Ranma&Fate\stay night crossover idea

[Kilich]

This idea came to me when i had a severe case of insomnia. I don't know much about Fate\stay night, but i hope there are no big mistakes.

Hundreds of years ago, when Grail Wars were less then organized, mages fought each other not far from Jusenkyo(magically charged place that, as i understand, is needed for starting the War).
Rider's(Medusa) Pegasus was shot down when she tried to save her master by flying away. They fell into Jusenkyo springs and her master died in one of them and even though Rider simply dissapeared when flow of Mana stopped, the spring copied her form.

Ranma fell into the Rider's spring and Genma in the spring of the drowned Mage and three red marks appeared on his hand. When the night comes the curse locks itself until morning.
Soon they found information about what happened (Of course Amazons would know that the War started, or some random mage will tell them *sigh*) and went to Japan to fight in the Grail War since Ranma wanted to cure his curse or at least stop the locking and Genma wanted the Grail.

[Comartemis]

You have a critical lore failure with this concept. All five Grail Wars--and there's only been five, the grail hasn't been around for "hundreds of years"--have been fought in Fuyuki City, whose land is owned by the Tohsaka family.

Also, though it's less crippling to the story than the first issue, Medusa isn't the only Rider-class servant; every Heroic Spirit in all of history falls into one of Servant classes, so there are dozens of different Riders. Fate/Zero has Iskander (Alexander the Great) as a Rider whose Noble Phantasm (one of them at least) is a chariot. If Medusa's presence isn't absolutely necessary to the story it'd be wise to replace her with another flight-capable servant to avoid stretching the willing suspension of disbelief... though frankly, the location problems are going to make that difficult enough as it is.

[Frog]

To fix the location issues brought up by Comartemis there's a few simple thing to recall:

1) Servants are not necessarily summoned in Fuyuki City. For the 5th Grail War, Bazette summons Lancer in Ireland and Ilya summons Berserker somewhere in the Russian wilderness.

2) Masters and Servants can still try to kill each other before the War has officially started. In the 5th War, Lancer attacks Shirou before Saber is summoned.

Now, the other issue is a bit more complicated. I don't recall the time-line of the grail wars but the 4th one was not so long before the 5th and the Rider there was, as Comartemis pointed out, Iskander, not Medusa. The "hundreds of years" part might not be be too much of a stretch, but summoning the same Rider (Medusa) over so many centuries seems a bit of a stretch... and one that I cannot think of a way to surmount right now.

[Comartemis]

Item 2 doesn't help matters much; it'd be an awfully contrived coincidence for two masters with pre-summoned servants to just happen to meet at Jusenkyo while one or both are en route to Fuyuki. Unless you have two Masters from the Amazon/Musk/Phoenix tribes, which might work better if you were to spin it just right, like having the Amazons have old contacts with the Mage's Association.

The Grail Wars have traditionally taken place every 50 years or so, which makes the Grail Wars themselves about 210 years old as of the start of FSN, ten years after the 4th war. "Hundreds of years" sounds like Kilich is aiming for Medieval times, not the 1700s. Also, to my knowledge there was never a time when the Grail Wars were "less than organized". The grail didn't even exist until the Einzberg family created it back when the Grail Wars were first initiated, which makes it no more than 210 years old.

Also, unless I'm mistaken the whole Master/Servant system was set up by the Matou family along with the Grail and the land provided by the Tohsaka family, so you couldn't have Masters and Servants prior to the Grail Wars either.

[Kilich]

Grail Wars were made by people? Hm, there goes my idea then, unless i make Fate part in AU where Grail existed before the War system was made. If so then maybe *less then organized* is about mages hunting the Grail on their own and checking all magical charged places first. Maybe that way two mages could've met at Jusenkyo. And about Servants. Unless it were Einzberg who first succeded with the summoning spell, then summoning a powerful warrior to fight for you, could be thought of, before creating Grail Wars.

