Awesome / Ward

Note: Spoilers for events prior to and during individual Moments of Awesome below are unmarked.

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Daybreak

• The moment things go bad in 1.3 Victoria steps up. Getting people people clear of an incoming bus with some help from her powers, shielding Jasper and two others with her forcefield when Kingdom Come erupts and taking the initiative to have Jasper ram the oncoming 18-wheeler.
  • The following chapter immediately reveals Victoria's plan to stop the 18-wheeler involved her physically slamming into the vehicle with all her strength to deflect it and lessen the impact with Jasper's bus. Let it be shown that Victoria's strength and durability is nothing to scoff at.
• Victoria vs Blindside in 1.4. Pretending to be floored with pain until the other villains leave, Victoria faces off with a Stranger/Master whose powers make it impossible to look at or physically interact with them, Victoria quickly realises the villains powers don't extend to objects and uses a tight swings of her bulletproof vest to strike them, the noise of repeated gunshots to deafen and stun before following up with another vest strike so hard that Blindside physically bounces off the side of the truck.
• A smaller but no less amazing example of Victoria's tactical cunning is in her brief fight with Kingdom Come in 1.5. Managing to defeat several of KC's mastered victims without seriously hurting any of them Victoria realises how time consuming and pointless the fight is and, seeing no other way to escape, makes her own exit by flying straight through the ceiling.
• Victoria and the Norfair Neighbourhood Heroes fighting Lord of Loss to a standstill in 1.6. The fight only ending as early as it did due to Fume Hood getting shot by a third party.

Flare

• As horrifying as the event is, the broken trigger in 2.4 is a excellent display of the heroes coordinating and thinking up new strategies on the fly in the face of a crisis. It's difficult to say how many more people would have got caught up in the trigger event if the heroes weren't keeping civilians away but many lives were absolutely saved.

Glare

• The game of Capture the Flag between the protagonists in 3.3 offers plenty of these. Victoria, Capricorn and Sveta vs Ashley, Kenzie and Chris.
  • Kenzie sets up a hologram device to make the flag near impossible to locate amongst a sea of hologram copies, allowing all three members of Ashley's team to go on the offensive and outnumber the two defending opponents.
  • With Capricorn fighting Ashley it becomes Victoria's job to fight both Chris and Kenzie by herself and puts her experience to use. Managing to overcome Kenzie's gadgets and the brute power of Chris' Wan Indulgence form with the combined use of her flight, strength and aura.
    • This leads to a masterful split second play by Capricorn, switching targets with Victoria in order to try and encase both Kenzie and Chris in rock and take them out of play while they are both floored by Victoria's attacks.
  • Ashley displays incredibly creative use of her insanely lethal power in the non-lethal mock battle. Making full use of how her power propels her in the opposite direction of a blast to make incredibly fast movements, dodge attacks and body check her opponents with surprising strength.
  • Swallowing a small tree, Chris makes use of his Wan Indulgences full abilities. Breaking free from his stone bindings after moulding the tree into a bat with his stomach and even spitting clouds of sawdust and wood projectiles during his brief clash with Victoria. If just a single one of his forms is capable of so much it begs the question of what else Chris is capable of.
  • Tristan halting Ashley's progress to the flag and staggering Chris by switching over to Byron, transforming all the stone constructs he created into a flood of water that washes them both away with ease.
  • The game-ending play however ends up going to Sveta. With Ashley's team confident enough in Kenzie's gadget to buy them enough time to grab the enemy flag in a full offensive, Sveta is left completely uncontested. Opening up one of her prosthetic arms, Sveta proceeds to grab for every single one of the flags at once with her tentacles. Snagging the real one she immediately rushes to home base with the flag while everyone is recovering from Capricorns flood and steals victory for herself, Capricorn and Victoria.
• Rain managing to defuse Ashley after her loss by suggesting one of Ms. Yamada's calm-down therapies.

