Beat Them at Their Own Element

"Me gettin' zapped? What's up with that?"

— Static, DEATH BATTLE!

Traditionally, the response to Elemental Powers is to counter with a different element. But sometimes, that's not an option for whatever reason. Maybe the character doesn't have anything else to use. Maybe they want to prove they're better at it, or wants their opponent to feel what it's like. Maybe they want to humiliate them by beating them with an inferior tactical option. The result is the same: Matching elements clash, and one proves superior.

Often, this comes across as the elemental version of a Curb-Stomp Battle. One character with a much greater control of the element ignores someone using that same element against them. Sometimes it's a Weak, but Skilled versus Unskilled, but Strong situation, or even just a Technician Versus Performer battle. Can also involve a Beam-O-War if the sides are close enough in power to push back and forth.

Almost always involves at least a mention of Required Secondary Powers, either an explanation for why people are not immune to their own element, or on how their immunity got overpowered. Sometimes this immunity means neither side is actually hurt, but one side was still clearly superior. See also Beat Them at Their Own Game, No-Sell, Takes One to Kill One, and Like Cannot Cut Like. Shapeshifter Showdown is a sister trope.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Bastard!! (1988): When Dark Schneider is storming Gara's castle to rescue Yoko, he defeats Efreet, the supreme elemental spirit of fire, by absorbing Efreet's fire spell Hellion and using it to fuel an even bigger flame spell, Exodus, which is hot enough to bypass Efreet's immunity.
  Efreet: "How can you summon a flame hotter than the sun!? HOW!?"
  Dark Schnieder: "Idiot! I added my power to your Hellion spell!"
• Fairy Tail:
  • Natsu gets into a lot of fights like this against other fire wielders, and while usually he has an innate advantage courtesy of being a Fire Dragon Slayer, allowing him to not just No-Sell most fire attacks but eat them to get stronger, occasionally he goes up against someone who can counter it.
    • Totomaru of Phantom Lord can't beat Natsu in a straight-up power brawl, but he can control any fire in his vicinity, allowing him to do things like force Natsu to hit himself with his own flaming fist, and he can generate various types of fire with different properties, such as tricking Natsu into eating a fireball that smelled and tasted like garbage. Natsu wins by generating a fire ball too big for Totomaru to effectively control or prevent from hitting his target with splash damage, though even then Natsu needed Gray and Elfman to blindside him while he was distracted.
    • Zancrow of Grimoire Heart is a Flame God Slayer, whose black flames are not only able to bypass Natsu's usual flame immunity, but he can do Natsu's usual fire-devouring trick and has increased resistance to Natsu's flames. Zancrow actually wins the first fight, and in the second Natsu has to resort more indirect methods of combat before finally gambling everything on a risky move to eat Zancrow's black flames and combine them with his own to take him down with a massive explosion after once again having a third party (Makarov in this case) set Zancrow up so that he can't dodge or counter it in time.
    • Atlas Flame is the Hell Flame Dragon with not only a similar basic powerset to Natsu, but he's effectively a burning dragon skeleton with far superior physical and magical strength. Natsu in this case decides to forgo a proper showdown and tries to consume Atlas Flame's entire fire body in order to also get a Power-Up against the current Arc Villain. Atlas Flame finds this entire idea ludicrous and decides to try and smash Natsu to death on his surroundings only to stop upon being reminded so much of his old friend and the Fire Dragon King Igneel. Once Atlas Flame learns Natsu is Igneel's adopted son, he decides to aid him in fighting the real villain, being named an Honorary Uncle.
  • Gray gets into almost as many fights against fellow ice magic users. Unlike Natsu, who usually relies on innate superiority of his brand of fire magic, Gray's Ice-Make prioritizes creativity over raw power.
    • Lyon was Gray's fellow student in Ice-Make Magic, but both took to different styles of the magic: Gray prefers Static Ice-Make, which prioritizes inanimate objects such as weapons and affecting the surrounding environment, and Lyon uses Dynamic Ice-Make, which prioritizes animate objects and controlling their movement like ice golems and sculptures. Lyon wins the first fight thanks to taking advantage of Gray's confusion and inner conflict, but Gray gets the upper hand in the second after coming to terms with himself and pointing out Dynamic Ice-Make's biggest flaw: it's faster on average than Static Ice-Make, but the creations are weaker and more brittle.
    • When he fights Ultear, who is his teacher Ur's estranged daughter, she resorts to using her own Ice-Make after he counters her preferred Arc of Time magic. Ultear's usage is far more focused on raw power thanks to her greater magical potential, but far less creative and honed thanks to her misplaced hatred of her mother souring her opinion of it. Still, they're rather evenly matched until Ultear gets distracted and leaves herself open to Gray freezing her.
    • Silver from Tartaros uses Ice Devil Slayer Magic, which not only has the raw offensive advantage on Gray's Ice-Make, but he has increased resistance to ice and the ability to eat it to restore his strength. Gray has to resort to indirect methods such as creating ice cannons to fire debris at Silver to do any real damage, and then resorts to turning his own Devil Slayer Magic on him, before finally punching a hole through him with a large metal ball hurled with a ice-gauntlet fist. Even then, he only lasted that long because the whole thing was a Suicide by Cop from Silver, who is in fact his reanimated father, and a test to see if Gray could handle accepting his Ice Devil Slayer Magic.
    • Invel Yura of Alvarez is one of the Spriggan 12, considered the most powerful mages of the empire, and his Ice Magic is honed to the point even Gray's various ice resistances from training in blizzards and his Ice Devil Slayer Magic can't fully block out his chill. In this case, it becomes Zig-Zagged. Invel's Ice Magic beats Gray's Ice-Make in a straight brawl, Gray's Ice Devil Slayer Magic can overcome the power gap with its innate advantages, Invel resorts to more esoteric means of his power to get around that (such as "freezing" people's thoughts to control them) that Gray only escapes through outside intervention, Gray puts on the hurt in a fury to keep him from using tricks like that anymore, Invel resorts to his trump card: an Elemental Armor that not even ice wielders are resistant to and manages to harm Gray even through his Devil Slayer resistances, and finally Gray uses Ice-Make to manipulate the armor to attack and defeat Invel.
• Jujutsu Kaisen: Sukuna kills Jogo by overpowering the Disaster Curse's fire with flames of his own, something he was not known to be able to use beforehand since thus far it was believed that Sukuna's cursed technique consisted solely of slashes.
• One Piece: It's stated that Logia type Devil Fruits have a superiority system when it comes to the elemental power granted by each fruit clashing with one another. The best example is during the Maineford Arc when Admiral Akainu manages to defeat Ace in a direct clash of their respective elements, Magma for Akainu and Fire for Ace, with Akainu himself stating that Magma is superior because it can burn even fire. Said superiority is what allows Akainu to deliver a fatal killing blow to Ace moments later.
• In YuYu Hakusho, Hiei is a fire demon who mostly prefers to use his martial arts and swordsmanship to win fights. In the first round of the Dark Tournament, he encounters Zeru, another fire demon who is impressively strong, and rather than try to take on Zeru with his usual fighting style, Hiei brings out his own fire abilities for one of the few times in the series. Hiei whips out a Dangerous Forbidden Technique that is the fire equivalent of a Fantastic Nuke and drops it on Zeru, reducing him to nothing more than a scorched silhouette on a wall.

