Awesome / Ender's Shadow

• Bean figures out the Fleet's entire, complex, crazy, top secret plan... because of one vague answer from tech support. And he was seven years old.
• Earlier in Ender's Shadow, Bean psychologist-talks Colonel Graff into giving him private access to restricted supplies to supplement Dragon Army's resources. (It should be pointed out that the reason Graff prefers Ender to Bean throughout the books is that while they're both geniuses, he can control Ender. Bean is the only student in Battle School who can freak Graff out.)
• Bean and his ludicrous intelligence are made of this trope: yet again in Enders Shadow, he figured out that the IF must have sent ships to attack the Buggers years ago, by applying fortification strategies to the solar system (basically, he realized that it is impossible to adequately defend a 3-dimensional space the size of the solar system from invasion, and that the only defensive strategy that makes sense is a pre-emptive strike against your foe). Managed, in one simple deduction, to scare the hell out of every higher-up in the IF, because that fact was supposed to be top-secret.
  • And he came up with this whole reasoning on the spot while arguing with his instructor that he actually did spend 2 hours reading the text (He actually programed his desk to show he was reading when he was hacking into secret school files.)
• Petra gets one of her own in the early books. Imprisoned, she manages to send a message to Bean she knows he'll intercept ... by starting an early form of meme! Specifically, a tiny digital drawing of a dragon that goes under an email signature as a kind of flourish, to be perpetuated and shared on the web, but with a message encoded in some of its pixels. It takes months for it to spread enough for Bean to notice, but it works perfectly.
• Suriyawong gets an awesome come-uppance in Shadow Puppets when he repeats a statement from earlier in the book.
  Achilles: What's this supposed to be?
  Suriyawong: The loan of a knife.
  Achilles: But he has a gun!
  Suriyawong: I expect you to solve your own problems.
• And the set-up for that line at the start of Shadow Puppets, when we get a single chapter from Suriyawong's point of view. Sent to free Achilles from imprisonment, he reflects on how Achilles kills absolutely everyone who ever sees him helpless, even people who are actively helping him. And so when they arrive at his prison transport ... Suriyawong simply slides a knife through the door, trusting that even a bound Achilles will have the wherewithal to seize it and kill his captors personally. He's completely right.
• And immediately following that, the great Gordian climax to Bean vs Achilles. They've spent years trying to outthink each other. Bean has described anticipating him as near impossible. Achilles has Suriyawong's men on his side, is allegedly holding Bean and his wife's embryos hostage, and is forcing him to come alone. What's the solution that finally defeats Achilles? Bean simply walks up to him, pushes him to the ground ... and shoots him in the head. Achilles is so used to Xanatos Speed Chess that it blindsides him, and so foolish he doesn't consider Suriyawong has been playing him the whole time until it's too late.

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