Fanfic / The Trickster and the Grand Order

The Trickster and the Grand Order is a crossover fic between Persona 5 and Fate/Grand Order, written by Kenjichan251 on Fanfiction Dot Net.

After unveiling nationwide political corruption and casting a false god down, you would believe Ren Amamiya would settle and rest. However, a blood donation leads the Chaldea Security Organization to make him an offer — and unwittingly give him the opportunity to save mankind once again.

It can also be found on AO3 and SpaceBattles.

Contains the following tropes

• Adaptational Badass:
  • Igor bestows Magic Circuits upon Joker and Morgana to let them summon a Persona in the material world.
  • In canon, Ritsuka is a below average magus save for having high compatibility as a Master. Here, she’s good enough to be a member of Team A.
• Animal Jingoism: Mona is terrified of Fou, something Ren chalks to him being a feline creature while Fou is classified as some manner of a dog. However, Mona insists it's not that — foreshadowing Fou's nature as Primate Murder, the apex predator.
• Awesome, yet Impractical: Ren summoning a Persona in the material world burns ungodly amounts of prana, so any other magus attempting the feat would collapse from exhaustion well before succeeding.
• Beyond the Impossible: Ren and Morgana tend to do that from Chaldea's perspective — suddenly gaining Magic Circuits and summoning Personas to steal people's hearts is not normal. It's so impossible that it's borderline True Magic, according to Da Vinci.
• Big Eater: Artoria, who else? The prospect of cooking enough to fill her stomach fills Emiya and Ren both with dread.
• Brutal Honesty: Just as in canon, Archer is not one to mince words. When Morgana asks him if he and Ren are naive for thinking they can get through the Singularities without killing, or getting killed in turn, he replies with a Blunt "Yes".
• Canon Welding:
  • Igor and Lavenza explain to a baffled Joker that a Persona can be extremely different from a Servant in spite of both being based upon the same historical figure, because a Persona reflects what people believe to be the truth, as opposed to a Servant being closer to the reality of the historical figure.
  • Archer's Unlimited Blade Works is actually his Palace, leading Joker to posit Servants with an inhuman mindset or Reality Marbles could also have one.
  • When Ren confesses to the Cognitive World's existence, Da Vinci and Roman call it yet another "layer" to the World, akin to the Reverse Side in which every single mythic creature dwells.
  • Ren ponders the possibility of the Velvet Room being part of Alaya, Mankind's collective will.
• Chick Magnet: By virtue of being Chaldea's last Master (prior to Ritsuka's introduction) and a Persona protagonist, Ren's gotten himself some attention from the opposite sex. Mash gets jealous whenever Ren's getting chummy with another girl, Ritsuka's pretty fond of heavily teasing him, and Marie flat-out kissed him on the lips when she was summoned to Chaldea. One of the tags on Archive of Our Own even lampshades this, as it says, "Ren being a charmer. Again".
• Composite Character: Ritsuka is a huge fan of the Phantom Thieves, believing them to the good the world needs and has her entire room decked out in merchandise of them in a similar manner to Akane Hasegawa.
• Didn't Think This Through: When he learns that Jeanne d'Arc Alter has a Palace, Joker decides to steal her Treasure and trigger a change of heart to stop her rampage across the French Singularity. Unfortunately, Caster Gilles de Rais was most unhappy with the result and outright absorbed Jeanne Alter into one of his monsters with the intent of remaking her rather than accepting her decision — something that horrifies Joker, who didn't take in account that his target's surroundings might not have been the safest for her to change her mind.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Igor doesn't look too kindly upon magi, both for lacking ethics in their pursuit of knowledge, and also doing their utmost to breach the Velvet Room and steal its secrets.
  • As the Wild Card, Joker can summon and work with a great deal of creatures and mythological figures, but he won't be forced to like them — he refuses to use the Persona of Lucifer and is rather freaked out by Kiyohime's mindset, for example.
• Experienced Protagonist: Downplayed. Ren is rather fresh from his adventures and thus isn't green about fighting or morally-dubious choices. However, killing people and throwing himself into life-threatening situations where one wrong move will end up with his death are things his adventures haven't prepped him for. This leads to the experienced Servants like EMIYA and Cu Chulainn to note how paradoxical some of Ren's reactions are.