Comic Books

• Fantastic Four:
  • During Super-Skrull's first appearance, he manages to produce flame hotter than the Human Torch can create, overwhelming him.
  • The Human Torch later has a similar experience when he tries to take on Firelord, one of the Heralds of Galactus.
  • He finally manages to be on the other end of this trope when he defeats Diablo's alchemical fire elemental by creating such powerful flames that they absorb all of the oxygen in the area, snuffing out the elemental's existence since it no longer has anything to fuel it.

Fan Works

• Anyone: Dabi says that using fire quirks against other fire quirks is actually very effective because the strongest flame eats the oxygen supply first, leaving the opponent with nothing to burn.
• A Certain Droll Hivemind: Yui gets grabbed by someone and immediately shocks them. This does nothing because the one who grabbed her is Misaka Mikoto, who is literally orders of magnitude more powerful than her. Thankfully, Mikoto of course isn't there to hurt her.
  I electrocuted my assailant.
  It did nothing. I felt my Electromaster power be totally negated by one vastly superior to mine.
  "Don't do that," the original said to me. "What are you doing here?"
• The Cultist: Solomon uses magic to override Poison Ivy's control over her man-eating plants and threatens to make them eat her.
• Justice: Outraged at Killer Frost's Lack of Empathy for killing a large group of people to "audition" to join the Straw Hat Pirates, Brook freezes her solid with his Song of Scratches: Blizzard Slice. Killer Frost can't believe that cold can harm her in any way, but Brook insists that his cold is the chill of the underworld, something much harsher than her own cryosis.

Literature

• Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: Boyfriends and Other Minor Annoyances: An enemy is scared off by the sudden appearance of help because that help is much stronger in the same type of supernatural power. That is, Psychic Powers:
  experience was telling her this was a fight she could not win.
• Whateley Universe: In "The Boston Brawl II - This Time It's Personal!": Phase and Matterhorn are both warpers, but Phase's fine control of warping energy allowed her to take over Matterhorn's whole-body warping field and man-handle the giant Matterhorn, smashing him around into the ground and throwing him at others.
  Ayla tensely timed it as best she could, and sent the energy that she used to "phase" her body or other objects into the displacement field around Matterhorn, synchronizing with it.

