Awesome / The Great Alicorn Hunt

• What Twilight does with Star Swirl's spell this time around is the worthy start for the awesomeness in this story; not only does she cause her own ascension but that of her five friends!
• Fluttershy's little brother Bishi, a colt as timid as she is, showing off his martial-arts skills to defend the CMC from some bullies.
  • Applejack and Celestia, upon finding out said bullies tried to beat up the CMC (and did actually torment Babs at school in Manehattan), send them to work at Sweet Apple Acres in lieu of being sent to Juvie for assaulting what are now members of the royal family. Not only do they end up having to deal with a pissed-off Big Macintosh and Granny Smith, there's no way their parents' money and influence can get them out of this, thanks to a quick Royal Decree.
• At the Coronation Gala, Rarity socially slaughters Prince Blueblood in retribution for his behavior at the Grand Galloping Gala. He was so humiliated that the footnotes state that "...he spent a month trying to become a reclusive hermit while retaining his household staff."
• Just before the hunt itself begins in chapter 12, Fluttershy tells Discord to behave himself, or else. Discord sarcastically asks if the "else" is The Stare, which he had previously shown to be (mostly) immune to.
  Fluttershy smiled sweetly. "Yes." Then she gave him the Stare. The new, improved, you-forgot-I'm-an-alicorn-now-didn't-you Stare.
  • It obliterates his eyes and scorches the rest of his face.
• Rarity, worried that her friends' ships might not be up to snuff in the eyes of the elite, decides to tour each ship so as to offer pointers. These turn out not to be needed as everyone had the sense to hand the planning over to someone who either knew what they were doing or were able to consult someone who did but the crowning example has to be Rainbow Dash who requested her ship be decorated in a very specific and classy Pegasus decoration scheme which not only proved to be a perfect balance between comfortable and opulent but also fulfills Dash's need for speed.
• Bishi continues to wow readers when, in chapter 13, he one-shots a guard during a sparring match, knocking him out cold and, we assume, dislocating about half his teeth. It WAS a good thing he brought those booties with him to the Junior Gala.
• Rainbow Dash, after being unable to fulfill her dreams of being a Wonderbolt and not even getting the consolation prize of befriending due to several misunderstandings as well as the Wonderbolts' own arrogance finally breaks after Spitfire gives her a poorly constructed call out. After a very unfriendly scuffle (which Dash wins in three seconds), Dash proceeds to cover for Spitfire when talking to Celestia and then gives Spitfire a REAL dressing down.
• After getting dragged across Neigh Orleans and into the swamp by her locator spell, Rarity gets confronted by an alligator. Not at all in a good mood from what she just went through, she then scares the gator off.
  "Take your best shot, lizard," she hissed. Her voice echoed eerily and her eyes glowed in her mud-caked face with an absolutely unholy light. "I'll make a matching handbag and shoe set out of your still living skin and stitch your writhing soul to the lining."
  • Sweetie Belle and Rarity's guards have to think very fast to make her trip a little easier. To wit: Sweetie steals a set of roller skates and claps them onto Rarity's hooves at a full gallop (though she did leave behind a bag of bits as compensation), and the guards clear a path for her through a busy restaurant and build a ramp so she can jump over a road construction zone.
• Sweetie Belle knocking out a kappa, twice, with the same rock (the second time is accidental, but still). Also a CMOF.
  • Followed by Dapper Blue (one of Rarity's guards) ruthlessly dispatching a second kappa by feeding it a cucumber spiked with an explosive chili pepper. The expecting couple it had cornered turns the incident into a CMOH afterward by naming their newborn triplets in honor of the various members of the group that came to their rescue.
    • Then, in Chapter 40, we learn that Dapper grew the thing himself — and has a whole greenhouse full of weapons grade experimental plants on-board Rarity's airship.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: The revelation of Mudpuppy's Alicornhood and subsequent crowning as Princess Necturus before the Neigh Orleans Bayou ponies. Rarity made sure it was awesome with her usual social talent and Gorgeous Garment Generation.
