Fanfic / Fighting Is Magic Tournament

Fighting Is Magic Tournament is a now complete Round Robin My Little Pony fanfiction written by Alexwarlorn (of Pony POV Series fame) and many other contributors.

Well known ponies come together for a fighting tournament, mostly from the Fourth Galaxy (IE G4), but a few from each of the other three as well. Victor is decided by 10 second knock out, ring out, or surrender.

Who will win?

Now has a character page that Needs Love.

Participants

• 1. Twilight Sparkle
• 2. Pinkie Pie
• 3. Rarity
• 4. Applejack
• 5. Fluttershy
• 6. Rainbow Dash
• 7. Octavia
• 8. Vinyl Scratch
• 9. Trixie
• 10. Sunset Shimmer (pony form)
• 11. Starlight Glimmer
• 12. Moon Dancer
• 13. Spike
• 14. Shining Armor
• 15. CMC
• 16. Zecora
• 17. Gilda
• 18. Princess Celesita
• 19. Princess Luna
• 20. Princess Cadence
• 21. Discord
• 22. King Sombra (Crystal War Timeline)
• 23. Lord Tirek (starts in weakest form at start of tournament)
• 24. Queen Chrysalis
• 25. Maud Pie
• 26. Minty
• 27. Iron Will
• 28. Wind Whistler
• 29. Patch
• 30. Philomena
• 31. Flash Sentry
• 32. Daring Do
• 33. Ahuizotl
• 34. Adagio Dazzle
• 35. Spitfire
• 36. Lightning Dust
• 37. Dragon Lord Ember
• 38. Garble
• 39. Diamond Tiara

Chapter List

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9

It is canonically unconnected to any of the author's other works.

A sequel series, titled Fighting is Magic Melee, has been written.

The line up for the second tournament is:

Participants

• 1. Sandbar
• 2. Yona
• 3. Smolder
• 4. Gallus
• 5. Ocellus
• 6. Silverstream
• 7. Reeka
• 8. Draggle
• 9. Teddy
• 10. Patch
• 11. Hydia
• 12. Daybreaker
• 13. Gizmonks
• 14. Storm King
• 15. Queen Novo
• 16. Princess Skystar
• 17. Capper
• 18. Captain Calaeno
• 19. Cheerilee
• 20. Apple Bloom
• 21. Scootaloo
• 22. Sweetie Belle
• 23. Gilda
• 24. Garble
• 25. Blueblood
• 26. Adagio Dazzle
• 27. Aria Blaze
• 28. Sonata Dusk
• 29. Lavan
• 30. Sunny Daze (G3)
• 31. Whimsey Weatherbe (G3.5)
• 32. G3 Rainbow Dash
• 33. Firefly (G1)
• 34. Queen Majesty
• 35. Meghan Williams
• 36. Grogar (G1)
• 37. Twilight (G1)
• 38. Tirac
• 39. G1 Smooze
• 40. Twilight Sparkle
• 41. G4 Rainbow Dash
• 42. Fluttershy
• 43. Applejack
• 44. Pinkie Pie
• 45. Rarity
• 46. Spike
• 47. Starlight Glimmer
• 48. Trixie
• 49. Sunset Shimmer
• 50. Princess Celestia
• 51. Princess Luna
• 52. Discord
• 53. Lord Tirek
• 54. Queen Chrysalis
• 55. Cozy Glow
• 56. Tempest Shadow
• 57. Spitfire
• 58. Soarin
• 59. Autumn Blaze
• 60. G3 Rarity
• 61. Princess Cadance
• 62. Shining Armor
• 63. Flurry Heart
• 64. Maud Pie, Sunburst, Sting the Bee, G4 Moon Dancer, Scorpan, and Wallflower Blush (decided via individual matches)

Melee Chapter List

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6

Warning: Unmarked spoilers for match winners.

