* In his first appearance, Jara Hamee ''slices into his own head and pulls open the wound, revealing his brain'', to prove that he's not a Controller.
--> Tobias:
--> Ax:
* Ax's CMOA came in the Megamorphs book "In the Time of the Dinosaurs", when, in his natural Andalite form, he KILLS A TYRANNOSAURUS REX that's chasing Marco. This alone might have been enough, but he truly sold it when he was able to convince his human friends, using his usual SesquipedalianLoquaciousness, that this was a fluke, and that under normal circumstances, "I would lose ninety percent of the time."
** And Ax gets one of these approximately every three pages in ''Back to Before'', where he almost single-handedly ends the Yeerk invasion, albeit at great cost. First he escapes his crashed underwater ship alone by capturing and morphing a shark, which he then uses to tear apart the Taxxons chasing him. Ax then breaks into a news station to reveal himself and the Yeerks, then hacks into nearly every American TV channel to broadcast another message to emphasise the truth. Finally he gets onto the parked Blade Ship, with the aid of Jake, Cassie and Rachel who have Dracon beams, and uses it to destroy the orbiting Pool Ship. The best part about the whole thing? It takes them three months to stop the invasion in this timeline, as oppossed to the three years in the main books.
*** Ax taking down the newly-appointed Visser Two by threatening to drop a nuke on the Yeerks (and his allies' hometown).
** In his first narrated book, ''The Alien'', Ax makes a plan to assassinate the Visser while he is feeding, by going alone to the feeding place, morphing a rattlesnake, and catching the Visser unawares. And he ''nearly pulls it off!'' The other Animorphs step in, but not before Ax manages to bite the Visser twice, poisoning his host body badly enough that the Yeerk actually abandons Alloran. For reference, the next time we see Esplin forced out of Alloran's body is at the end of the entire series!
* By the time we meet Loren in ''The Andalite Chronicles'', she's already taken over the alien spaceship that abducted her.
** She later ''threw a rock at the eventual Visser Three's head'', hitting him hard enough to make him bleed. And she was barely a teenager at the time.
** She kicked the crap out of Chapman in the same book.
** The NEXT time we meet Loren, she totally takes Tobias' revelations in stride despite having no real memory of even ''having a son'' and then figures out morphing in roughly thirty seconds.
** Keeping her cool in face of harassment from (what she believes to be) three delinquent teen boys should also count.
* Despite being very recogniseable and having no morphing powers, the free Hork-Bajir were able to expand their colony without a single recapture to give away their secrets, and ''only one'' risk incident with that one kid who wandered off once.
* Marco chewing out Rachel for her screwing up as the team's temporary leader in ''The Weakness'':
-->'''Marco''': Listen to me, you mall-crawling psycho, we have one hour and ten minutes to get Cassie out of the Yeerk pool. Now, I can come up with a clever plan. I can work all the angles. I can see the perfect solution. But that all takes time. We don't have time, Rachel. We don't have time for clever and subtle. We need reckless, we need impulsive. We need dangerous. We need out-of-your-mind, pure adrenaline, butt-kicking, total out-there insanity.
--> ''He stabs his finger at Rachel's face''
-->'''Marco''': We could have used me back at the Community Center. But right now we need you. We have an hour to save your best friend, Jake's girlfriend, and the entire human race. You got us into this, ''now get us out.''
** In the same book Marco also manages to kill the Council of Thirteen's inspector by using his cobra morph on the Inspector's very, ''very'' fast Garatron host body. The act is described as almost like catching a bullet in mid-air.
-->'''Marco''': You're fast, Yeerk. I'm faster.
** What about how they got into the Yeerk Pool in that book in the first place: stealing a private jet and nosediving it into the roof of a hollow building the Yeerks were using as an entrance tunnel for spacecraft.
