed to get past the defenses Tessa possesses. His response? "I officially did not care," and he unleashes his fury and his will against Tessa. "Burn!" Which results in a bar of blue-white fire so dense it's nearly a solid object slamming into the Denarian, burning a hole through her, a fire far more powerful and destructive than any Harry has ever used before, with or without a blasting rod. Don't mess with Harry's friends.^note For the record, this particular Denarian can escape harm by breaking up into swarms of tiny mantises. Harry hits her so hard and so fast that not even that could save her.
  • Made even more awesome by Ghost Story, when Harry says that that using a spell in a language you can speak with full fluency could cause brain damage or even kill you. He's just that pissed off.
  • It was a spell stronger than any fire spell Harry had ever cast before. Which includes one powered by Summer Fire itself. Also, it must be noted that, even without his rod (that Harry uses to be able to wield his evocations precisely) he manages to concentrate it and hit a very specific spot.
• An incredibly subtle one comes toward the end, when Luccio is telling Harry that the Merlin wants him to stay away from the Archive. She points out that Listens-To-Winds and Ebenezar McCoy were among those who warned the Merlin that Harry would never agree to that. Also among the group of people who knew Harry would never stop being friends with the Archive? Morgan. Keep in mind the relationship between Harry and Morgan thus far has been of the sword-swinging variety, and you'll understand just how significant that is.
• And we can't leave out that Mab took away Harry's blasting rod. Lots of Chekhov's Guns are fairly obvious, but very, very few are set up specifically by the failure to mention them.
• Murphy manipulating the situation so that she can learn one of Marcone's secret bases to report back, right in front of Gard, who can do nothing about it.
• Harry has learned from past adventures. When he catches Nicodemus unaware, he manages to grab Judas' noose (which protects him from everything but itself) and strangles him for long enough that Nicodemus ends up out like a candle. And the only reason he doesn’t die is because Harry drops him out of the ship to distract Deirdre.
  • Plus, it has physical consequences even years after. In Skin Game, Nicodemus speaks with a raspy voice due to the damage he took to his throat.
• Carol, the customer-service rep on the train station. Completely unaware of anything magical, caught in a magical crossfire, she takes care of the people around her, gathers them in one room, positions herself between them and the entrance, and starts praying—which is the only weapon at her disposal, and, given the circumstances, a pretty powerful one. It works.
• After Harry's surprise attack fails and Tessa has him strung up for questioning we get this gem:
  Tessa: Tell me where the little girl is.
  Harry: I wish I knew. That way I could exercise free will while telling you to go fuck yourself.
• Ivy snarking at Tessa. She's surrounded by literal Fallen Angels, with Kincaid not around and Harry trapped, and with only a limited reserve of magic-and she sasses the being who's implied to be the second most dangerous Denarian of all. Yup, she's definitely learned from Harry, all right.
• Luccio telling Harry that Kenmler's spirit of intellect was almost as powerful as Archive. Who? That's right, Bob.
• Harry vs Thorned Namshiel, the Archmage of Denarians. They trade CMOAs.

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