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This series contains examples of:

Fighting Is Magic Tournament

• Action Survivor: Patch, due to being the most 'normal' combatant of the entire tournament and having no magical powers. She's fully aware of this, and thus chooses to resort to anything but fighting head on.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: For coming in third place (getting the bronze award), Flash Sentry gets a new suit of armor and wing-blades.
• Artifact of Doom:
  • Tirac gets to use his Rainbow of Darkness for the race for the losers of the tournament.
  • Trixie ultimately resorts to using the Alicorn Amulet, which has a similar effect on her as it did before, but it's eventually destroyed by Flash Sentry.
• Badass Boast: King Sombra makes one...then gets told to save it for later. He does.
• The Bad Guy Wins:
  • The King Sombra participating is from the Crystal War timeline, where he won. Fortunately due to him being away a rebellion lead by that timeline's Rainbow Dash successfully overthrew his empire and put the Royal Sisters back on the throne. Though according to Sea Breeze, this created a splinter universe due to the nature of the tournament.
  • Adagio wins the kart race for those eliminated in the preliminaries and first rounds. Though this just means she skips the preliminaries if a second one is held.
  • Chrysalis manages to beat both Daring Do and Celestia via lots of manipulation and thought.
• Batman Gambit: Diamond Tiara performs one on Queen Chrysalis: she pretends to break down crying when her attempted bribe doesn't work, and begs Chrysalis to eat her love for her mother last. Chrysalis being the Sadist that she is, decides to eat it first. Considering how their relationship is, Chrysalis gets food poisoning and is left helpless as Diamond pushes her out of the ring.
  • Flash Sentry pulls this on the Alicorn Amulet-using Trixie by tricking her into hitting herself with her own illusion spell, making her think she hurt Starlight Glimmer and take off the amulet, giving him a chance to destroy it.
• Battle of the Bands: Flash and Applejack engage in this while playing to the song Discord Went Down to Ponyville, Flash wins.
• Battle Rapping: Pinkie tries to invoke this. Twice. It doesn't work.
• Beam-O-War:
  • Celestia and Philomena get into one with fire. Celestia wins, though Philomena does well.
  • Ember and Twilight have a few during their fight, Ember's fire breath vs Twilight's magic.
  • Adagio and Applejack have several using Adagio's magical sonic waves vs Applejack's Rainbow Power magic beam. The first one ends in a tie while the second ends in Adagio's favor.
  • Flash has one with Diamond Tiara's robot, he wins due to sabotaging it earlier during the fight.
• Big Brother Instinct: Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Applejack aren't too happy that their little sisters fought Tirek and end up beating Tirek up afterwards.
• Blinded by the Light: Patch uses a flashlight to blind King Sombra during their match a few times, knowing he's way too powerful for her to have a prayer fighting head on, but that he can't use that power if he can't see her. It's extra effective because, while his pony form prevents it from hurting him, being an Umbrum makes Sombra extra vulnerable to bright light.
• Brandishment Bluff: Patch pulls this on Sombra by disguising a flashlight as a blaster. It works because Sombra was sealed away for a thousand years and thus has very little knowledge of his world's technology, let alone her. Unlike most examples, Patch wasn't so much trying to intimidate him as make him prepare for an attack, not being Blinded by the Light.
• Combat Commentator: Zipzee and Seabreeze are the announcers and commentators of the tournament.
• Combat Pragmatist:
  • Diamond Tiara, who beats all her opponents via underhanded means.
  • Implied with Patch, who came to the ring with bags full of prank items. Justified, as unlike nearly everyone else, she has no superpowers or high level combat skills. Her fight with Sombra basically consists of 'do absolutely everything that's not fighting him head on'.
  • Queen Chrysalis, as one would expect. Particularly in her fight with Celestia, which she wins solely by deceit and a Batman Gambit.