** Marco's best [=CMOAs=]? First, deciding to tell his Dad all about the Animorphs rather than lose another parent, and - after spending almost a whole series coming to grips with probably having to kill his mother someday - freeing her from Visser One. Hell, even Marco's mom gets CMOA then, when she crushes the Yeerk.
** In ''Visser'', it's never stated outright that the plan was Marco's, but it seems likely, and he's still enough of a bastard to make Visser One sweat when she calls to ask for his help. Read that again: he makes Visser One, the top military leader of an alien race that is slowly conquering the galaxy, fear for her life because he plays coy about whether or not he'll sabotage her trial. Despite the fact that anything that happens to Visser One could happen to his own ''mother.'' ''Visser''-freaking-''One'' calls ''him'' a monster. That's pretty badass right there.
* In the last book Jake gets a CMOA by facing down Captain-Prince Asculan, leader of the Andalite force tasked to destroy Earth and the Yeerk forces concentrated on it, despite the Animorphs having just defeated Visser One and captured the Yeerk Pool Ship. He does so in a way that is very polite and diplomatic in wording yet harsh in terms of the subtle barbs directed at the Andalites between the lines of said wording. And said discussion was patched through the Andalite civilian network, trapping Asculan and preventing him from going ahead with Earth's destruction.
** Marco also has one here, as the entire time that Jake is going through his CMOA he is narrating in his head what it means in plain english in his own head and to the audience.
* Tobias forcing himself to act emotionless and apathetic as Visser Three - who had been masquerading as his last living relative - tells Tobias Elfangor is his father has always been Birdboy's CMOA.
** He also walked into that building knowing full well that he was dealing with Visser Three. ''And he never flinched.''
* Toby Hamee (Jara's daughter) in #34. Keep in mind that Ax can be rather arrogant when it comes to his Andalite pride.
-->'''Toby:''' "You only ask this [will Aldrea release the body she's possessing] because you don't trust Aldrea. As an Andalite you don't trust anyone who would choose to permanently become Hork-Bajir."
-->'''Ax:''' (after a long pause)
-->'''Toby:''' (with "no sincerity whatsoever") "I did not mean to sound suspicious of my Andalite friend."
* According to Erek, Cassie's [=CMOA=] is performing brain surgery on Ax.
** Cassie, sweet, shy, tree-hugging Cassie once made Visser 3 and several Hork-Bajir flee in horror. How? She morphed into a skunk and sprayed them!!! [=CMoA=] for Cassie AND for Mother Nature.
*** This is one-upped when the team holds the secret to removing the smell as their ransom for him to stop his current plan... and then lies about it for a few days to make sure he actually stopped. "Do you think we should tell him it's tomato juice now and not grape?" "Give it a little longer."
*** Truly Cassie's most epic moment of all took place in Megamorphs #3, when in the midst of all the [[TimeyWimeyBall time travel mayhem]] it seems that both Jake and Rachel, Cassie's LoveInterest and best friend respectively have been killed, and the Animorphs find themselves in the 1930s, confronted by some racist idiot named Davis who used 'a word Tobias wouldn't repeat' and was a general {{Jerkass}} to Cassie. Cassie, [[DespairEventHorizon rather upset]] over recent events, pleasantly says, "You don't like black people, Mr. Davis? No problem. I can turn white. Watch me." She then proceeds to morph a polar bear, pin the guy to a wall, stick his face in her jaws, and ROAR. Davis, for his part, babbles an apology and continues to apologize long after he's been released. It's a damn good thing Rachel turns up alive again.
*** Book 19 is an entire CMOA for Cassie: she manages to drive a Yeerk to voluntarily free its host, and does it simply by letting it peek inside her head. Later, in book 29, she goes into the Yeerk Pool ''alone'' to rescue said Yeerk while the rest of the team is sick.
* Rachel's threat in the second last book, when Tom is trying to make a deal with the Animorphs. Tom's acting cocky, until Rachel growls, "Don't even listen to him. We grab onto him now, hold onto him for three days and wait until that slug in his head starves to death. Then we have Tom back." This is the first thing said that legitmately ''scares'' Tom's Yeerk.