  • Rarity manages the revelation of Mudpuppy's alicorn status, sets the army to deal with the kappa threat, arranges to have a clinic built in the bayou (since the army has to build a road out there anyway), sets up Mudpuppy's grandmother as a consultant at that new clinic, arranges to have Mudpuppy's best friend brought along with her, sets up a royal silphium growth operation which will pay for everything else she's doing with money left over, and figures out how her Element's extra powers have manifested... all while high as a kite on Mammaw Catfish's "calming elixers".
• Trixie making herself and Jasper ascend into Alicornhood with a runaway transmogrification spell. Or, in layman terms, completely by accident.
• The sting operation that Trixie and Jasper help Celestia and Sunset set up to arrest (and publicly ridicule) the corrupt and racist leadership of the town of Promise, along with all their supremacist comrades. Not a bad first act for the two newest Alicorn royals.
• As Twilight, Flash and Spike approach Hollow Shades, Flash gets Twilight properly prepped and then demonstrates his Crazy Is Cool way of being Crazy-Prepared. Nothing gets by this version of Flash if he can help it - and anything that does will have to deal with Spike:
  Flash: You're magic resistant, tough as nails and most importantly, you breathe FIRE. Heat and light and flame, anything I've ever heard of is vulnerable to those. In your own way you're the baddest little dude in the valley.
  • Flash, Twilight and Spike forms a Power Trio: Flash is an expert at being Crazy-Prepared, Spike breathes fire, is magic-resistant, and Made of Iron to boot. And we still have Twilight herself, who is a powerful magic user in her own right (What she did with Starswirl's spell is no easy feat.) Anything or anyone that tries to mess with this group is in for a hard time.
• Woodcutter the timberjack. Timberjack as in hunts timberwolves and reduces them to firewood for a living.
• In Chapter 36, Babs effortlessly trims and styles Applejack's mane, earning both the servants' respect and her cutie mark.
• Chapter 37: At a trade show, Apple Bloom happens across an inventor showing off his latest creation, a fountain pen. She passes the word to Twilight, who puts in a huge order on the spot—the equivalent of an entire year's worth of business for the inventor.
• In Chapter 38, not only does Apple Bloom quickly devise a way to contain some of the chaos unleashed by Malfunziona, but she's also the one who figures out a way to take him down and re-seal him. Thus earning her Cutie Mark and ascending to Alicornhood in one go, as revealed in Chapter 39.
  • It gets even better: She LOGIC BOMBS the damn thing. Malfunziona's power is to cause machines to malfunction and go haywire. However, as a draconequus, he is unable to do anything outside of the boundaries of his power. So, Apple Bloom locks him in a cage made of inter-connecting gears that lock each other into position. Malfunziona's power dictates that he cannot 'fix' machines, so he cannot simply break a gear because by removing one gear, the machine works. She even has suggestions for a just-in-case-of-power-leakage prevention system.
  • And how did she take him out in the first place? By blasting a Bee-Bee Gun-full of lightning-charged Twittermites up his nose.
  • Princess Celestia states that a lot of legends were written that day, including, but not limited to:
    • Babs, her hairstylist Cutie Mark and a pair of oversize scissors taking on a giant monster made of hair. This earns her the title "brave little barber".
    • Gred and Forge Weasel putting a horde of rampaging animals (and more than a few ponies) to sleep in seconds with their after-dinner tranquilizer mints. Applejack's guards are so impressed that they decide to talk to the brothers about putting in an order once everything has calmed down.
    • The Nightshade bat-pony triplets, members of Applejack's Roughneck guard contingent, manage to fly a runaway biplane back and forth through the exhibition hall until it runs out of fuel, then ditch it in a fountain without any injuries or property damage. They pull it off despite the fact that the engine can't be shut off, the throttle is stuck wide open, and Moon Penny (the one at the controls) doesn't know how to fly it.
    • The train engineer and inventor Red Fort breaking open the boiler of his train engine (and almost getting scalded to death as a result) in order to prevent it from exploding after Malfunziona sabotages it.