• Curbstomp Battle:
  • Luna vs Garble. Luna uses her magic to turn him into a Pegasus foal, then scares him out of the ring as a dragon. Luna states she only put that much effort into it because Garble was so disrespectful to her.
  • Also happens when Princess Cadance fights Iron Will in the opening fight. Iron Will is totally crushed.
• Dark Horse Victory: The final round was this no matter who one, seeing as few people, including the competitors themselves expected the final match to be Trixie vs Patch. Trixie is the winner.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
  • The CMC manage to defeat Lord Tirek. However, it's mainly due to him being in his weakest form and them knowing how he works enough to not let him get Sweetie's magic.
  • Downplayed with Wind Whistler defeating Luna, as she merely convinces her to a game of rock, paper, scissors and manages to out think her.
  • Chrysalis manages to defeat Celestia by an elaborate ruse involving first disguising herself as Celestia and telling Luna to go buy a giant cake for her. Then disguising one of her changelings as Luna in the stands. Then disguising herself as Nightmare Moon and challenging Celly. Celly blasts her knowing it's Chrysalis, but Chrysalis using the flash of the blast to transform into Luna after being hit. And the changeling in the stands then turns into Chrysalis. Making Celestia think she just attacked her brainwashed little sister, and Chrysalis then taking her moment with her guard dropped to do a ring out.
  • Patch manages to defeat King Sombra by tricking him into nailing himself with his nightmare spell, causing him to ring himself out in his terror.
  • Diamond Tiara manages to defeat Queen Chrysalis by tricking her into eating her love for her mother. Considering how her mother treats her, it gives Queen Chrysalis food poisoning and cripples her, allowing Diamond to push her out of the ring.
• Did You Think I Can't Feel?: As in her canon, Wind Whistler runs into this, with Chrysalis treating her as emotionless. The fact Patch doesn't see her as this (due to knowing from Bright Eyes that intellectual and logically minded does not mean emotionless) sincerely touches her and combined with their "Not So Different" Remark, wins Patch the match by making Wind Whistler smile, which was the challenge they did instead of fighting.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: One of the tournament rules is put in place for this reason: any being over 1000 years old has the handicap of losing automatically if their opponent lasts 50 seconds because the majority of them are simply too overpowered for it to be fair otherwise. The CMC exploit this to defeat Tirek and Sunset to defeat Ahuizotl.
• Evil vs. Evil: Discord (who while on the good side, is still a malicious troll and definitely playing the part of a Heel) vs King Sombra. Sombra wins.
• Forced Transformation: Garble gets turned into a Pegasus foal by Luna. Luna leaves it up to Ember when he'll get turned back to normal.
• Friendly Tickle Torture: Flash Sentry defeats Twilight this way. During their match he tackles her to the ground and before she can free herself he starts tickling her. During the tickle attack, Twilight shouts between her laughter that "she gives," which counted as a forfeit to their official match.
• Fusion Dance: Apparently, the Flash Sentry in the tournament is a temporary fusion of the human and pony versions of him.
• Genre Shift: A temporary one: between rounds a race is held with the losers of the first round and preliminaries, causing the story to a Wacky Racing style story.
• Graceful Loser:
  • Except for the villains, most matches end with the loser being this. The villains naturally don't take losing well.
  • Flash doesn't mind his loss since he destroyed the Amulet.
  • Patch stands out, as she makes it clear she's ultimately just happy her universe made it to the finals, and thus has no problem with Trixie winning.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Patch defeats Sombra by tricking him into using his nightamre spell into a mirror and hitting himself with it.
