Skulduggery Pleasant/Awesome

• Valkyrie forcing her way into the Faceless One's dimension to rescue Skulduggery in the fourth book. Determinator at its finest.
• Valkyrie kills a God in book 3 and owns the others with Necromancy. Which she had never studied before.
• "Get away from my ex-girlfriend, you moany little whinge-bag." You tell that sad little emo git, Fletcher Renn.
  • Fletcher is generally good at chewing people out. His What the Hell, Hero? to Valkyrie was equally awesome.

"Well done, Val. You share the emotional range of a dead man."

• Villainous example. Eliza Scorn utterly outplays Magnificent Bitch China Sorrows. She foils her plan to end the Church of the Faceless Ones and takes away everything she holds dear. When she says "Finished with you? I haven't even started." she bloody well means it.
• Desmond. Throwing Moore into a pharmacy window.
• Skulduggery at the end of Death Bringer, tossing off his Super-Powered Evil Side casually to throw off Darquesse's Hannibal Lecture.

I wouldn't stay like this. I like being me.

• • Skulduggery somehow manages to make giving in to his Super-Powered Evil Side seem awesome.

"That is not Lord Vile. This is Lord Vile.

• Another Skulduggery example, from Playing With Fire. The infamous 'swordfight/gunfight' one. Skulduggery is facing down Baron Vengeous, and proceeds to snark all over the Honor Before Reason trope.

Vengeous: Only a heathen brings a gun to a swordfight.
Skulduggery: Only a moron brings a sword to a gunfight.

• Even in the first book, Stephanie's declaration that "my name is Valkyrie Cain". I cheered.