    • Applejack supporting the entirety of the giant Glass Palace with her magic after Malfunziona takes the rivets out, and later blowing the whole structure outward to prevent injuries before passing out.
    • Also, props for Bold Lion, the pony equivalent of Leonardo da Vinci; besides being an Omni Disciplinary Scientist, he's the one who captured Malfunziona in the first place, his trap being so effective it held him for 500 years and only failed when an external force damaged it. Apple Bloom actually admits that her own container is based on Bold Lion's. And, again, Apple Bloom, who figured out how the device worked after just giving a quick look to what was left of it.
    • And a villainous one to Malfunziona for keeping Equestria in a Medieval Stasis for 500 years under Celestia's watch, without her even noticing.
• As of this posting, we haven't seen it yet but Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo earned their Cutie Marks AND ascended at the same time Apple Bloom did. CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS SCORE, YAY!
• Rarity being Rarity, her airship, the Fabulosity, is extremely opulent. Rarity being Rarity, she defrayed most of the enormous cost-and found many ways to find the money: she sold extremely expensive tickets to various corporate tycoons, diplomats, celebrities, nobles and so on, paying the crew with 25% of the gross and giving the rest to charity; then she offered berthing to an army of reporters, gossip columnists and glam magazines, and secured well-paying deals for interviews with her and the celebrities on board to pay for the refit (just the interview for Countess Coloratura paid for half the refit); finally, she created the Lady Midnight Mystique as a Secret Identity for her fashion designs and making herself publicity by having herself, all the princesses and even her highest-ranking staff (because "it would do no good to have my entourage around me not looking their very best, after all") wear her designs, and is selling to everyone-while driving the paparazzi mad, as nobody can see Lady Midnight Mystique and the staff is fanatically protective of her privacy (that, and somehow people missed the significance of her boutique being below Rarity's quarters and accessible from those through a spiral staircase, much to the Radiant Guard's amusement).
  • The Fabulosity herself: aside for the opulence, it houses the appropriate tools and workshops for the extremely talented individuals Rarity surrounded herself with ("One does not hire a performing dolphin, put them in a fish bowl, and then complain when their performance becomes sub-par, my dear."), including, but not limited to, a small metalworking toolshop, an apothecary, a costuming and makeup room, an apiary, an aquarium, a small glassworking studio, and the Radiant Guard's rooms, including Dapper Blue's garden for his many weaponized plants, "several walk-in closets that doubled as miniature armories with enough stabby, pointy, and shooty things to keep a dojo full of action-movie ninjas happy, a magic artifacts laboratory, a chamber with encryption and decryption tools, a complete supply of antitoxins and antivenoms (alongside bottled doses of very good reasons to have them) and a number of other odd little private workspaces along with secret entrances and passageways to access them."
• Sweetie Belle earns her Cutie Mark and ascends by singing the various Zombie Defense plants into accord against Malifec and his minions — then, when she and Mudpuppy are all out of plants and magic with hundreds of zomponies still left, singing a song to comfort Mudpuppy so soulfully that the Zomponies awaken to what they've become and turn on Malifec, dragging him to the island where Sweetie and Mudpuppy have taken refuge because it's the one place in Port Malfou that sunlight and moonlight can reach, thereby causing him to be incinerated by the moonlight pouring down on the island.
• Even though Scootaloo still can't fly despite all the Wonderbolts' efforts to help her, she's found a way to get airborne: a folding glider mounted on her scooter. Not only has she become proficient at handling it, she uses it to show up older Pegasus colts who give her a hard time in Windy City.
• The Windy City's pranksters gang, Nobody's Fools, is lead by a one-winged Pegasus with Le Parkour abilities who can evade a large group of guards without breaking a sweat and making it look easy. Rainbow was visibly impressed.
  • It's equally impressive that despite their large variety of backgrounds, skill sets and personalities, they're a tight-knit group who can work together with minimal ribbing. Especially impressive because as Scootaloo notes, several members would normally be perfect Jerk Jock material.