Pitch

• Kenzie, of all people, taking out Mama Mathers in 6.3 by dropping a flying camera on her. Completely taking her out of the fight and defeating a monster of a parahuman who was terrorising heroes and hostages alike.

Beacon

• The ending of Interlude 8.x. After a group of Love Lost's underlings, two of whom being capes, break into Kenzie's house in an attempt to abduct her after the broadcast it's Natalie who saves the day. Even with no powers, weapons, or real ways of defending herself Natalie steps up to protect Kenzie, immediately notifying both the police and Gilpatrick via text and even gets outright stabbed in the chest after refusing to give up Kenzie and trying to convince the younger intruder, Colt, to back down. Then Natalie gets more aggressive.
  • She then outright tackles the knife wielder down the stairs, kicks Colt with all her strength even further down, and then rushes to barricade herself and Kenzie in a room. When Kitchen Sink is on the verge of smoking them out with dynamite Natalie proceeds to start throwing things at a cape whose whole power revolves around throwing things... AND IT WORKS! She manages to make him lose the stick of dynamite he was preparing and stalls long enough for the police, Victoria and Chris to arrive at the scene and scare the intruders off. It's with this chapter Natalie cements herself as a member of Breakthrough.
  • Kenzie herself also deserves credit. Armed with nothing but her hologram projecting hairclip she falsely surrenders herself after Natalie gets stabbed, only to confuse her abductors with several fake clones before raking her hairpin along the knife wielders arm to escape and set up the opportunity for Natalie to tackle him down the stairs. Later, when the two are barricaded in a bedroom, Kenzie stops Kitchen Sink from burning the door down simply by telling him why it wouldn't work.

Gleaming

• Byron gets one in 9.3. During their talk with Goddess, the entire team gets mind-controlled by her. While the team realizes this, they also think that "the effect isn't that bad". When Tristan switches with Byron, the latter is free of her influence, and despite being terrified, decides to stand up to the whole team. When that doesn't work, he physically attacks Victoria. Though she subdues him easily, he is able to convince her that something is seriously wrong by reminding her of master stranger protocols. The chapter ends with Victoria asking Byron to accompany her and steer her away from wrong decisions.
• Chapter 9.11. Antares, fighting at a self described 110%, goes up Lung and the Pharmacist in what is probably the most nail-biting, brutal and intense fights of the series up to that point. Receiving only minimal help from Capricorn, Precipice, and Goddess, Antares makes full use of her flight to avoid the fires, aura to provoke and distract while setting off the Pharmacist's powers, and ends up practically tearing apart Lung using massive makeshift spears lifted by the Wretch. She even uses the Pharmacist's own power igniting flames against Lung and forces him to tear off his own arms and large chunks of flesh to avoid being killed by them. When Lung's Healing Factor and monstrous transformation becomes too much to deal with, Antares switches tactics and instead goes after the hidden Pharmacist after pinpointing her location just by observing Lung's behaviour. Hunting her down like a killer in a slasher movie, Antares tears through any of Teacher's thralls that get in her way, before flying straight through a floor after pinpointing her location by baiting her into talking. To get around the risk of her flames, Antares simply doesn't use any powers, threatening the Pharmacist by holding her gauntlets spikes against her throat.
  • In that same fight, Capricorn manages to trap Lung by first bombarding him with water, and then switching, turning the water to stone.
  Where there had been water, there was now a small mountain of stone, all spikes radiating up and out from the epicenter. The licks of purple flame were going out.
  • Credit to Lung, he really shows off how he was able to go one-on-one with an Endbringer. His tag team act with the Pharmacist is incredibly well executed, using his pyrokinesis to spread her power-burning flames in such a way as to counter any powers brought to bear that might manage to pose a threat. By the later stages of the fight, his pyrokinesis is powerful enough to melt through solid stone and his Healing Factor is so fast that when Victoria and Rain work together to cut him in half he heals back together before the halves can even fall away from each other. The combined forces of Breakthrough, Goddess, and both the prison's guards and inmates aren't enough to actually stop him, the fight only ends when Victoria manages to remove the Pharmacist from play and give Goddess an opportunity to whammy him.
• Tension in the group with Monokeros reaches the breaking point in 9.14 with a confrontation packed with several awesome moments.
  • First is the build-up. From Crystalclear immediately jumping in when Monokeros tries to subtly master Capricorn, Damsel straight up telling Monokeros to "shut the fuck up" when she suggests just following the orders of Goddess, and Rain's display of a Papa Wolf side when the psychopath insults Kenzie.
  Monokeros: She gave you to me as a gift. It’s a little bit like getting a book as a gift with the cover ripped in half, I have to grin and bear it-
  Rain: What the fuck? You did not just say that about our teammate and friend.
  • Next is Kenzie. Held hostage under the full weight of Monokeros power and told to stab her own throat out if any of her friends move to save her, Kenzie manages to completely overcome the extremely overpowering awe effect entirely through the way her personality works before turning her flash gun on her attempted kidnapper.
  • Finally we have Victoria and Swansong, who both immediately charge Monokeros when Kenzie gives them an opening. With Victoria's choking grip firmly on the child killer's throat and Swansong poised to obliterate her head if Victoria shows the slightest hint of being mastered by Monokeros, the two managed to successfully deal with their no longer smug opponent by dumping her in the flooded tunnels nearby. Leaving open the possibility that Monokeros may end up trapped forever in a world where she has no-one to influence once the prison disaster is dealt with. A fate Monokeros fully deserves.
• Chris proves yet again that attempting to manipulate him is a bad idea: he changes to a form called "Twisted Betrayal", indicating that its specific purpose may be to subvert mind-control. Despite looking like it has a broken neck and no right to walk, as soon as the chance is made available, his form ignores Goddess's potent mind-control, dodges around her attacks, and quickly closes the distance before easily tearing her open.