** ''Tom shook his head. "Crazy cousin Rachel. I always knew you were too much for your own good."''\\
'' Rachel snarled. ''
* Also, Rachel from the final book, when she faces a handful of dangerous morphs for her final battle: "This was my place and my moment and my own perfection. I was no longer afraid. If I had a mouth, I would've smiled. I said. No one moved. I asked. No answer. I said, almost laughing."
** Tobias got a [[SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments CMOH]] here, when he morphs into human so that he can cry.
* One of Ax's best moments came in #18, when he tells the Andalite commander who is trying to give him orders (and totally ignoring his human friends) that if he wants Ax to do something, he has to go through Ax's Prince - Jake. The commander is absolutely floored.
** Followed immediately by a pretty good one for Jake when the commander doesn't even finish explaining what he wants the Animorphs to do before Jake agrees to do it.
-->'''Commander Galuit:'''
-->'''Jake:'''
-->'''Galuit:'''
-->'''Jake:'''
-->'''Galuit:'''
-->'''Jake:'''
-->'''Galuit:''' (''Privately to Ax'')
* Alloran has a [=CMOA=] when he begs Ax to kill him, knowing that his body will otherwise be recaptured by the Yeerks.
* Ax and Alloran get a joint [=CMOA=] in the final book, when Captain-Prince Asculan flat-out refuses to honor Jake's promises to the Yeerk prisoners. Jake feels defeated, but Ax surprises him: under Andalite law, it is "the right and obligation" of any soldier to challenge the actions of a superior when he feels there's been an injustice. Asculan just laughs at him, because Ax is of insufficient rank to issue a formal challenge. He needs the support of someone of princely rank or higher... so Alloran, who's been Visser Three's host body for years upon years, points out that hey, he's still a War-Prince. The consequences of the challenge failing are that Ax will be exiled and his tail-blade cut off, but he and Alloran still risk it. At this point, Asculan confers with his staff, and ultimately concedes. The best part is that Asculan promotes Ax to prince by a proxy, without even stopping to make him a full warrior first--something not even Ax's legendary brother, Elfangor, could manage. Arbron teased him about it way back in ''The Andalite Chronicles.''
** Going into more detail for Alloran, he was very recently knocked unconscious with a blow to the head, and then Visser One left his head. Concussed and free and unpoisoned for the first time in something like twenty-five years, as he climbs to his feet he's able to assess the situation (the Animorphs have taken over the Pool Ship and are trying to talk to the Andalites, who think this is a trap and are angling to attack) and immediately starts giving detailed suggestions to diffuse the situation and open negotiations. ''Alloran'' readily lends himself to helping avert genocide of both 'primitive' aliens and helpless Yeerks, to having the humans taken seriously by his people, and to sharing Andalite technology with them.
** Since both Alloran and Asculan have "Semitur" as part of their names, and we see from Ax's parents' names that the middle name is inherited by their children, one {{Fanon}} theory is that Asculan is Alloran's own ''son'', who he hasn't seen for 25 years (possibly Asculan's entire life).
* Since he's the enemy of all these CMOA characters Visser Three doesn't get very many of his own. But one moment that stands out is when there was a big complicated Yeerk plan to infest the leaders of the world powers. The Animorphs go through a big complicated plan of their own to stop him...only to discover that it was all a trap and they had ended up right in V-3's clutches.
-->< By the way, the ''real'' banquet is tomorrow night. >
** Also, how the Animorphs retaliated after they barely escaped from the trap. Outplayed and outmaneuvered, the heroes dispensed with any elegant strategies, morphed into elephants and rhinos, and simply charged through the compound causing as much damage as they could. The banquet, understandably, was canceled. Rachel compared it to preventing a loss in chess by throwing the chessboard across the room.