  • The Alicorn Amulet powered Trixie's own fear spell backfires thanks to Flash, causing her to envision Starlight as the one she'd hurt instead of Flash and take off the Amulet in horror. While Flash manages to destroy the Alicorn Amulet, Trixie still wins due to the backlash of dark magic throwing Flash out of the ring.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After the tournament, the Rainbow Dash from Sombra's timeline comes with Cadence and Pinkie Pie to apprehend Sombra and his family for his crimes. While they succeed with the help of their world's Discord, Sea Breeze attempts to charge her for "for bringing in unauthorized guests before the closing ceremonies" and "fighting an unauthorized fight" despite the group not knowing of the tournament or it's rules and then calls her out for "expecting others to swoop in and fix your problems for you". This comes back to bite him big time when he gets a huge bag of bits dropped on his head, with a letter threatening to leave Sombra with him next time, and it later turns out that the bits are "Sombra tokens" that were only used in Sombra's Empire, and are completely worthless anywhere else! And to add salt to the wound that world's Celestia and Luna have closed off access to their world so he can't complain to them. Zipzee points out that he kind of deserved it. Played With, as the ones who make Sea Breeze do so and make the rules, the tournament sponsors, more or less get off with no real karma to speak of.
  Zipzee:"Well you DID try to extort a war hero... Plus, you didn't bother charging Sombra when HE demanded help from Celestia and Twilight. In hindsight, you kinda had it coming."
• Mundane Made Awesome: Some of the matches end up turning into this due to the fighters deciding to do something different instead of fighting with the loser ringing themselves out:
  • Moondancer and Wind Whistler decide fighting each other would be a waste and instead choose to settle their match via trivia contest. Wind Whistler wins.
  • Patch and Rainbow Dash choose to settle their battle with a prank war, due to both being The Prankster. Patch wins by putting a kick me sign on her back using her longer reach thanks to actually being able to hold things with her hooves.
  • Luna and Wind Whistler play rock, paper, scissors. Wind Whistler wins by making Luna think she's going to use transformation powder to do something other than rock. It was just a smoke bomb she got from Patch.
• Mundane Solution:
  • The CMC are faced with Tirek, in his weakest form. Their solution to beat him? Hide Sweetie Belle, since he's currently too weak to drain Pegasus or Earth Pony magic and thus can't steal Scootaloo or Applebloom's magic, then run out his timer.
  • After a match of using superpowered attacks, how does Applejack beat Adagio? By kicking an apple into her face while she's charging, blinding her and causing her to ring herself out. Applejack lampshades this.
  • Patch is fighting King Sombra, who outclasses her by a gigantic margin to the point fighting him would be suicide. She shines a flashlight in his eyes, because as powerful as he is, he still needs to see. Downplayed as she only manages to distract him with it a few times before having to resort to other methods and ultimately defeats him by turning his own spell back on him by tricking him into using it on a mirror.
• Must Make Her Laugh: Invoked and downplayed platonic example. During their match, Wind Whistler decides that, instead of fighting, she and Patch will have a contest to see if Patch can make her smile in ten tries. Patch ultimately succeeds but not with jokes (which all fail), rather by defying Do You Think I Can't Feel and understanding her due to being seen as dumb by some for how she handles herself.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Iron Will ended up in prison for the whole 'performing high treason helping Radiant Hope attack the Crystal Empire' thing, and Lightning Dust is a wanted fugitive for the same reason.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: One version of the Chrysalis vs Daring Do fight ends this way.
• No-Sell: During their match, Patch nails Sombra in the horn with a carpenter's hammer as hard as she can. All it does is snap the hammer, give Sombra a small headache, and make him mad.
