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The Weed
- Maud gets herself swallowed by a hydra so that she can crush its heart with her bare hooves. Though it's also a case of Didn't Think This Through, as she didn't think to tell Tarnish, resulting in him thinking she got killed.
- In the same chapter, Tarnish unlocks his special spell, which his mother Pinny Lane had explained to him a few chapters earlier. From his horn, he could produce water for supplies or shoot steam hot enough to melt flesh.
- Later, when Maud and Tarnish realize they're at ground zero when a volcano erupts, the first thing does is set Tarnish on her back and then run like Tartarus is after them both. And they manage to survive the whole thing (though not without health problems)
- A flashback reveals that when they were little, Maud protected Pinkie from an eldritch bed monster. In context, their parents didn't believe Pinkie when she told them and Maud stepped up to do the job herself.
Venenum Iocus
- Tarnish carrying the Crown of Corruption so that it can be destroyed, and the support of all his friends as Grogar does everything he possibly can to stop him. He's literally gibbering in fear by the end, but he doesn't stop walking. The support his friends are offering, by the way, counts as Awesome itself:
- Flamingo manifests as a spirit, and fights the shadows both as her sword form and her pegasus form, while shrieking a Badass Boast against Grogar's shadows.
- Celestia delays the sunset so that Tarnish can use it as a safe point, and sends Philomena, who
- Performs a Heroic Sacrifice, but as she's a Phoenix, it doubles as Taking You with Me, and doesn't stick as she literally explodes, scorching away the shadows, and reforms from the ash.
M.F.D.
- Holly has the weight of four ponies strapped to her back and is told to walk up a massive flight of stairs as a test. She makes it, all 32 floors. We later find out that making it to 20 would get her hired, nobody else got that far before.
- Her first job, as well. She gets trapped behind a wall of flame with two civilians (one of them a young colt), and, unable to get to the stairs, kicks a desk through a window and jumps across the street, carrying the two civilians on her back.
Where The Wind Takes You
- Gloomy flies into one of the worst storms she's ever seen, just because one pegasus can do more than none, and saves two foals, an act so Awesome, it earns the attention of Princess Luna.
Princess Twilight Sparkle's School For Fantastic Foals
- Sumac managing to impress Princess Celestia by refusing to take her offer out of loyalty, and managing to turn her own flattery against her. It's so impressive that Celestia tells anyone who'll listen about how she got out-manoeuvred by a foal.
- Trixie, while fighting in Ponyville, is seen holding off a massive horde while standing over Lemon Hearts, who is too badly injured to fight. Part of this involves smashing a group of changelings with a wagon.
- Stinkbug's potion wears off in the middle of the wedding reception, and his stink is immune (or worse) to direct arcane countermeasures. So Princess Luna transmutes the noses of everyone in the palace to make them think they're smelling roses.
- After Arcturus (posthumously) and Dandelia Lulamoon put Trixie through a great deal of stress and pain for their own noble pride, Princess Luna thoroughly averts Never Speak Ill of the Dead and chews them both out, before offering reparations to Trixia and Sumac and forcing Dandelia to undergo therapy for the abuse she had received, that was feeding her abuse of Trixie.
- Dandy Lion may be a horrible person, but when Sumac accidentally taps into the magic of an Eldritch Abomination, she's the one that knows how to save him, and casts the necessary spells.
- Twilight uses protection spells to stop Sumac getting zap apple tincture, intending to use it as a means to motivate him to improve his magic. She expects the first barrier to take him about a year longer than the minutes it actually takes him once he's decided he wants it.
- Olive doing everything in her power to save Sumac from Chrysalis, even going so far as to attempt a Mercy Kill, knowing she may never be forgiven for it, and getting beaten to a pulp for it, but never ever giving up.
The Sun Always Surprises
- When Celestia drops into a serious mess because she won't let herself have what she wants, Cadance breaks into her room and informs Celestia that she won't let her destroy herself. And Celestia listens. Also counts as Heartwarming.