* The best line in the whole series. It's Jake's and the writer's [=CMoA=].
-->Jake: "Ram the Blade ship."
** Doubly so when you remember that ramming the Blade Ship is ''exactly what Elfangor did'' when the Ellimist first restored him to his timeline. The Animorphs' similar ending could be seen either [[BolivianArmyEnding as ominous]] or as an excellent CallBack.
* In #41, when Jake hallucinates a Yeerk-controlled future, Jake speaks with who he believes to be Elfangor (it's actually an aged Tobias in Ax morph):
-->''"The EF'' [Evolutionist Front] ''is certainly a force to be reckoned with," I said.\\
\\
"Action is the surest path to change. No question there."\\
\\
"What I want is to go home."\\
Elfangor was an awesome presence. I'd be lying if I said he didn't intimidate me some. But I was a leader, too. I saw the war for Earth as more my fight than his. I wanted to be respectful, but he had made a huge error in this war, and I had to call him on it.\\
"No. I want to go home so I can stop all this from happening in the first place. I can stop the Yeerks without sacrificing my friends, without botching the war, and without stumbling into your brand of terrorisms and half-freedoms. I can stop this before we sacrifice the things we're supposed to be fighting for!"\\
Elfangor laughed. \\
"You don't always have to give up your principles to win. Isn't there always an alternative to sacrifice if you just step back, look at the big picture and -"\\
\\
The repetition stung. How had he known I was just talking big? It was like he was inside my mind, rifling through my personal file of fears and mistakes. Now I was angry.\\
"It's all your fault," I shouted suddenly. "I always saw you as a hero, Elfangor. A leader. But the truth is you just couldn't see another way out! You sentenced us to hardship and pain and suffering. We were just ''kids!'' You made us question every value we had ever learned! You had no right to heap that weight on us, huge and impossible. You used us!"\\
''
* If David gets a Crowning Moment, Tom (/his Yeerk) does too:
-->''"You appear to be experiencing some engine trouble, Visser," Tom said, gloating.''\\
'' Visser One asked.''\\
''"Oh, I doubt it," replied Tom cheerfully. "The Andalite fleet is rather close by. It's possible that I misled you on that part."''\\
''He was all but giggling.''
* Alloran gets one in ''The Andalite Chronicles'' that is also a rare [[SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments CMOH]], considering that at this point, he was a GeneralRipper and treated the humans with contempt. When Loren explains that her father was a Vietnam Veteran and that he suffered PTSD and eventually left the family because he wasn't able to cope, Chapman mocks her father, saying he was weak. Alloran asks Chapman if he fought in a war. Chapman answers "no", then Alloran tells him to shut the hell up because he has no idea what horrors soldiers go through.
--> '' He looked directly at Loren. ''
* Tobias has a [=CMoA=] that is nearly series-long, but never focused on. Whenever the group directly engages Visser Three, there is almost always a line about Tobias charging him- while in his default hawk form. A teenager trapped as a bird of prey attacking a trained killer in an Andalite body head-on. The CMOA comes from the fact that Tobias has a tendency to ''win'' these duels.
* Another one for Rachel during the David trilogy: while in rat form, she chews her own tail off to stop his attempt at {{Taking You With Me}}.
* Cassie anticipates every move David will make and plans out how to trap him as a rat.
* Practically everything that Elfangor did before and after the series began was a CMOA. From his first adventure that changed history, to his death, where he refused to let a world go down in flames due to some old code, and died fighting his nemesis than bowing. All amazing, simply amazing.
* Rachel manages to morph grizzly bear to ''tunnel her way out of a Kronosaurus'' in ''In the Time of Dinosaurs.''
* Most of Visser Three's morphs. Eating Elfangor in one bite, right at the start of the first book? Check. Something that is essentially made of fire? Check, if impractical. At least two large creatures that fire deadly-looking projectiles? But of course!