I chose Medusa because she's the only servant i saw that uses martial arts and a weapon instead of focusing on weapons. And it doesn't have to take place the same time as Fifth War, because imagine two Medusas meeting. It could Second or Third War. If the next time Medusa was summoned after Jusenkyo incident was the Fifth War, then maybe it would be too much of a stretch. Also Ranma might have her body and ,maybe, know her techniques but he's still himself inside.

[Knight of L-sama]

Hmm, an idea occurs to me that might just save this idea.

Comartemis knows TYPE-Moon lore better than I but to the best of my knowledge that says that an Epic/Heroic Spirit can't be summoned outside the context of the Grail Wars. It even gives you an excuse to why it would occur near to Jusenkyo since it and Jusendo would be sources of great power that a mage might attempt to use to add in such a summoning. (I can even give you a reason why a mage would be trying to summon a figure from Greek legend in China. Specifically since Iskander/Alexander the Great's empire left a series of Grecian kingdom all the way into modern day Afghanistan and I think even Pakistan. (Special aside the capital city of Afghanistan, Kandahar derives it's name from Iskandria/Alexandria) This would place a mage with potentially some familiarity with figures from Greek lore not too far from the Sino-Tibetan plateau and the Bayankala mountain range.)

End result, Ranma falls into the spring, takes on Medusa's form and is directed by the Amazons to look in Fuyuki City since whatever Genma's form of magical control takes it most closely resembles the Command Mantras of Masters in the Grail War.

It's a bit of a stretch but I think it can be pulled off without seriously disrupting the fabric of the TYPE-Moon universe. (Ooh! Evil idea. Spring of Drowned True Ancestor!)

[Kilich]

How about removing most of the Fate from the prologue.
It'll be something like this.

A powerful chinese mage, who devoted his life to summoning magic, decided to create a spell to summon not a mere familiar but a legendary entity that would make himself a legend amongst his fellow mages.
Aware that his power alone will not be enough for such a spell, he traveled to the most magic saturated area he knew about(Jusenkyo&Jusendo) to work on the spell.
Amazons who held a deep understanding of the land in those areas exchanged their information for some information about the spell, so they could see themselves that it would not endanger them.
Other mages jealous\thinking that the summoner will have too much power attacked him when he was still exhausted from casting the spell that brought Medusa forward (randomly or because he thought that her petrifying gaze would make her an excellent bodyguard (He was not foolish enough to think that nobody would try to kill him)).
Medusa, low on mana because of his condition, trying to fly him away on Pegasus but they were shot down above the Jusenkyo.

Much later Einzberg found the spell he created and, after much improvement, used it in Grail War system and when Amazons saw the cursed forms of martial artists, that were just like in the legend, they directed them to where Einzberg researchers where from.
After learning about the Grail War the 8th Master\servant pair decided to join the fight.

[Comartemis]

It seems doable except for the part where Rider retreats on Pegasus. If she's low on mana, using a powerful Noble Phantasm like Pegasus will either kill or severely weaken her, just like Excalibur did to Saber.

One sticking point that I'd like to see resolved is how Genma is going to go about using/abusing the command seals ("Boy! You will marry Akane!"). Hopefully you can have him blowing through the seals ordering Ranma to do trivial things for him, then have Ranma take off and attach himself to another master or potential master... say, maybe, Shampoo?

[Kilich]

Well, probably the summoner said *I command you to save me* and since she wasn't strong enough to fight enemies and protect him at same time, she tried her Noble Phantasm.

Yes, i think that he'd burn through them quickly. Something along the lines
*I command you to stop beating your father* immediately after Jusenkyo, *You must carry my pack for me\Do as i say!* on their trip to the village and *Nonsense, boy. Go and defeat that girl so i can have that prize* in the village.

Shampoo as a Master. Well, i certainly can see that .Some sort of mission given to the Champion of the village to restore glory to the Amazons\whatever other reasons.
And then Mousse will follow to watch Ranma so he won't *steal Shampoo's heart away from him*, Cologne as an advisor and bitter Genma, who seeks to reclaim control.