Polarize

• Though short, the fight against the electricity tinker/breaker in 10.8 is full of awesome. At first, Victoria, Sveta, and Rain quickly subdue him and disarm him, but he unexpectedly turns the tables by using tinker rings that turn himself into living electricity. Rain uses his power to break his tinker rifle in half, at which point he starts arcing towards the commercial center. The team discovers his weakness to conductive materials, and Rain tosses Sveta a pair of blades that she uses to slow him down. Finally, Victoria uses the Wretch to break open the road and dig up a metal pipe that disorients him long enough for her to break one of his rings and end the fight.
• Interlude 10.x has Tattletale's late birthday present for Aidan/Chicken Little: a live fucking Haast's Eagle, a prehistoric bird that's the largest eagle known to exist, with this particular eagle weighing 39 pounds and having a wingspan measuring 8.5 feet.
• In Polarize 10.13 Victoria is trapped within a cape mercenary "arena", that nullifies everything from powers to noise leaving her trapped there with him with no choice but to fight. He's bigger, stronger, ruthless and has an ax. She has no powers, her only weapon are her spiked gauntlets and she can only rely on her experience with fighting bigger opponents than her, thanks to spars with Manpower in the past, and the training that Gilpatrick gave her while in the Patrol Group. She still puts up a good fight against him and manages to get the upper hand with a nasty beatdown. He's finally forced to kick her out after she proves to be a tougher enemy than he thought.
  • This is important because while she already proved to be the threatening enough without powers in her confrontation with the Pharmacist, that fight was more of a chase after she knew of counter/ avoid the enemy cape power. This fight shows that she can handle herself well against an enemy more accustomed to fighting like a normal without powers, and cementing her badassery and capabilities, proving that she's more than her powers in the process.