** Becomes {{Fridge}} when you consider that the Visser first had to ''acquire'' all these morphs. And he did it somehow without being killed by ''any'' of the original acquir-ees?!
*** Well, Yeerks have stun-beams. And [[WeHaveReserves cannon fodder.]]
* In #38 The Arrival, The Animorphs really show the Andalites who's boss. For those curious, that included showing up with the intention of being treated as equals, storming out upon being denied that request, overpowering the Andalites when they try to force them to stay, making it clear that ''Jake'' is in charge of the entire operation, and later pulling a BatmanGambit to top it all off.
** Of particular note is this exchange:
-->'''Gonrod''': Are all humans as arrogant as you? You dare to make demands of the highest-ranking Andalite within light years?
-->'''Jake''': Huh. So, your rank is 'Commander' and you're the highest-ranking Andalite within light years?
-->'''Ax''': A Commander is typically in charge of a single ship. A single *small* ship.
-->'''Arbat''': (cracking up) There goes our plan to bluff the enemy into thinking we have superior numbers.
* In ''The Hidden'', a buffalo acquires the ability to morph. Through a series of accidents and reflexes, it lays dying, then acquires and morphs Visser three's host, then ''goes tail-to-tail with Visser three and comes out ahead''. It makes Alloran, and anybody whose ever fought the visser, look bad.
* In the last book, Rachel hides on the Blade Ship, morphs grizzly, and manages to fight everyone on the bridge. And for the first time in the series, the Yeerks don't use "Andalite bandit."
-->'''Yeerk:''' Animorph!
-->'''Rachel:'''
** Of course, since Ax actually *is* an Andalite, he gets the chance to make badass responses like this all the way through the series:
-->'''Hork-Bajir''': Andalite!
-->'''Ax''': Yes, Andalite. How unlucky for you, Yeerk.
* In book 34, Cassie [[BeyondTheImpossible morphs to whale, while still demorphing from osprey.]] Every time someone does a rapid switch from one morph to another, they have to revert fully to humans before they can start morphing again. Even more impressively, she does it - a morphing feat Aldrea says would have made her a hero to the Andalites - while also fighting off Aldrea within her head.
* Megamorphs #1: Marco and Ax escape captivity on the Blade Ship by jumping out of it into the sky, at which point Marco demorphs out of his Gorilla morph and into an osprey just in time to save himself from falling to his death. Bonus points for pulling this off while scared out of his mind, despite the fact that morphing typically requires concentration.
** This is followed by a weird CMOF/CMOH/Tearjerker when Marco wakes up Jake, who went to bed assuming Marco and Ax were dead, by screaming "Booga booga booga!" at him and then laughing until he starts crying.
* This is sort of a CMOA by proxy for Jake:
-->'''Naomi''': Okay, fine, Eva. You've been in this war. You know the enemy. And you're old enough to drive. You should be the leader.
-->'''Eva''': No, I shouldn't. Yes, I know the enemy. But there's only one person in the galaxy that Visser Three is afraid of, and that's Jake.
* Tom - the real Tom - gets one in the very first book, when the Animorphs manage to briefly free him and a bunch of other hosts. When he gets cornered by some Taxxons, he tries to fight them off, and ''then'' he charges at Visser 3 - currently morphed as some enormous, monstrous creature - completely unarmed. A teenage boy attacks a giant alien monster with just his fists. Naturally, he loses the fight instantly, but he manages to delay Visser 3's attack on the Animorphs long enough to help them escape at the cost of losing his freedom again.
* Alloran in the final book, after Visser One departs his cranium. Aware of his reputation as the GeneralRipper who tried to euthanise the Hork-Bajir species, as well as the only Andalite unlucky enough to be infested by a Yeerk, he gives a PatrickStewartSpeech about how he's aware those will mar his reputation for the rest of his life...and he ''simply doesn't give a shit'', because he's ''free'' now. He curls his tail of his own accord, and the ability to control his own body again makes him laugh and cry out in euphoria. If Andalite arms weren't so weak, he'd probably ask for a high five.
