Awesome / Iron Widow

• Zetian kills Yang Guang in the mindscape, takes over the Nine-Tailed Fox, and wins the battle. Just as all the other pilots are crowding around to see a new balanced pair, Zetian comes out, dumps his corpse on the ground, and laughs maniacally for the cameras.
  Zetian: WELCOME TO YOUR NIGHTMARE!
• When the strategists try to intimidate Zetian, she hobbles up to a soldier, still bound, pressing her forehead to his gun and daring him to shoot. No one tries to threaten her after that.
• The first time Zetian and Shimin achieve Heroic Form in the Vermilion Bird, despite being still qi-exhausted and unused to each other. They pull out a longbow and snipe every noble-class hundun themselves, proving themselves too valuable despite crippling a duke-class pilot and killing the two soldiers keeping an eye on them.
• Yizhi calms down Zetian and Shimin in their rampage by donating some of his qi despite being a normal human, outside a chrysalis. No one ever mentioned trying such a thing before because adding a third person to a pair almost never works, but they manage it.
• Zetian and Shimin capture An Lushan on the night before the assault, knowing there will be no time for an investigation. They waterboard him with alcohol to force him to explain the secrets behind the pilot program, then drown him in alcohol.
• Shimin pilots the Vermilion Bird alone, which should literally be impossible, to save Zetian and Yizhi.
• Zetian finds the legendary Emperor Qin Zheng to get the Yellow Dragon to win the battle against the hunduns and kill the Black Tortoise at the same time. They both realize she'd never survive piloting from the concubine position... so she makes him sit in the concubine position, hobbling him just enough that he won't kill her if he's careful.
• Once the battle is over and Zetian has broadcast the secrets, she decides to fly off in the Yellow Dragon to literally tear down the power structures that have been keeping her down her entire life. By the time she reaches the capital, the entire population is on their knees, begging for mercy. Except for the scholars, who still think they can get out of this.
  Scholar: Pilot Wu–
  Zetian: Empress Wu.
• After Zetian defeats the scholars, Yizhi's father tries to blackmail her by surrounding himself with little girls so she won't kill him, then threatening to release the video of her reciting the contract naked. Yizhi sounds hurt and confused, and asks to be let out of the Yellow Dragon... which lets him get close enough to zap his father with a lightning bolt, because he put on just enough of Zetian's spirit armor to manage it. Then he takes over his father's criminal and corporate empires and demands everyone bow before the Iron Widow.

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