  • Played with in Flash and Trixie's battle, Trixie uses an illusion spell to make him see his worst fears, however since he's both the pony and human versions of himself combined into one, he has two sets of memories and two different fears. As such he's able to shrug off the spell by reverting to his pony form and vice-versa.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Patch and Wind Whistler come to this understanding when they realize they've both been judged by others for how they appear externally, even if it's in opposite ways. It's what wins Patch the match, as her sympathy makes Wind Whistler smile and wins the challenge they'd set up in place of fighting.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: Tirek yells this when Sunset defeats him in much the same way Megan did using her Daydream Glimmer form during the racing intermission.
• The Power of Rock: Flash Sentry utilities in his battles with Applejack, Trixie, and Diamond Tiara.
• The Prankster: Both Patch and Rainbow Dash are this, and even settle their match with a prank war. Patch gave herself the title Queen of Pranksters as her Red Baron because she felt it fit her (having had a song all about this trope in her show)).
• Playing with Fire: The dragons, naturally.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking:
  • Queen Chrysalis, naturally, who is strong enough to win against Daring Do.
  • The Princesses, all of who are quite powerful.
  • Dragon Lord Ember, unlike Garble, manages to put up a pretty effective and even fight with an Alicorn, namely Twilight.
  • Queen Majesty from G1 is so powerful that she's not allowed to compete. She's powerful enough to turn Chrysalis into a ladybug with barely any effort, and unlike the Alicorns and villains, she's not over a thousand years old. She's eventually allowed to participate in the sequel due to new rules being added.
• Shout-Out:
  • Before their match, Patch asks Sombra if he might give her a handicap. Sombra's response?
    Sombra: Is that another word for coffin?
  • During their match, Patch (who's mentally INVOKING the concept of Final Girl as a motivator) nails Sombra in the head with a hammer...which snaps and only gives him a headache. Patch comments that probably would've knocked Jason out for a few minutes. In fact the entire match is basically an extended shout out to slasher movies.
  • Patch asks Sombra if he's seen the ending of A Night Mare on Elm Street 4: Dream Master. She proceeds to defeat Sombra the exact same way Freddy was in the movie: by making evil see itself in a mirror.
• Smug Super: Discord is naturally this, not taking King Sombra seriously at all. It costs him when Sombra uses his nightmare power to scare him out of the ring to win their match.
  • Trixie becomes this the more she uses her Amulet. She reverts to normal after Flash crushes it.
• Stop, or I Will Shoot!: Patch says this when she seemingly pulls a blaster on King Sombra. She's bluffing: it's not a gun, just a flashlight done up to look like a weapon. She was just hoping he'd think it was due to his lack of knowledge of her world and technology in general so she could blind him with it.
• Story-Breaker Power: In-Universe, this is acknowledged and the reason that the rules have any being a thousand years old or more will lose automatically if the fight goes longer than 50 seconds. Queen Majesty also didn't participate because she's too powerful for it to be fair.
• Super Mode: The Mane Six have their Rainbow Power forms, but they've mutually agreed to only use them against the big villains out of respect for what the powers ARE.
• The Power of Hate: King Sombra, as in canon. Diamond defeats Chrysalis by tricking her into eating her 'love' for her mother. Instead of love, Chrysalis swallows a stomach full of love poisoned by negative emotions, including anger, resentment, and fear.
• Victorious Loser: Flash Sentry loses to Trixie but managed to destroy the Alicorn Amulet and free her from its influence. As such he considers himself the winner after all.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Chrysalis and Sombra are played dead seriously, and win both their matches in disturbing ways, despite the overall light tone of the story.
  • Trixie joins in on this too after she uses the Amulet. defeating Spike by showing him i
• Wacky Racing: After the first round, a race of this type is held between the competitors who have been eliminated.