* Jake not only taking down a Howler, a being designed by Crayak to be the ultimate killing machine, but acquiring it in the process of free fall. He then gets an even greater one by [[XanatosGambit using this to force the hand of Crayak himself]] to either destroy the other 6 hunting the Animorphs or else risk have their whole race [[HeelRealisation actually realise what it is he's making them do.]]
** And he does it by ''kissing Cassie''. Later, the Ellimist tells Jake they succeeded - the next time Crayak uses the Howlers they will attempt to defeat their targets by kissing them.
* In the TV show, Jake sampling escargot with great enjoyment, right in front of a horrified Visser 3 in human disguise.
* Toby Hamee's arc is really one great big CMOA.
* It's not just aliens and the Animorphs that get awesome moments--everyday humans, including hosts, get them, too. For instance, in the second book, the Yeerks infesting Chapman and his wife begin to discuss taking their daughter Melissa as a potential new host. Suddenly, Chapman--the 'real'' Chapman--starts going for a knife, while Mrs. Chapman tries strangling herself. They're willing to kill themselves and thus force out their Yeerks rather than [[MamaBear see their]] [[PapaWolf daughter harmed]]. It doesn't work, but it's the thought that counts--and the Yeerks never do infest Melissa, suggesting that they respect the threat.
** It becomes even more awesome in retrospect when, later in the same book, Visser Three allows Chapman's Yeerk to temporarily give up control of him so that the two can speak directly. It turns out that Chapman's been infested for so long that he's barely able to walk or speak by his own volition--but he's ''still'' able to stand up to the Visser, outright threatening his own Yeerk's life if Melissa is ever taken. And Visser Three listens.
* In ''Elfangor's Secret'' (the third ''Megamorphs''), the Animorphs find themselves traveling back in time to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong--the former Visser Four was able to find [[TimeyWimeyBall the Time Matrix]], a machine that allows users to travel to the past or future and thus alter reality, and used its power to make Western civilization much easier to conquer and control (in this new reality, for instance, slavery is still legalized, and "reeducation" camps are popular tools to force people to learn their place). The teens' first stop is the Battle of Agincourt, in the Hundred Years' War, but they don't find out why Visser Four bothered to stop there until late in the book. It turns out that John Berryman, his host, despised what his Yeerk was doing and fought back by constantly reciting lines from [[Creator/WilliamShakespeare Shakespeare's]] ''Henry V''--and it bothered the Yeerk so greatly that he tried to alter the battle's outcome so that Shakespeare wouldn't be able to write the play. Being able to annoy a creature with the power to literally change history that much? Chalk one up for the little guy.
** John Berryman's Yeerk proves to be a dangerous enemy right off the bat at Agincourt simply because ''nobody can find him''. He not only has his own ConsummateLiar Yeerk powers to help him blend in, he has all of Berryman's acting experience to stretch it even further. [[TheChessmaster Marco]] has his own moment of awesome when he figures it out: no modern actor looking for work could afford to accumulate the decades of filth and rot that the soldiers at Agincourt had. Once the Animorphs start looking for someone clean, they find him in minutes.
* In ''The Ellimist Chronicles'', we have Tree, Toomin/Ellimist's Andalite wife during the period when he had run away from Crayak's "games" - a humble, uncomplicated being who wouldn't have had the slightest context to even begin to comprehend who and what her husband truly was, she understood the trials of life in ways that he had largely forgotten, and gave him the inspiration and motivation, not just to move past the death of their first child, but to gain the upper hand against Crayak. With nothing more than her stubborn determination to bring new life into the world no matter what diseases, predators, or natural disasters could throw at them, she effectively saved the galaxy.
