Awesome / The Trials of Apollo

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

The Hidden Oracle

• "Percy Jackson had arrived." For context, Percy arrives in the nick of time to battle the giant statue and save the camp.
• Apollo uses his power of music to tame the giant ants and uses them to help him rescue Meg.

The Dark Prophecy

• Apollo in the climax. He actually manages to save his friends from a hostage situation that would've resulted in people getting hurt either way by revealing his divine form and blinding Commodus and his Germani, allowing the defenders to gain the upper hand. Note the fact that he is nowhere near full strength (by mortal standards), having just regained consciousness after passing out from surviving a sanity-exhausting trip to the Dark Oracle, swimming with one arm while carrying an unconscious Meg, and a blemmyae attack that left his arm broken.
• Apollo is tired, Meg is out of commission, and the blemmyae have him outnumbered and have a bomb to go off after five seconds. How does he solve this? By convincing them the main blemmyae to set the bomb off underwater, because everyone knows that the timer doubles underwater and then uses the commotion, a few lucky rocks, and the timely arrival of an army of karpoi to escape.
• The Hunters of Artemis pull off a Big Damn Heroes to save Apollo and Meg from the gladiatorial battle, not that the two weren't already doing a good job themselves. Highlights include:
  • Apollo convincing an elephant to stop a freaking race car.
  • Meg rescuing Peaches.

The Burning Maze

• Apollo attempting a Thanatos Gambit on Medea and Caliluga to save his friends.
• Apollo speaking his own prophecy, when in agony and bound in Herophile's chains in order to summon enough stone tiles to cover Helios' essence so that Medea's spell will fail.
• Apollo talking Helios out of destroying southern California
• Jason going toe-to-toe with Caligula. It ends up being a Dying Moment of Awesome, but still, undoubtedly, awesome.
• And, on the other end, Caligula managed what the Giants, and Gaia herself, never did: He killed a member of the Seven, and, unlike Leo, Jason doesn't seem like he's coming back.
• Also Caligula: Apparently, his wrath is so terrifying, he managed to scare a god.

The Tyrant's Tomb

• Frank Zhang, with a knife in his gut, crushes Caligula's throat and then deliberately ignites his cursed stick to set off a stockpile of Greek fire. Caligula has just enough time to realize how screwed he is before he's vaporized.
  • Commodus actually manages to survive the inferno, with his armor melted to his skin, and gives the order for the Triumvirate fleet to fire on New Rome. Apollo's response is to pin the emperor to the ground and scream with such raw, primal rage that Commodus is reduced to dust.
    • Even better, it turns out that Lavinia and her ragtag team of nature spirits actually managed to sabotage the ships' cannons to shoot straight up, so that the entire fleet of billion-dollar yachts ended up being sunk by their own Greek Fire.
  • And later, Frank's miraculous survival and return to camp in defiance of his fate, marred only by the fact that he was dressed in nothing but his cape and his underwear.
    • How he did it too: Instead of being terrified of his fate like Meleager, he accepted it and embraced it, which allowed him to survive.

The Tower of Nero

• Ben the wheelchair-using demigod mowing down monsters on his wheelchair.
• Lu, after losing both her hands to Nero, makes up for it by strapping daggers to her hands.
  • And after running into Will Solace, she upgrades to swords.
• Austin pulling a Hold the Line by distracting a room full of Germani.
  Austin: Hey, idiots! You're all gonna die! (plays 'Pop goes the Weasel')
• Will pulling a Big Damn Heroes moment with Lu and Rachel just as Nero's guards were about to kill Apollo, and when Meg was surrounded by her enemy step-siblings and Nico just got slapped into a pillar.
  "No one hits my boyfriend," Will thundered. "And no one kills my dad!"
  • This was followed by Will ordering the Germani to step aside so he could drag his injured boyfriend away. No one stopped him. Refuge in Audacity indeed.
  • This mind, when both of them had pulled Big Damn Hero moments. Nico had rode in on a (re-animated) forest bull from earlier, and Meg had released a shockwave of chlorokinesis enough to coat the whole room.
• Meg finally shutting down Nero's gaslighting and successfully turning her step-siblings against him.
• Lu successfully obtaining Nero's fasces by trading away her immortality. Nero starts sputtering that she doesn't have immortality, but then it hits him: Lu traded away the immortality she and Nero shared. The terror in Nero's voice is so beautifully cathartic.
• The glorious return of the blue plastic hairbrush.
  Apollo (narrating): Rachel pulled out a blue plastic hairbrush and threw it at the nearest barbarian, beaning him in the eye and making him howl.
• Apollo kills Nero. He is dead.
• The Arrow of Dodona's Heroic Sacrifice to critically injure Python and allow Apollo to win. Immediately prior, it also fulfills its oracular duty by finishing an aborted prophecy by Python which was meant to seal Apollo's fate and making it into something that ensures Apollo's victory.
• Apollo also kills Python, sacrificing himself in the process, making him the first main antagonist to actually die. While Kronos and Gaea were scattered, the fact they're immortal gods mean that their return is probably inevitable even if it's sometime slightly before the end of time. Not Python. He gets dropped into Chaos and utterly shredded.
  • Even better? Python's demise is basically a direct result of him attempting to twist prophecy to serve himself. He meant for the prophecy to be about Apollo being undone to finish Python's own rise to power, only for it to become Python being undone to finish Apollo's quest.
  • Even more amazing than that? Any of the other Riordan-verse protagonists sacrificing themselves wouldn't be that much of a shock. However, Apollo—who used to think the world revolved around him, who started out as nothing but vain and arrogant—is completely ready and willing to die if it means his friends will be safe.
• Subtle, but after Apollo is officially welcomed back and the other Gods have vanished, he and Zeus are left alone in the throne room where Apollo briefly considers Calling the Old Man Out with a well-deserved diatribe that he might actually get away with, considering that they are alone and that Zeus actually seems slightly ashamed of himself. He ultimately decides against it, acknowledging to himself that Zeus is just a narcissist and that there is no point in engaging with him any further, instead resolving to do what many of us have done to escape such people; going NC (No Contact) or in Apollo's case, resolving to spend as little time as possible around Zeus and to limit any and all interactions from now onwards, basically saving himself from being influenced by someone who has no qualms putting his own children to danger just to satisfy his vanity and pride. You go Apollo!
• Apollo remembered. He remembered what it was like to be human.