- How Gosling finally breaks through Celestia's resistance. He uses clouds to refract light and make a sunset outside her window.
Stinkbug The Unwanted
The Perilous Romance Of Swans
- How Gosling meets Seville - he finds a tribalist unicorn journalist attacking Seville to put him in his place, and politely inquires as to the problem. When the journalist decides to insult Gosling, then Gosling summons the guard and has him arrested for assault, and when the journalist claims You Have No Idea Who You're Dealing With, Gosling turns it back on him and permanently bars him from the castle. Also counts as Heartwarming.
- Gosling and a platoon of Night Guards holding off Equalist pegasi, and convincing his teammates not to execute their leader, a military turncoat, and bring him to the Royal Sisters alive. This results in Hotspur and Gosling getting promoted by Shining Armor.
- When confronting Skyfire Flash, the filly from his high school who ostracized him with false rumors of homosexuality, Gosling decides to keep his own feelings in check and do the right thing, by giving her An Offer You Can't Refuse: either join the Royal Guard for twenty years, or go down as a criminal who slandered a member of the Royal Family for the rest of her life. And he deflects all of Skyfire's emotional manipulations. She ends up choosing the former.
- When Mr. Mariner enacts an Xanatos Gambit that basically threatens all of Equestrian society to remove the Royal Sisters from power, Gosling manages to convince a mob of nobles who happened to be Celestia's former students. How? By speaking to them honestly about how Celestia thought of abdicating because her subjects no longer loved her or needed her around. Realizing the extent of their Princess's despair, the nobles rally behind Gosling and become his army.
The Mask Makes The Pony
- Flicker's attempted Heroic Sacrifice. It might well have been Stupid, but dealing with a rabid bear by applying excessive quantities of dynamite is still pretty Awesome.
- Flicker is shown eternity, which apparently took a good portion of the sanity of a being that is basically a God, and just says "that wasn't so bad" Funny? Yes. Awesome? Most definitely.
- Dr. Sterling's successful Heroic Sacrifice. He uses a building's gas supply and every grenade he can reach to take out both Contagion and himself in the biggest explosion he can make.
The Perilous Gestation Of Swans
- In the mirror world, Trixie was still just a high-schooler. She also kidnapped Sumac to get him out of an unjust system, rescued Twinkleshine from an abusive facility and successfully went on the run. As a high school student.
Together, They Fight Crime
- After Yam is captured via a gas bomb and taken to where a lot of captured foals are being held, Guacamelee comes to the rescue, effortlessly carving through a small army of Mooks in a dozen paragraphs of hilarious awesomeness, wreaking righteous vengeance on those who would harm foals. And that's before S.M.I.L.E. and The Wardens show up.
House of the Rising Sunflower
- Sundance's flight to Canterlot to get Earwax to a hospital. Through a feral storm. He has a little help at the end, but still manages to get her there safely.
When Life Gives You Lemons
- Rainbow Dash once Took a Third Option by flying faster than the speed of magic, cracking time apart to save two her friends at the same time.
Nom's Mom Bomb
- Chartreuse going into battle against the imps alone. The threat was far more than Dim expected, but Chartreuse handles it, including using a Cold Iron poker to drive an imp out of her own leg, an act that impresses and unnerves even Princess Luna.
Eigengrau Zwei: Die Welt Ist Grau Geworden
- Weaver Indigo's Heroic Sacrifice, dying to release the spiders that bring down the false-alicorn's shields.
- Blackbird Ascends to divinity out of sheer willpower and refusal to lose Dim.
Lies, Damn Lies, And Statistics
- Chartreuse nearly jails Princess Celestia when the latter attempts to bribe her for favourable trade deals with the Empire. Given Celestia's cooperation with justice, she's sentenced only to public humiliation. Dim and Sunburst were unable to intervene due to sudden muteness and paralysisnote . It's also all-but stated this was a Batman Gambit by Celestia to cow the nobility in the absence of the Emperor and Empress.