Blinding

• Breakthrough's fight against Lord of Loss inside Nursery's area of effect. Nursery's power is slowly turning the landscape into a creepy, old time nursery, complete with discordant music box sounds coming from nowhere. The floors, walls, and containers have been thinned and made brittle, and if you break them, a fetus monster that impregnates you attacks. Lord of Loss has been experimenting with his power and shapeshifts in new and more dangerous ways, becoming stronger every time he does. And so Breakthrough is getting their asses kicked... until Victoria figures out an innovative use for Rain's ability to induce shame and self-doubt in others. She has him use the power on her. On some people this would be crippling, but for Victoria, feeling those emotions drives her to get angry and improve herself. Wielding the hook and cable from a large crane as a flail, she goes on the offensive, and with Rain's backup, learns from every mistake she makes, figuring out Lord of Loss's fighting style and putting him on the defensive. She ends the battle by literally breaking open his body, using the wretch to expend the opening, and flying inside of it to reach his breaker form and making him surrender. Finally, she punches him in his human form for good measure.
• Darlene, a pre-teen Heartbroken, straight up kills Operator Red, a combat thinker, by taking him on with her power, which allows her to form a connection with others that, among other things, lets them feel each other's pain, and continually makes him flinch or pause by hurting herself.

Heavens

• Heavens 12.1 has the heroes brutally take out all of the guards stationed at the portal station, with New Wave in particular using effective power synergies like Brandish going into her breaker form while carrying one of Flashbang's grenades, Victoria carrying her, then Brandish returning to human form and detonating the grenades immediately after.
• While it's bad for our heroes, credit has to be given to the ambush that the villains set for them during 12.2 to put them at a clear disadvantage through traps that disable powers.
• Interlude 12.e show us Love Lost before she triggered on her regular job as a detective, and how she was really good at it as she alongside her partner manages to trick a suspect into confessing how she encouraged her little cousin to kill himself.
• The entire sequence from Heavens 12.6 to 12.9 is simply too awesome to describe. Through a clever use of Chastity's power, Rain wakes up early from the dream room with a fully-powered doubt aura thanks to Love Lost's tokens. He then proceeds to use it to "cook" Cradle while inside his "egg". Cradle wakes up from his draining with enhanced powers but an emotional wreck. He decides to continue with the plan anyways, but senses the heroes thanks to his enhanced emotion power, and has his hired mercenaries attack. Though vastly outnumbered, the heroes manage a controlled retreat while slowly but surely whittling down the enemy ranks, with Rain continuing to sow distrust and doubt with his aura. When arriving in Frontier Row, they discover that Cradle used his enhanced tinker power to hack their device and open the portal, but Bluestocking's group has a change of heart and assists the heroes. After brutally maiming Paris and blinding Thud, the remnants of Cradle's group arrive, and everyone in town gets trapped in Cretan's labyrinth, with a group fighting Cradle, his mech, and a bunch of unpowered mercenaries at once in the arena at the centre. After destroying his mech and disabling most of the soldiers, Cradle finally brings out his personal guard consisting of Cretan and Lionwing. Despite having a bad matchup against her, Victoria manipulates Lionwing into revealing Cradle's emotion power and then quickly takes her out by almost ripping out her arm. Meanwhile, Cradle and Cretan have defeated the rest of the group save for Sveta and Rain, with the latter surrendering himself. As Cradle and Cretan march Rain towards the portal, Victoria and Sveta launch a surprise attack that Cradle didn't see coming because of their resistance to emotion powers. Sveta frees Rain and disarms Cradle of his whip, with Chastity, who had been hanging back due to an injury, catching it and using to cut Cretan in half. Cradle, now completely alone, is about to flee, but hesitates for a second too long thanks to Rain's aura, letting Cretan cover the portal and holding him hostage until Cradle fixes him. Cradle uses a device to fix Cretan and goes through the portal, only to get greeted by a welcoming party consisting of Citrine, the Number Man, two of his clones, and several others. Cradle tries to bargain, claiming that they need him to fix the mess he and March created, which Citrine doesn't buy. Finally, in an ironic reversal of Cradle's own portal hacking, Lookout was able to pick up the signal used to heal Cretan and can use it to fix his other victims as well. With no allies or bargaining chips left, Cradle is finally defeated in an extremely satisfying and cathartic way.
• In 12.none we see Dauntless' trigger event. He was so focused on helping his girlfriend that he willed himself to maintain focus from the trigger vision and accompanying dizziness, to the point where his shard gave up during the adjustment phase of trigger event. We see Dauntless feeling "a frustrated concession" from the alien entity.
• The ending of 12.x. Foil confronts March alone, intent on vengeance, and finds herself in the middle of a two-on-one situation, with Tori assisting March from the sidelines. Then Imp shows up, having last been seen shot by Colt, and swiftly turns the tables by slitting Tori's throat. March is undaunted, however, and with a last use of Tori's power she cuts through both Imp and Foil in one fell swoop...until March notices something wrong. True to form, she doesn't look behind her as her foes fall to the ground, and finds them still standing. She trips and stumbles. Space is warped. Her reinforcements haven't appeared. She moves to attack Foil - and finds her blade shortened to the point where it can barely pierce the skin. Foil catches her strike, and at the cost of a hand she skewers her nemesis and leaves her for dead. The person responsible? Vista, who survived March's assault on the Wardens in 12.all by exploiting March's flair for dramatic deaths and monologues by skewing the length of March's rapier so that it never ran her through to begin with, and as March never looks behind her after using her powers, she never realised that she merely knocked Vista unconscious. March may have unleashed Dauntless upon the multiverse, but with a single solid counteroffensive, a grave threat to the city is eliminated, with her cluster leaderless, down another member, and scattered to the winds.

