Tear Jerker / PS238

• The story of Mr. Extraordinary. "That's my girl". And then suddenly it turns into a Heartwarming Moment.
• When Tyler finds himself in a Castle Beyond Time, he finds a hall of mirrors where he sees versions of himself in other universes where he has powers, but several have definite Tear Jerker aspects. The worst? One where he is a powerful psychic who accidentally linked the entire human race, save himself, into a single peaceful, benevolent Hive Mind. The problem? The Commonality is too big and powerful for him to contact mentally, leaving him locked out, and very lonely. The only redeeming feature is that The Commonality is grateful to him and does try to make him comfortable.
• When Guardian Angel's powers are turned off, she feels rain for the first time, and decides to wait out in the cold instead of going inside.
  Angel: I'm just going to wait here, because if I leave, my guardian might not be able to find me again. So I'm going to wait here.
• Toby using his powers to make sure that his and Tyler's parents wouldn't reject the normal son now that they had the super-powered son they always wanted. In exchange, Toby had to give up the chance for the greatest friendship he would ever have.
  • Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to have affected the Powers' severe case of Parental Neglect, to the extent that they forget Tyler's name and generally ignore him. Tyler's dull acceptance of their neglect is heartbreaking.
  • It's especially clear then Tyler gives Toby the reason why he would rather continue to live in the dorms at PS238 than with their parents — not only is his "room" just an unused storage room that Toby had to get for him because their parents kept forgetting to get Tyler a real room, but there's also this:
  Tyler: Did anyone I'm related to remember my name, or that I exist, this morning?
  Toby: I did.
  Tyler: Anyone who isn't my clone?
  Toby: Uh...
  Tyler: See you at school.
  • Even more heartbreaking, Toby’s room used to be Tyler’s. Their parents gave Tyler’s room and all his stuff to Toby, and Toby doesn’t seem to have protested that. Think about that: the parents gave their real son’s belongings and place to their son’s clone.
• Despite the generally light-hearted tone of the series, one character's subplot has taken a much darker turn: Ron Peterson, Captain Clarinet. After his parent's divorce, which he blames himself for, he finds himself increasingly disaffected with where his life is going. He suffers from a bad case of world of cardboard, and feels that PS238 isn't giving him the direction he needs. So he turns to the Praetorian Academy for... 'help'. Bear in mind that up until this point, these guys have been about as threatening as Dr. Claw. Given that Ron is the son of a prominent superhero, they decide to 'recruit' him. By mind-controlling his mother into abandoning him (deepening his already-bad abandonment issues) to their care, and beginning a program of thorough brainwashing. Ron is eight. I have been fervently wishing for something extremely unpleasant to happen to the villain in question.
  • And now things have gotten worse. Ron, now code-named Argonaut, was sent with 2 other Praetorian Academy students to greet a ship from Argos. Unfortunately Ron is abducted by the ship's leader, a nobleman who thinks Atlas is out to steal the throne of Argos and hates Ron for existing since he's a half human/half Argosian and the people of Argos hate halfbreeds. Additionally the 2 other students who went with him can't be bothered to go after him to offer any form of assistance. Now Ron is essentially a hostage with no way out (since he's got the powers common on Argos, they have the tech to negate them). The only bright spot is that Tyler/Moonshadow, Cecil and a few PS238 students have turned up to help. Maybe that will fix things.
  • Update: Ron's stint on Argos lead to him getting depowered, used as a bargaining chip against his father and separated from his father from an indefinite period. To make matters more confusing, he's conflicted about the loss of his powers.