But Shampoo would need either *the spring of a drowned Mage* curse or maybe Cologne knows some magic (she made that ice bear in the anime) and her grandaughter inherited the magical circuit needed to provide Mana. But this way Ranma would be in even worse situation than Saber before Rin helped Shirou.

[Comartemis]

Another idea that occurred to me, based on an idea posted here about six months ago. This one requires some pretty extensive knowledge of the Fate, Unlimited Blade Works, and Heaven's Feel storylines to pull off, but acquiring said knowledge shouldn't be too much harder than spending an hour or two on FSN's Wikipedia pages, particularly the character bios.

Let's suppose Genma doesn't figure out how the command seals work until the pair is almost to Fuyuki City, and then starts abusing his power not realizing that he only has three uses of the seals before Ranma is no longer bound to him. With Fuyuki City in sight and Genma's seals all used up, Ranma bids Genma goodbye and good riddance and takes off to find the cure on his own.

At this point some of FSN's extended lore comes into play. Most of the Servants in the Fourth and Fifth wars were summoned using specific catalysts to summon specific heroic spirits. Kiritsugu and Shiro both summoned Saber using Avalon, Bazette summoned Lancer with one of his earrings (I think), Gilgamesh was originally summoned with a fossilized snake skin and Rin summoned Archer with the pendant she would later replace Shiro's heart with. Sakura, however, summoned Rider using no particular catalyst, basically making a shot in the dark for any given servant to answer her call. The reason Rider answered her was because of the mutual suffering they've shared, Rider at the hands of the Greek gods and humans like Perseus, and Sakura at the hands of Shinji and Zoken Matou.

But when Rider fell into Jusenkyo and drowned there, the natural magics of the spring anchored her spirit to that pool and prevented her from returning to the Throne of Heroes, the end result of which is that Sakura's summoning attempt attracted the attention of no particular Servant and failed miserably. And since Sakura couldn't summon a servant, Shinji couldn't threaten and intimidate her into handing her command seals over to him.

Ranma gets into Fuyuki City late in the evening after school has let out for the day. His path takes him past the high school most of the Masters attend and his senses pick up two persons with high and low degrees of magical capacity in the school's dojo. He swings down to reconnoiter the place and see if either of these two are Masters, and promptly gets an eyeful of Shinji raping Sakura.

Well Ranma doesn't like that, not one bit. So he walks into the dojo, beats Shinji black and bloody, and just as Shinji is cowering in the corner the sun goes down and Ranma's curse activates. Since Servants need mana from their masters and Ranma has cut ties with Genma, Ranma immediately notices that his curse form has become significantly weaker. It doesn't prevent him from beating the ever-loving daylights out of Shinji and sending him home to Zoken colored in many interesting shades of black and blue, but it does convince Ranma that he has to anchor himself to a mage if he's going to fight in the war or even survive for very long.

That's where Sakura comes in. When Shinji flees, Ranma turns back to Sakura and goes with her to fetch some clothes that haven't been torn to pieces out of the school locker room. In the process the two introduce themselves and learn a bit about each other. Eventually Ranma mentions his curse and Sakura immediately figures out that if Ranma doesn't anchor himself to a mage he'll die within a few days. She offers to be Ranma's Master, not yet knowing that Rin and Shiro are also masters and that she'll probably have to fight them, and Ranma agrees.

From here on out the series will probably have to incorporate elements of all three storylines for it to be much good. If Sakura teams up with Shiro and Rin, Rin will probably not have to sacrifice Archer in the fight with Berserker, which would lead to Archer trying to carry out his plans to kill Shiro and require a twist on the events of Unlimited Blade Works, and with Sakura serving as one of the main characters, elements of Heaven's Feel are almost certain to show up at some point as well. I can't see Ranma hanging out with Sakura for long before noticing the effects that Zoken's worms are having on Sakura's body, for instance, and if Sakura becomes too independent thanks to Ranma's influence, Zoken will probably summon True Assassin and use his worms to turn Sakura into The Shadow, forcing a confrontation between Ranma/Shiro/Rin/Saber(/Archer?) and Zoken/Shinji/Sakura/True Assassin. And just to make things really nuts, have Ukyo show up at some point.