• Flat "What": This is Morgana's reaction when Stheno reveals Astolfo's gender to him.
• Fury-Fueled Foolishness: After Jeanne asks Ren for answers about his abilities, the stress of the entire situation caused the Phantom Thief to go into a sort of rage that Morgana noted had never been seen from him before. Ren lashed out at everyone in the area as well as the technicians watching from Chaldea, accusing them of hypocrisy, prying into his business, and even planning on killing him while he was without allies, apparently projecting several of his old antagonists onto them. This culminated in Ren summoning two of his most powerful Personas out in a fit of pique, and attempting to summon Lucifer before Morgana interfered. The narration outright states that bringing out Lucifer would quite possibly have killed Ren, and as it was he was left in a state of Heroic RRoD in the middle of a Singularity.
• Glass Cannon: Ren can summon Servants and Personas alike, but his lack of familiarity with Magic Circuits means he's prone to overtaxing them and exhausting himself dangerously in the process.
• Godzilla Threshold: Igor is able to grant Magic Circuits to any guest of the Velvet Room, however such was deemed too dangerous for both the guests and the world at large to do so. With Mankind's destruction and the Sea of Souls scoured clean, however, he has no other choice but to gift them to Ren.
  • Roman is aware that Ren and Mona are deeply suspicious, courtesy of their weird abilities and mysterious past, however he willingly overlooks this since Chaldea really needs Masters and they are the only candidates left alive.
  • One of the most unexpected summons in this fic is Avenger-class Loki, someone who isn't even possible to summon in Fate/Grand Order except through Ren because of his experience with Akechi.
• Green-Eyed Epiphany: During Orleans, Ren talks to Mash about his friends back home. As he describes Sumire and how she confessed to having a crush on him, Mash finds herself getting filled with a sense of dread, especially when she asks if he accepted it. Her relief when he says he didn’t is what makes her to start to consider the possibility that she has a crush on him herself.
• Heroic BSoD: Ren really doesn't take it well when informed of Mankind's destruction, an event that means he lost not only his team, but every single bond he had in the world.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Ren and Mona are wary of explaining their ability to summon Personas to Chaldea, for very good reasons.
• Logical Weakness: The Velvet Room relies on the Sea of Souls — Mankind's collective unconsciousness — to bestow the power of Persona upon their chosen agents. With Mankind's destruction, they're completely cut off from their power source and Igor grimly admits they will likely disappear if Ren cannot restore the world to what it was.
• Must Have Caffeine: Roman drinks gallons of coffee, mainly because he needs it to maintain a level of work sufficient for Chaldea to function in spite of losing a lot of staff. Needless to say, he definitely enjoys Ren's talent as a barista.
• Not Helping Your Case: After Ren summons Satan as a Persona to shake up Jeanne Alter and make a getaway, Jeanne, as a devout saint, naturally feels the need to ask what exactly he is. Ren is insulted by the sudden scrutiny, and is reminded of the treatment he got at the hands of "respectable figures" back home... so he decides to call out Archangel and Metatron simply to mock the heroes for "instantly condemning him," and is in the process of summoning Lucifer out of a sense of Then Let Me Be Evil when Mona stops him. Reflecting on this moment later on, Ren acknowledges that bringing out a being that radiates pure evil and malevolence in front of new allies he was trying to get to trust him was just absolutely stupid.
• Not So Similar: After poking a bit at Ren's definition of "hero", Emiya concludes the Trickster is not bent on treading a solitary path to save as many people as possible, he's merely helping people he finds on his journey and would rather inspire them to stand on their own feet. Even if Ren also is burying his pain and plastering a false smile on his face.
• Redemption Earns Life: While initially it looks like Jeanne Alter's Change of Heart would result in a Heel–Face Door-Slam when Gilles decides to have her eaten by his monsters with the intent of recreating her, followed up by her inadvertedly summoning the Demon Pillar Orobas from her Holy Grail and body which then ends up being destroyed, in the end she ends up returning as an incarnated Lancer Servant using that Grail as her base due to whim of the Goetia collective.