  • They all put their talents together to utterly humiliate a protest group that is causing traffic in Windy City with their ranting against the Princesses. From making false fart noises to static charges, the Nobody's Fools gang and Scootaloo turned what was essentially an anti-royalty rally into a comedic show. Counts as Funny Moment too.
• Chapter 46 gives us two big ones for Scootaloo. First she's a total natural at aerial ballet, so much so that Velvet Slipper, a professional at it in her own right, can't stop gushing about her. Secondly, she demonstrates that it's not just Dash's showboating ways she's picked up; once you're her friend, she's loyal for life and demonstrates it in her adamant defense of the Nobody's Fools when they're accused of working with the now-terrorist-level-threat Crownbreakers.
  • Dash for her part trusts Scootaloo to put her own trust in the right ponies/people and shuts down all attempts to arrest the Nobody's Fools until Scootaloo can mediate a meeting between herself and the Fools.
• The majority of the Nobody's Fools' parents (aside from Bananas Foster's family, as only his grandfather and his little sister are on his side) putting their full support behind their children after they get arrested by the City Watch. Watching some incredibly justified and protective parents rip the beleaguered Watchponies a new one is incredibly satisfying.
  • And Bananas Foster delivering a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to his family, their banana crop business and how he doesn't want any part of it is equal parts hilarious and cathartic.
• Harshwhinny slicing through the mayor's blather and justifications and outlining just how far he's twisted the law to settle his own petty grudges. And as a coup de grace revealing that the entire fiasco is already in the papers, and the press is prepared to roast the mayor on a spit for it.
• While Mach telling Scootaloo his back story is a sad scene, his epic burn (see below) on his uncle at the "flightless pride" fundraiser Fussbudget dragged him to on his birthday is pure awesome.
  They drag me up front; I blow out the candles. The reporters start lobbing fluff questions at me, one of them asks me what I wished for... and I sort of... snapped." He looked a little sheepish. "I told them I wished my parents weren't dead, I wished that I wasn't a stupid cripple, and I wished I was living with anypony other than my stupid, butt kissing, vote-grubbing uncle.”
• Harshwhinny managing to Troll Rainbow Dash, prankster extraordinaire.
• Presto's technical magical knowledge and inventions actually impress his parents, who are academic instructors unicorns. They note that he had found ways to perform spells that would be difficult even for a well educated unicorn. Even more, they're impressed with the notes and relatively small stuff that he could save inside his hat when the Nobody's Fools were arrested and Presto lost his homemade laboratory, showing how talented and studious he is.
• Mach One deconstructs the ascension plan by pointing out all the people who are going to want to stop it and what they'll be willing to do to achieve that. And then Dash responds that it doesn't matter, she and the others are going to keep going along with the plan anyway because it's the right thing to do.
  • After that, Mach overhears Dash vowing to get Scootaloo in the air and, after thinking about how ascension would help his friends, has this thought.
    It was no longer a matter of “Somebody ought to,” it was a question of “Will I?”
  • As we soon see, his answer is a resounding, "YES!"
• The heroic deeds of the Nobody's Fools when the performance at the Thunderdome is interrupted by a terrorist attack.
  • Mach is able to recognize the bombs and catch the ponies who planted them on his own without breaking a sweat. Then he performs a mark-perfect interrogation, backfires their plans on them with an epic parting taunt (when one of them points out what his priming of the bombs will do, he responds “Then you'd better hope somepony finds you before the floor disappears from under you.") and when his attempt to save the day falls short, he rallies the Fools into action with their Badass Creed of "Nobody's Fools! Nobody falls!" Immediately an entire task force that has had "You don't wait for rescue; you do the rescuing!" and "You are your brother's keeper!" drummed into their heads is totally ready to rock; the Nobody's Fools' training allows them to do absolutely amazing things with what skills they have at their disposal.
  • Scootaloo refuses to stand down and whips out her glider to help with the rescue efforts, quickly proving able to compensate for extra weight on her glider by saving two ponies in less than a minute. Dash couldn't be prouder.
  • Softy's father and Crackerjack work together to keep a cloud from splitting any further.
  • Flute ransacks the Fools' gear and starts telekinetically throwing things to the others that might serve as safety ropes.
