Artemis Fowl/Awesome

• Artemis and Butler manage to have these moments en masse, though Foaly isn't too far behind either.
• The book itself got one when ten-year-old Artemis wakes up after the events of The Time Paradox saying "Fairies. Something about fairies."
  • I was wondering what Artemis was doing looking for The Booke in the first place.
• The second book was chock-full of these. Holly particularly during the scene with Root, the ship, and Koboi Labs. "Let me ask you something. How fond are you of your ribs?"
• The whole "The Lost Colony" is one CMOA after another
  • One personal favorite: Butler holding a trained killer with deadly martial arts to the wall, then throwing him across the room for Holly to shoot in mid-flight.

Holly: "Pull."

• "About my name - Artemis - you were right. In London, it is generally a female name, after the Greek goddess of archery. But every now and then a male comes along with such a talent for hunting that he earns the right to use the name. I am that male. Artemis the hunter. I hunted you."]]
• How about Juliet in The Eternity Code? She manages to infiltrate a SWAT Unit and convince them she's a rookie. All after she convinced a desk clerk at the building the rest of the crew were infiltrating that she was a little girl asking if her "invisible friend" could come along (so that Holly could enter the building - Fairies have to have permission to enter a human dwelling in order to enter it without becoming sick). Also taking out the Dumb Muscle pair with one and two blows each and knocking out her brother's Evil Counterpart with a sucker punch. Cute, powerful, and versatile.
• Butler gets at least one per book. Off the top of my head:
  • In book one, he wanders unarmed into the middle of a heavily armed and invisible group of LEP commandos, and proceeds to wipe the floor with them. Shortly after, he trumps that by taking on a troll (which in the Artemis Fowl series, are 10 foot tall, 900 pound, crazed engines of death, with retractable claws, and poison tusks) and beats it to a quivering pulp, using a mace, and his BARE HANDS. Even the human-hating fairies acknowledge it as awesome (it basically turns Butler into a legend, with the footage of the battle used in LEP training videos), and one of them has to be assured that it wasn't a hallucination brought on by delirium from severe wounds.
    • LEP training videos dealing with how not to deal with trolls, no less. Actually, it's Holly's encounter with the troll in Italy that's used as a bad example. Butler's confrontation with the same troll is far too Badass for the fairies to receive it negatively.
      • Holly's is used, by her instructor in a class she takes. Butler's is in the hand-to-hand combat instruction class.
    • Made even more awesome in the graphic novel version where, once Butler's done beating the troll to a bloody pulp, he proceeds to forcibly chuck the broken 900 pound killing machine out the front door, while nonchalantly stating: "And don't come back."
    • He does this in the book as well.
  • In book 2, he takes on about 200 heavily-armed goblins, with nothing but a SIG pistol and his fists. He gets through about 50 of them, before the rest flee in terror from the terrifying god-mountain. As the book puts it "There were only two people on Earth more well-versed in the martial arts than Butler. One was related to him. The other spent his days alone on a small Pacific island, meditating and beating up palm trees. You really had to feel sorry for those goblins".
    • To give you an idea of what exactly that entails, he is described as "a ton of bricks, but with considerably more economy of movement."
    • In the graphic novel, one panel shows Butler out of ammo and surrounded by goblins. The next few panels show what else is going on, and then it cuts back to Butler, who is still surrounded by goblins, all of whom are unconscious. He took them all down offscreen.
    • "Two hundred goblins versus two LEP officers, one human and one working weapon. This was going to be close."
  • In book 3, he throws himself in front of a bullet meant for Artemis, and then (even though the bullet went through his heart) he manages to remain conscious long enough to shoot the would be assassin in the head. When this fails to kill him, Butler later returns (his heart got better) and manages to convince the hitman that he is a spectre sent from hell to claim him, which leaves the hitman a gibbering wreck, promising to confess to every crime he's ever committed.
    • It should also be noted that he was essentially blind when he made that shot
  • in book five when he yanks artemis out of the past, literally
• The ending of Artemis Fowl 3.

All the better to see you with, Spiro.

• • And an epic Badass Boast Meaningful Echo as an addendum to that:

Artemis: (to Spiro) About my name- Artemis- you were right. In London, it is generally a female name, after the Greek goddess of archery. But every now and then a male comes along with such a talent for hunting that he earns the right to use the name. I am that male. Artemis the Hunter. I hunted you.

• The Lost Colony, when Artemis figures out, in his head, the pattern in which a dimension is fading from time and space and uses it to save Holly's life, in the past, from the future. I know, that scene is kinda tough to explain.
  • Doesn't make it any less awesome, though. Let me try to clarify: the Big Bad has run Holly through. He then went on to kill Number One and Qwan and is now readying a killing blow for Artemis. Every three minutes or so (bit unclear on the timing), a piece of space teleports back to the previous three minutes. Artemis fires a laser shot into this space, where it teleports back in time just in time to hit the Big Bad as he readies the (now-averted) fatal strike.
    • In laymans terms, he shot a laser backwards in time.
• The Opal Deception.

"Yes, sir," said Trouble, and fired.

• • ( Root's horrible replacement, Sool, has just given the order to blow Holly's shuttle out of the air - the justification being that she supposedly killed the Commander). Foaly is arguing with Sool in Trouble's earpiece. Trouble and Holly were friends, but he doesn't have any of the proof about her innocence. So he fires... a comlink.)
  • Not to mention his defense of Police Plaza in The Arctic Incident. Managing to keep the enemy off without working weapons until the heroes could win the day. Bad. Ass.
• The climax of The Arctic Incident is a brilliant CMOA for Foaly. Basically, he uses his tech genius and some secret footage of his conversation with one of the villains to turn the joint Big Bads' army against them, and then the Big Bads against each other. All from inside a locked cell. It's probably the only adventure in which Artemis relies entirely on someone else's plan to save the day.
• In The Atlantis Complex when Artemis knows that once Turnball gives him an order he will be unable to disobey, so he goads Ragby into shocking him, knowing this will trigger the complex and bring the Orion personality - which is not under Turnball's control - to the fore. He finds a way to use a serious mental illness to defeat the Big Bad. Only Artemis Fowl.
• In The Opal Deception Holly pilots a shuttle without the engine to hide their heat signiture from heat seeking missles.Yes, being an ace pilot is a necessary plot skill.