Breaking

• In Breaking 14.7, Kenzie absolutely destroys Chris with one speech.
  Chris: You never got that. That I don't get lonely.
  Kenzie: You do, though. Because ever since we showed up all you’ve done is be angry and push and prod, like you’re trying to prove something. The world’s moved on and you’re stuck being whatever you are and it doesn’t matter how much you change on the outside because on the inside? You’re still a miserable little fucknugget. Um. Haha, my heart’s beating so fast, because I’m angry, and I’m angry because you missed out, you know. Because even now? Even if I might get tortured, I’ll be happier than you are Chris. You missed out and you deserve to. There were glimmers of good in you like when you helped Rain, but you didn’t stick to that and you didn’t try. You were super cool when you stopped trying to be uncool, and I kind of loved you and now I kind of don’t. You’re being shitty by pushing us away and making something hard even harder and suckier because you’re scared and resentful and whatever. I know whatever happens next for you is going to be ten times as hard and sucky as what I have to deal with. You’re going to be just as alone and even more frustrated because you’re never going to be able to take a drug that changes you deep down inside and makes you any less of a pathetic miserable fucknugget.
• In Breaking 14.z, Sveta crawls through a drain, attacks Crock o' Shit to save Director Armstrong's life, then crawls back through the drain and pretends to be taking a shower to maintain plausible deniability. And it works like a charm.

Last

• In Last 20.7, Victoria and Rain cut the Simurgh in half. After hours of fighting her, hundreds of deaths, insanity, and general horror, Rain hits the Endbringer with one of his blades and Victoria kicks the resulting cut. Granted, this isn't anywhere near enough damage to actually do more than inconvenience the Simurgh, but it's still an incredible feat. Scion notwithstanding, they're tied with Phir Se for the most damage anyone's ever inflicted on an Endbringer. And they did this while Rain's Blaster power was at its lowest strength- so Rain couldn't throw the blade, he and Victoria had to get up close and personal.
• In Last 20.9, Lisa reveals that she has a way to implement Victoria's plan, but refuses to do so unless Victoria can convince her it's the right thing to do. Victoria tries to intimidate Lisa into talking by blasting her with her aura, hard enough that everyone in the building feels it. Lisa's response? "You haven't convinced me."