• Running Gag: Servants being floored by Mona being a catlike creature able to speak and summon them.
• Secret-Keeper:
  • Da Vinci guesses that Mona and Ren are members of the Phantom Thieves but reassures them that she has no interest in exposing them, calling herself a fan of their work.
  • Roman is the only person to know how powerful Ren and Mona truly are because he's their doctor, but he would rather prevent the Clock Tower from slapping them with a Sealing Designation.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Olga Marie is still killed in the initial attack against Chaldea, however Ren manages to save the remnants of her soul by asking her to enter in a contract with him, allowing the Velvet Room to swoop in and turn her into a new Velvet Room attendant.
• Spotting the Thread: Cu Chulainn, as a warrior in Celtic Ireland, got to see plenty of New Meat before big battles. As such, he quickly intuits that Mankind's extermination isn't Ren's first rodeo in this arena – the teenager is far too calm, and tired, about it. It also lets him pick up on that Ren's rodeo was much different, since Ren still reacts to some things – like killing people – in ways that paradoxically comes off as very inexperienced.
• Stating the Simple Solution: As soon as Ren and Morgana explain the mechanics behind Palaces, EMIYA suggests that they should strike down the Ruler immediately, as few Grail Wars offer such an unexpected route for assassination. This suggestion forces Ren to reconsider the differences between his adventures as a Phantom Thief and the current situation. Ultimately, the group still decides to go ahead with the Change of Heart, both because the real Jeanne wants to offer her doppelganger the chance to atone if possible, and because Mental Shutdowns remain a Trauma Button for Ren and Morgana.
• Stepford Smiler: Joker is nothing but cocky and confident around Servants and Chaldea's staff. When he has a moment to himself, however, Ren is prone to breaking down and weeping out of the sheer pressure to save Mankind without his trusted friends beside him.
• Supreme Chef: Ren makes a mean curry and coffee combo. Roman hesitates to investigate him in spite of his many weird quirks because he doesn't want to lose his caffeine provider, and Chaldea's staff is noticeably dismayed when Ren goes on a mission and leaves robots in charge of the cafeteria.
• These Hands Have Killed: During the Roman Singularity, Morgana leads of Roman to a camp of United Empire troops. After said troops slaughter their enemies, Morgana is shown horrified by the slaughter as the Phantom Thieves have a strict Thou Shalt Not Kill policy.
• They Would Cut You Up: Igor strongly stresses that Joker must be very careful around Chaldea and keep the true nature of his power a secret, or the magi will try to abduct and vivisect him in their greedy attempts to gain these abilities for themselves. It's reinforced by Roman after he gives Mona and Ren a physical, warning them that the Clock Tower will slap a Sealing Designation upon them if they are seen wielding their Personas.
• Unskilled Yet Strong: Courtesy of Igor, Ren and Mona gain Magic Circuits — ninety-five for Ren and seventy for Mona, amounts you would only see in the most powerful magi lineages. Since this acquisition is extremely recent, however, they're vulnerable to exhaustion and overtaxing.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Chaldea's staff tend to be aloof towards Servants. Mona and Ren disagree with their opinion — when you look, talk and act human, you deserve to be treated as a human being. Nonetheless, the Phantom Thieves has no qualms killing a Servant, comparing it to killing a Persona — you always can summon them back again, after all. Ren is later hit by the implications when the group enters Jeanne Alter's Palace; the Phantom Thieves find the concept of Mental Shutdowns abhorrent, but he has a hard time articulating what the difference would be between causing one for an immediate victory and simply killing the Servant like they've been doing.
• Wrong Context Magic: Magi and Servants are quite unsettled by Mona and the Personas summoned by Ren, since they're not the usual familiars.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: The cognition of the Satan Persona in Jeanne Alter's Palace is invincible (both to the Palace denizens and Chaldea) because Jeanne Alter views it as an invincible judge of sinners. When Jeanne Alter's Shadow hits her Rage Breaking Point, she declares that she won't allow herself to be judged by it and proceeds to attack it with the intent to kill, and accordingly it loses its invulnerability and perishes to her attack.