* Rachel shows up in her own kitchen in grizzly bear morph. Rachel's mother tries to drive her off... with a spice rack. Clearly badassery without regard for personal safety is InTheBlood.
* When a Controller barks the word ''Andalite'' at Cassie in Rachel morph, she doesn't miss a beat - she just keeps walking and agrees that "and a light would be helpful, too".
* When Eva is temporarily free in ''Visser', she's brave enough to walk right back into slavery because it's better for humanity to have Visser One in charge than Visser Three, despite Marco begging her not to do it, even convincing him that it's necessary.
* In Megamorphs 4, Rachel isn't the out and out warrior she becomes in the main series, with an array of dangerous morphs. She's still a mallrat gymnast facing an alien invasion alongside a few friends. But the protective-slash-aggressive active tendencies that make her love the fight are still there, and Cassie says it seems like she's killing time and waiting for something. She was born to fight.
** When Marco sees his mom and gives chase, Rachel joins in instantly, [[ImprovisedWeapon hits someone with a bottle]], and as soon as they're cornered boosts Marco up to a fire escape that she then jumps up to herself.
** As Ax got on the TV talking about the Yeerks Rachel left home with a baseball bat, ran to her cousin's house, and got there just in time to [[BigDamnHeroes clobber Tom and save Jake and Marco]], clubbing him in the head and knee, and then hitting another Controller to make him drop his weapon.
--> The bat came up fast, caught Tom in the face. Then one! Two! Three! Three stiff, hard blows and Tom was down, curled in a ball, groaning, eyes rolling, blood gushing from his nose and ear.
--> I stared at my cousin. Rachel was breathing hard. But her outfit, hair, and makeup had remained perfect.
** When Ax is in a bad way surrounded by Hork-Bajir, Rachel ''picks up a severed head'' and then ''stabs one of the Hork-Bajir in the back'' with its horns. She's then able to lead the group to the roof of the mall, even though it's flooded with invading aliens.
** Even in her final moments of the book, Rachel goes down fighting. After being told by Ax that their mission was more or less [[FlingALightIntoTheFuture suicidal,]] she still chooses to ''rush'' a Hork-Bajir barehanded. Her last second is spent screaming in defiance as she attempts to tackle the bladed alien, which kills her nearly before she hits the ground.
* In the infamous Starfish Book (#32), Rachel (while suffering from a LiteralSplitPersonality) morphs bear, and when a Hork-Bajir cuts one of her arms off, she ''picks it up and hits them with it''.
* In "The Stranger", the destruction of the Kandrona. Not only it's the first unquestioned ''victory'' the Animorphs achieve, killing thousands of Yeeks and limiting the ones on Earth to the one on their orbiting ship until a replacement is brought in (thus hampering their activities as they need to go in orbit and back), it later turns out to be an extremely serious blow and the moment the Animorphs actually started having a chance.
* A quiet one for the Ellimist: He agreed with Crayak that he would choose six random kids to fight the Yeerk invasion. He chose Ax (Elfangor's brother), Tobias [[spoiler: Elfangor's son]], Marco [[spoiler: the son of Visser One's host]] (and a ruthless strategist), and Cassie (who, in addition to being a naturally-skilled morpher and someone with a connection to all kinds of animals, turns out to be [[spoiler: a "sub-temporal grounded anomaly" whose very existence prevents reality from being rewritten]]); meanwhile, the cousins Jake (a natural [[TheLeader leader]] and tactician and someone whose brother is infested, making the fight [[ItsPersonal very personal to him]]) and Rachel (a deadly BloodKnight who makes for a great warrior nonetheless) are eventually revealed to be the only ''truly'' randomly selected members of the group. Furthermore, they all know each through Jake and thus have the ability to be connected. When the Drode whines that he stacked the deck, the Ellimist's response is wonderful.
--->'''Ellimist:''' ''[laughing]'' [[CouldSayItBut Did I? If I did, that would be very clever of me.]]
----