[Kilich]

I like that idea, but its writing requires a level of skill\talent\creativity that's wayyy higher then my quite low one. Even my first fanfic is still half-finished(first text i wrote for myself instead of school\university in several years)

I'll try because i really do like your idea, but i suspect that i'll fail in an epic fashion -_-''

[Muramasa]

Hmm... I see several problems with the idea. Even if Genma did end up with command seals he would have had to summon a servant on his own or at the very least formed a contract with Ranma. Since he would have no clue on how to do either that presents a bit of a problem. The second problem would be lack of information. Ranma and Genma have no clue about the Holy Grail Wars and the only way I see them getting any information about it at all would be through the amazons but that's potentially a whole new can of worms. Cologne would have a Master and Servant who are completely clueless about the war. I'd definitely think she'd take advantage of that. The third problem would be if Genma squanders all his command seals, that leaves only six active magi for the grail war. It's strange but workable.

If Sakura failed her summoning, does she still have her command seals? If she failed to summon anything, Zouken may just end up fed up with her and summon something himself.

[Comartemis]

Hmm....

Let's take another look at that. What if Sakura's summoning ritual succeeds in summoning Ranma/Rider after he's acquired the curse, leaving Genma stuck alone in the middle of China and Ranma right in the thick of things from the beginning?

[Muramasa]

Hmm....

Let's take another look at that. What if Sakura's summoning ritual succeeds in summoning Ranma/Rider after he's acquired the curse, leaving Genma stuck alone in the middle of China and Ranma right in the thick of things from the beginning?

That sounds like a lot of fun.

Ranma's world being turned inside out from the very get go without a clue whats going on. No ki as it's from the beginning of the manga. Just her wits and maybe only the faintest idea of what (her) noble phantasms are. Lots of fun.

Rider's existence as a spirit is questionable. Ranma is very much alive and I don't think spirits can drown. The summoning would connect Ranma to the throne but no additional aid from the grail is needed since Ranma already exists in the world. In fact that leaves the grail with a surplus. A potential plot device there.

I had an idea of what if Rider/Ranma came out of the cursed spring and wasn't wearing Rider's outfit? Blindfold included. The answer I got out of that was a very clueless/panicked Ranma petrifying everyone in her sights and not a clue why it's happening . Well obviously that didn't work.

This also has a lot of potential to be quite dark. Ranma would be quite adamant about refusing to work with Shinji but he might not have a choice in the matter if things work out like they did in Canon.

[Comartemis]

Rider's existence as a spirit is questionable. Ranma is very much alive and I don't think spirits can drown.

Spirits can't bleed either but Servants do it all the time, hence Servants must be physical entities composed of spiritual energy. Jusenkyo might represent a loophole in the world's "Things that die stay dead" rule which leads to Servants requiring mana to keep the world from erasing their physical existences. Since Ranma has an existence of his own, the world can no longer erase Rider (or any other spirit from any of the other springs). In a sense, every single spring of Jusenkyo is a single-occupant Throne of Heroes.

I had an idea of what if Rider/Ranma came out of the cursed spring and wasn't wearing Rider's outfit? Blindfold included. The answer I got out of that was a very clueless/panicked Ranma petrifying everyone in her sights and not a clue why it's happening Laughing . Well obviously that didn't work.

No kidding. There'll probably have to be some kind of safeguard built into the plot to keep Ranma from doing something stupid like taking off her blindfold in a crowded area, maybe give him some of Rider's memories and a few basic skills along with the curse.

This also has a lot of potential to be quite dark. Ranma would be quite adamant about refusing to work with Shinji but he might not have a choice in the matter if things work out like they did in Canon.

Which is why they shouldn't. Instead, when Shinji starts trying to "convince" Sakura to hand over her seals, Ranma starts channeling Simon and Kamina for a moment and gives a crude but inspirational "fuck you" speech that convinces Sakura they can win the war without killing Rin and Shiro.