With Grace and Elegance is a crossover fanfic between Ranma ½ and Girls und Panzer, written by Grounders 10.
Following Principal Kuno being arrested, Furinkan High is forced to close its doors and the students there to seek for another school. Ranma is in luck, because he happens to have a grandmother who took care of that!
Well, except for the teeny detail of St Gloriana's Girls College needing for him to attend in his female form and act like a graceful, elegant young lady. This is gonna be a long, long wait until graduation...
On the other hand, they have tanks.
Can be read here
on Fanfiction Dot Net, here on Space Battles and here on Sufficient Velocity.
Contains the following tropes
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Himawari refuses to pressure her grandchild into growing an interest for Sensha-do in spite of her desperation to pick an heir that won't dismantle everything she built in the latest decades. Due to that, Ranma is open to become the heir she needs, as her grandmother actually gave her a choice in the matter.
- Brits Love Tea: St Gloriana's Girls College offers more than three hundreds tea options to the students, as befits a school using English trappings. Ranma takes a fancy to Ruby Red.
- Department of Child Disservices: A mild subversion. Ranma doesn't want for the Social Services to intervene in his life, especially when they are treating him as a girl, but the government genuinely believe they're helping a young girl to escape a toxic life — and Genma and Nodoka really are unfit to raise their child — and agree to trust said girl's grandmother with her custody when the woman asks. At the worst, they are misguided.
- Dysfunction Junction: The Hayashida family — Himawari was so hard on Nodoka that her older daughter ran away with a lowlife and fully renunced Sensha-do, while her younger daughter Misato wants to spite her for neglecting her by undoing the reforms adopted by the Hayashida school.
- Everyone Has Standards: Whatever Principal Kuno cooked when the fic opens, it was so bad that Nabiki called the police to put an end to this. Ranma actually expresses his surprise at this.
- Evil Aunt: Himawari warns Ranma that her younger daughter Misato will likely try to inflict a nasty surprise to the martial artist out of spite for being a potential heiress to the Hayashida school.
- Evil Is Petty: The Kunos lost the paperwork related to Nabiki's last year of high school and deleted Kasumi's records, forcing them to repeat school in order to enter post-secondary learning, and they also registered Ranma as biologically female. After learning that, Ranma really wants to kick their asses.
- Father, I Don't Want to Fight: Himawari put a lot of pressure on Nodoka to become the Hayashida heiress. For a while, she genuinely struggled to fulfill her mother's expectations but ultimately broke down and eloped with Genma. Even after a tentative reconciliation with Himawari, Nodoka still doesn't want to hear about Sensha-do and is obviously irritated by the prospect of Himawari grooming Ranma as the next heir.
- Fountain of Youth: Kasumi and Ranma consume age mushrooms in order to regress to fifteen years old, since they are forced to retake high school and need to look the part.
- Godzilla Threshold:
- Nabiki calling the police on Principal Kuno, because even the unapologetically greedy girl has standards and the principal's latest scheme was too much.
- Faced with the Social Services threatening to take her child away, Nodoka called her estranged mother to the rescue because Himawari would at least care for Ranma.
- Heir Club for Men: The Hayashida School of Sensha-do is a matrilineal lineage who expects from a potential heiress to be interested in tankery if she wishes to become the next Head. Ranma wonders if he actually qualifies as his grandmother's heir because he doesn't know anything about tanks and his gender is a complicated matter.
- Inadequate Inheritor: Himawari cannot name one of her daughters as her heir, Nodoka for running away from the school and Misato because she would undo the reforms undertaken by her mother in the name of tradition.
- Lessons in Sophistication: As the scion of a very old family attending a college styling itself as the pinnacle of grace and elegance, the loudmouthed and coarse Ranma finds herself taking etiquette lessons and is very much annoyed about it.
- Obnoxious In-Laws: Himawari bluntly accuses Nodoka from losing her mind when she agreed to marry Genma. It's hard to disagree with the Hayashida matriarch.
- Noodle Incident: The story opens on the police arresting Principal Kuno because Nabiki herself decided his latest antics were far too insane. Considering what he pulled in the canon source, one really have to wonder how he managed to top that — perhaps it's for the best to leave it open...
- "Not So Different" Remark: After eating the de-aging mushrooms, Kasumi shows a much more mischievous and carefree side, leading Ranma to comment on her being Nabiki's sister after all.
- Parents as People:
- Kasumi bluntly tells Ranma that even if Nodoka does care about her son, she's not playing with a full deck for allowing her husband to take the toddler on a training trip and actually trying to force Ranma to commit seppuku.
- It comes from her mother, really — Himawari laments being far too harsh on a young Nodoka and neglectful of her younger daughter as she focused on reforming Sensha-do, something that alienated both her daughters from her.
- Kasumi actually criticizes Soun, admitting he utterly faded away after losing his wife and leaving his elder daughter quietly afraid of him just dying.
- Rags to Riches: Ranma went from a wandering martial artist raised on the roads to the Hayashida heiress, with his grandmother granting her one million yen as pocket change.
- Raised as the Opposite Gender: Courtesy of the Kunos messing with Ranma's records, the Social Services operate under the assumption that Ranma was born a girl and forced to act like a boy her whole life. Ranma is not pleased.
- Raised by Grandparents: With Genma and Nodoka being obviously unfit to care for Ranma, the governement agree for Himawari Hayashida to claim her grandchild's custody. Ranma quickly grows fond of her grandmother for actually giving him choices instead of forcing her to obey her whims.
- Social Services Does Not Exist: Actually, they do — after a lifetime of Ranma dropping under their radar, they get an inkling of what happened in the Saotome household following Furinkan High's closure and immediately take action to remove him from the mess.
- Succession Crisis: Currently looming in the future of the Hayashida School. Himawari has two daughters, but the older Nodoka refuses to hear about Sensha-do after trying and failing to live up to the expectations piled upon her shoulders as a potential heiress, and the younger wants to ruin her mother's work by undoing the reforms underwent in the latest decades by the school doctrine. Ranma could be named as heiress (yes, it's matrilineal but Ranma is a Sex Shifter) but he doesn't know anything about tankery and is unsure about wanting to develop an interest for the sport, leaving the succession in the air.
- Unwillingly Girly Tomboy: Even in female form, Ranma is no lady. Unfortunately, the governement expects from her to explore her femininity — still, tankery is considered appropriate for a young lady...
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Downplayed with Nabiki who was grimly aware that Principal Kuno getting arrested would have heavy consequences for Furinkan High, but she certainly wouldn't have imagined how far it would spread.