  • Presto uses a fire extinguisher to create makeshift clouds which he ties down with bottled star spider silk (implied to have been thought of as "for Unicorn-use only"), while his parents fire spells to try to neutralize the cloud solvent; he's doing better but they're no slouches.
  • The entire Banana clan takes to the air to help. In the words of Pudding, "BANANA POWER!"
  • Fledge and his family airlift a donkey family to safety with a little help from Prince Ajax, who compliments him on his bravery. Cue the Squee.
  • Wheezer knows exactly what's going on with the weather and can even do Layman's Terms.
  • When Scootaloo gets knocked into the supercell, Mach steps up again. With a whisper of "Nobody falls," he dives into the supercell after her.
• While the Fools focus on the "sparrows", Rainbow is holding the whole Thunderdome by herself; she's literally containing a perfect storm, and keeping it stable enough for all the other rescuers to do their job.
  • As Dash watches Mach and Scootaloo freefall, she finally is able to get over her insecurities about being magically Book Dumb and casts Starswirl's spell, intending to ascend Mach. She misses, but the spell still hits its mark since Scootaloo turns out to be a nascent Alicorn and her determination to save Mach ascends her. She forces her way out of the ethereal plane and back into the real world, then casts the spell on Mach herself to save his life. Many fans have started calling Scootaloo's ascension the most awesome out of the Crusaders.
• Lightning Dust, reinstated to the Wonderbolts at the bottom of the reserve list, has overcome her selfishness to help the team fight the storm despite impossible odds.
• Scootaloo and Mach One, having ascended while in freefall inside a supercell, proceeding to create a counter-storm to break up the power of the collapsing Thunderdome. Bonus points for making their plans without speaking a single syllable.
• Sweetie Belle shows her alicorn talent for music and arts by instructing Flute, the mute unicorn, on how to use his sound-based magic to finally get a voice. Bonus points for the two of them not even being in the same room; she does the whole job via the group's communication mirrors. Her idea works so well that Apple Bloom, who's sitting in on the conversation, immediately starts thinking about designs for an invention to replicate the spell's effects and help other mute ponies.
• Rainbow Dash at the Alicorn Academy giving the directors and teachers a piece of her mind and telling them of the many changes on the educational system that they'll need to perform if they still want the crown's funding… It's just too awesome.
• When Granny Smith discovers that the Gala Brats genuinely believe that Applejack, Babs or one of the CMC will ruin them and their families just because they can, she takes it upon herself to turn them into better ponies...which is looking like a sure-fire success in the making as of the end of Chapter 53.
• Pinkie Pie's vengeance on Mayor Fussbudget is delicious. She shows up in the mansion he's going to lose once he leaves office, trolls him for several minutes, then forces him to eat a replica of the papier-mâché cake that prompted Mach to shred his uncle badly enough to get sent to his granny's care. Once she returns to her ship and Luna mentions that she's worried Fussbudget will get into more mischief, Pinkie's response involves a Bond One-Liner. Admittedly it only counts as one coming from her, but still:
  "Sitting on the throne, learning about the Power of the Press."
  • Lest we forget her using her Reality Warper powers to make all the exits in his office lead back to said office... including making him pop out of a desk drawer.
• Nobody's Fools pulled off an epic prank in chapter 55: turning up one by one as their hypothetical Alicorn selves. Gold Star nearly has a heart attack.
• Chapter 56 has Mach's first outing as a prince: making the Windy City Flightless Foal’s Clinic into the Windy City Royal Flightless Foal’s Clinic, firing the entire board of directors, putting the competent and caring Dr. Hospice in the position of chief administrator, calling the entire staff out on how easily they give up on any case that looks even remotely difficult, starting a partnership with a hospital in Manehattan to bring in patients and specialists, and setting up an aggressive treatment plan for all flight-related injuries and handicaps, with Mach acting personally as a test subject.
  • Hospice gets points for smugly guiding Mach into rehiring the former board members to handle filing and clerical work at half pay, with the savings being used to hire competent doctors and support staff.

---