Fighting Is Magic Melee

• And Call Him "George": Flurry Heart turns Patch into puppy dog, and proceeds to hug her. Being a Super-Strong Child, she nearly crushes her and Patch ends up with cracked ribs. Cadence wisely decides not to give Flurry a dog until she's older.
• Ass Kicks You: Reeka accidentally knocks Teddy out of the ring like this.
• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • Yona is hypnotized by Sonata and spends most of the tournament as her servant.
  • Spike, along with Roseluck, Minuette, and Moondancer are transformed into Tirac's servants by thew Rainbow of Darkness.
• Curbstomp Battle:
  • Yona is easily hypnotized by Sonata.
  • Sandbar completely pummels Inept Mage Draggle.
  • Both Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle lose to Princess Cadence and Queen Novo pretty quickly due to both of them being older.
  • Maud defeats Sunburst, and destroys half the ring, with a single Shockwave Stomp.
  • Majesty wins her fight with Discord simply by casting a time spell so that one second for them is the time limit Discord has to work with and he loses without being able to do anything.
  • Twilight easily rings Cheerilee out with the Want-It, Need-It Spell.
• Irony:
  • Celestia wins her first match against Aria by replicating the same strategy Chrysalis used against her and the first tournament, complete with having a Changeling in the audience help trick her opponent.
  • Chrysalis herself attempts the same strategy used in the first tournament against Applejack, but she usually sees through the deception and beats her.
• Drunk on the Dark Side:
  • Wallflower gets a bit of this due to having the Memory Stone back and it proving devastatingly effective, and the villains cheering for her when she plays dirty. As in canon, she comes to regret it.
  • Trixie puts on the Alicorn Amulet again and once more goes this trope.
• Forced Transformation:
  • Tirac turns several ponies into minions with the Rainbow of Darkness, and wins his match by doing it to Spike.
  • Reeka actually manages to do this to Teddy on accident. She was aiming for 'sunk' to make him sink through the ring and get rung out, but got the word wrong, first turning him into a hunk, and then into a skunk.
• Groin Attack: Gallus finds none of his attacks can do next to anything to Garble, so he goads him into getting into a full speed chase, then does a loop right into a high speed kick to the groin. He then pushes him out of the ring while the dragon is curled up in agony.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Tempest gets petrified by her own Obsidian Orbs and shattered. Subverted as it was a nightmare made by Luna to teach her a lesson, Luna actually put her to sleep the moment she got close enough to do anything.
  • Wallflower relies heavily on using the Memory Stone, as she's otherwise a normal human girl, and playing dirty. Using the Memory Stone on Autumn Blaze completely blows up in her face, as the Nirik transformation is instinct driven, and thus Wallflower accidentally removes her memories of how to control her Nirik form trying to remove her memories of how to use it. This enrages Autumn Blaze into going Nirik on instinct, and without her memories of how to control it, she goes completely berserk and Wallflower ends up having to dive out of the ring to escape her.
  • Grogar ends up bringing the arena's light rig down on top of himself trying to kill G3 Rainbow and knocks himself out by accidentally blasting it with lightning trying to hit her.
  • The Storm King tries to use his last Obsidian Orb to petrify Adagio, but she uses a sonic attack to shatter it so that it turns him to stone instead.
• Hope Spot: Sunny Daze looks like she's going to outlast Tirek in their fight, but then he realizes that and critically injures her while also ringing her out at once.
• Logical Weakness: The Memory Stone effects memories, it can't effect instincts. As such, it can't do anything to remove a Kirin's power to turn into a Nirik, which is an instinctive reaction. Word of God points out a greed grown dragon or Tirac's animalistic minions would likewise be unaffected as they're also driven by instinct.
• Mama Bear: G4 Tirek says he wishes he'd been able to drain Flurry Heart during his rampage. Cadence replies if he'd so much as laid a finger on her, Cadence would've been the one to get all the Alicorn's magic and would've beaten him into the ground.
  • Twilight and Celestia are outraged when Tirac turns Spike into his minion with the Rainbow of Darkness.
• Metronomic Man Mashing: Patch ends up on the receiving end of this from Flurry Heart during their match.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Sandbar of all people does this to Draggle.
• One-Winged Angel: Daybreaker is technically this for Celestia, Celestia herself uses this to her advantage in order to scare Aria long enough to push her out of the ring.
• Share the Male Pain: The universal reaction to Gallus's Groin Attack on Garble.
• Shockwave Stomp: Maud does one to defeat Sunburst, and she's so freakishly strong that it destroys half the ring in the process.
• Smelly Skunk: Reeka accidentally turns Teddy into one. Teddy naturally tries spraying her...but Reeka likes it and promptly tries to eat him. Ace and Lancer decide to mock him for it while he's still a skunk, which ends as one would expect.
• Sore Loser: Aria doesn't take her loss to Celestia very well, to the point where she's carried out of the arena crying.
• Super-Strong Child: Flurry Heart, naturally. This poses a huge problem for Patch, as Flurry ends up beating her up pretty bad without even meaning to.
• "Reason You Suck" Speech: Scootaloo gives Cozy Glow one during their match, goading her into loosing her cool and tricking her into to flying in her scooter and out of the ring.