Live-Action TV

• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: J. T. James is a recurring villain with fire powers. In Season Four, he gets into a fight against Ghost Rider, who easily manages to overpower him thanks to his much stronger Hellfire powers.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition: The feat Searing Spell can be applied to Fire spells to make them ignore Fire resistance and partially bypass Fire immunity. It burns so hot it can burn things that can't be burned!
• GURPS: GURPS: Magic has Burning Death which incinerates the target from the inside out - even if they're magically protected from fire, which most magical fire users are.
• Magic: The Gathering: Jaya Ballard, on fighting fire, that is, you should use fire. As quoted on Sizzle:
  Of course you should fight fire with fire. You should fight everything with fire.
• Many older Psychic Pokemon in the Pokémon Trading Card Game have Psychic as a type weakness. As a result, whichever Active Pokemon gets Knocked Out first essentially boils down to who manages to do more damage with their attacks.

Video Games

• In Final Fantasy XVI, player character Clive is the Dominant of Ifrit, the Eikon of Fire. Although he gets his hands on other types of elemental magic, fire is his first and most used element. In spite of this, several bosses are against other fire-based opponents in straight tests of whose flames burn hotter, including his Enemy Within the Infernal Shadow; the Living Flame; and the other Eikon of Fire, Phoenix. During the final boss, Ultima attacks Clive with the powers of each Eikon, and Clive counters with the same powers, winning each clash.
• Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards: Unlike every other boss in the series, Miracle Matter cannot be damaged by anything other than the current element it is using. This puts the player in the position where Power Comboes are rendered useless and any Copy Abilities used in the fight will have to be discarded after damaging the boss's current form due to Miracle Matter changing its elemental forms every so often.
• Metroid Prime has the Beam Troopers, who've managed to reverse-engineer Samus' weaponry. They can only be damaged by the specific Beam they use, which has the same color code as their armor (yellow for the Power Beam, purple for Wave, white for Ice, and red for Plasma).
• In Pokémon, Dragon- and Ghost-type Pokémon are the only Pokémon weak to their own type, meaning that it's a perfectly valid strategy to use a Pokémon that knows those moves against specialists, such as Gym Leaders or Elite 4 members.

Web Animation

• DEATH BATTLE!: The show's entire premise is built around taking two fictional characters with similar qualities and having them fight to the death, so a great many of the episodes qualify for this trope when both warriors are known for their elemental abilities. Examples include electricity versus electricity (Killua VS Mikasa, Miles Morales VS Static), fire versus fire (Natsu VS Ace, Red and Charizard VS Tai and Agumon), and ice versus ice (Sub-Zero VS Glacius, Gray VS Esdeath).
• In RarePG: Garbage Guy vs. Justin Bieber, at one point Garbage Guy's "Multi Garbage Rocket" is "absorbed by even more garbageness".

Webcomics

• Ctrl+Alt+Del, The Campaign: Into the Fire, involves a trial concerning the Fire Form spell. The spell was overpowered by surrounding the form in a dome of fire to choke out air.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • In "The Waterbending Master", Katara attempts to beat Master Pakku at waterbending to prove that women can be just as good at waterbending beyond healing, in spite of the Northern Water Tribe's sexist customs. Zig-Zagged — while Katara manages to impress Pakku with her skills despite her lack of formal training, he still defeats her, since she is still only an untrained 14-year-old.
  • In "The Blind Bandit", the Gang watches Earth Rumble VI, an underground earthbending tournament, in the style of Pro Wrestling. While the latest challenger, The Boulder, bests most of the opponents through arrogance and extravagant moves, the champion, The Blind Bandit, bests him in two moves because she "waits and listens" to the earth, signaling to Aang that she is the best person to teach him earthbending.
  • An Agni Kai is a traditional duel waged between two firebenders meant to defend one's honor, where victory is determined by the first person to get burned, showing greater skill at firebending. This occurs a few times in the series:
    • In "The Southern Air Temple", Zuko goes up against Zhao, a high-ranked commander with more experience than him, over the right to track down the Avatar. Zuko manages to defeat Zhao not by being more advanced, but by remembering his basics and getting Zhao on the back foot, proving he has the skill to hunt the Avatar but not delivering the burning blow out of mercy.
    • In "Sozin's Comet", when Zuko and Katara challenged Azula for the Fire Lord's throne, Azula challenged her brother to an Agni Kai. While Zuko would normally never do this, since Azula has always been stronger and more skilled at firebending, he senses the emotional turmoil throwing her off balance and accepts so that Katara is less likely to get hurt. Zuko's calm control, learned from the Sun Warriors, nearly manages to beat Azula's unhinged rage-fueled bending, until Azula cheats and aims a lightning bolt at Katara, bringing her into the fight.
• Justice League: In "Ultimatum", Downpour attacks Aquaman with a water blast. The only result is a disdainful "King of the Seas, remember?" rejoinder.
• The Legend of Korra: In the first episode, just after arriving in Republic City, Korra confronts the Triple Threat Triad, a street gang made up of a waterbender, an earthbender, and a firebender, and easily curb stomps each member of the gang with their own element.

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