#orenji

“Reality is dull but memories are vivid”

It took me one full year but I finally finished this wip. \(TT )✨

Cure Cherry, Cure Azure, and Cure Golden stand together, facing their Inkling opponent. On the school campus’s fields is an Inkling with a candle body, holding a blowtorch in its wax hand. 

Noir is hovering above them, arms crossed. “Let’s see how you take care of things this time!”

Azure turns to her two teammates, asking, “Okay, so what’s the plan?”

“Stop the Inkling!” Golden is already on it, charging ahead.

“W-wait!” Azure reaches out, but it’s too late. Cure Golden is already writing out ‘風’ with her Neon Pen. In a click and a flash, her fist becomes charged with wind power.

Azure and Cherry watch as the Inkling strikes at Golden, who is dodging over and over again, with the wind ability helping her.

“Seriously, what’s the plan?” Azure turns to Cherry to ask.

“I got one!” Cherry chimes, beginning to charge as well. She tells Azure, “Cover for me!”

“Wha-?!” Azure doesn’t get that message. Her eyes are blank in confusion. She exclaims, “I’m not a mind reader! TELL ME THE PLAN!!”

The Inkling slaps Golden away with its wax hand. Its attention is brought to Cherry and Azure, and it aims its blowtorch at them. It starts slashing waves of fire.

Azure takes action and flicks her hand outwards. Her blue mirrors appear below Cherry, who uses them to jump out of the way of two waves of flames. Azure uses a shield over herself to protect herself from said flames.

Cherry, from the air, goes for a drop kick down on the Inkling’s head. It doesn’t work, as the Inkling notices and swats her away.

Cure Golden returns to the scene, charging forward. “Azure! Pincer!”

“What?! No!” Azure, who is still blocking flames, protests, “We should play this safe-!”

Golden doesn’t take no for an answer. She flicks her pen to make Azure fly out of the line of literal fire. At that point, Azure has no choice but to join in. She lands on the ground and dodges a swat of a wax hand. Golden, on the other side, jumps over the wax hand that comes for her, slamming her hands on it. Both of them go for a pincer kick to the head…

But the Inkling leans out of the way, leaving both of them in shock and unable to stop themselves from crashing into each other's bodies. 

The Inkling takes the chance to take the blow torch and blast fire at both of them, forcing them to have a hard impact on the ground.

Before it can do anything else, it gets hit in the back with a small paint bomb. It turns around to see Cure Cherry, holding another paint bomb in her hand. She shouts, “Over here!”

With the Inkling’s attention diverted, Golden and Azure get up, feeling the literal burn. 

“I told you it was a bad idea…” Azure strains to say.

“We timed it wrong! Oh well!” Golden ignores her concerns and gets up faster. “Let’s deal with this guy already!”

Golden writes ‘火’ with her pen, and with that, she’s able to block the next fire wave that comes their way. With a slash of her pen, she breaks the wave entirely.

Cherry, who is facing the Inkling upfront, manages to jump over all waves and land a punch. She flips out of the way before she can get swat again. Golden gets behind her, and the two of them spam wind and paint at the Inkling’s body. 

“Okay, Cherry, we need a way to melt the wax!” Cure Golden says to her. “My power isn’t doing anything.”

“Melt?” Cure Cherry turns her head to her to question the wording. That’s when she notices, behind Golden, is a metal lantern post. She chimes at her idea and decides, “We can set it ablaze!!”

“Wait, what?!” Golden jolts up, but Cherry is already legging her plan without hearing out her partner. This leaves the Inkling to get the upper hand and blast fire at Cure Golden. Cure Azure jumps in front to shield her, but they’re both stuck.

Cure Cherry grabs the lantern post, and with enough force and strength, breaks it off its place in the ground. It short circuits from the bottom. She grins at her plan and charges back in, jumping above her vulnerable teammates. “Hey Inkling! Light this up!”

“Wait…” Azure flicks her hand to make a pair of sunglasses appear. She puts them on, and she scans the pole Cherry is holding. 

*ALERT: MAGNESIUM DETECTED*

Azure gasps. She screams, “CHERRY, DON’T! PUT IT DOWN!!”

“I got it!” Cherry completely ignores the warning. She throws the pole at the Inkling’s literal candlehead. 

What happens is a massive explosion of fire that knocks away all three of them. The Inkling’s wax melts instantly, and what stands in its place is a raging stick figure of an uncontrollable fire beast.

Cherry falls on her back from the impact. Azure is knocked out next to her. Golden is the only one not affected harshly, as she’s reflecting with her own fire. Though, Golden is fuming herself, the orange ombre of her ponytail flickering in anger. She yells at Cherry, “A metal pole made of magnesium is going to make the fire uncontrollable, YOU FOOL!!!”

“I…” All Cherry can say is sheepish, “...sorry?”

“Forget it! You’ve done enough!” Golden groans, jumping up and over the uncontrollable spewing of fire. 

Once she’s in the air, she pulls out her PreCure Palette and her Yellow Neon Pen. She announces, “I’ll do damage control myself!”

“Pretty Cure!” Cure Golden transforms into her Creative Wings. She writes ‘ゴールデンファンタジー’. “Golden Fantasy!”

The kanji turns into two hard clunks of gold fire, and she throws them down at the Inkling. The tower of gold flames ensue, and yellow paint is splattered everywhere.

The Inkling is purified, and the storm of flames fades away. The purified origami floats away.

“That was my last origami!” Noir exclaims in frustration.

Cure Golden lands on the ground with a smooth half split pose. She stands upright and demands, “Get out of here! And can you please leave the candle making students alone?!”

Noir groans. He brushes off the demand, saying tiredly, “Forget it.”

He vanishes.

“That was crazy!” Cherry exclaims happily, fists in the air. She pulls her hair back as she wonders aloud, “How many fire powered Inklings are there?”

Her cheerings stops when Azure gets up, coughing out smoke. 

“A-Azure…” Cherry notices that Azure’s dresstail is still on fire. 

The blue designer looks down, notices, and freaks out. “No! No no no no! Why?! Why me?!?!” She picks up her dress tail and tries to put it out with her hands. It doesn’t work.

Cherry pulls out her Neon Pen to help her. She draws an outline of a water drop. She clicks the pen, and real water appears to splash on Azure to put the fire out.

“Thanks…” Azure says to Cherry. Because their outfits are magic, there’s no damage done to them. She’s still upset, tears streaming from her face. “Why must such beautiful fashion get ruined?!?!?”

“It’s magic.” Golden rolls her eyes with her arms crossed. She says sarcastically, “It’s not a big deal.”

“Okay.” Azure is offended by Golden’s rude comment. She drops her dress tail and asks, “Am I missing something?”

“We won the match, Cure Golden.” Cherry also picks up on this. She asks, “What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me?! What’s wrong?!” Golden repeats with an edge to her voice. Her ponytail sparks up. “I’m tired of all this useless filler, that makes us act stupid!” She points at the busted lantern post, mocking with a high pitched tone. “‘What is the Inkling’s gimmick? Oh, it’s fire? What do I do with it? Oh, I know! THROW A MAGNESIUM POST AT ITS FACE!’”

“It’s not filler.” Cherry insists. “We won. I thought you liked thrills.”

“If I have to, yeah, I do.” Golden clarifies, “But I don’t fight for the sake of a thrill.”

“Well, think of it as a daily workout. Sometimes you’re rusty.” Cherry assures her.

“Does that involve nearly burning to a crisp?”

Cherry feels a tear over her head. “Maybe…?”

Cherry’s eyes then meet Azure again. She exclaims, “Azure, you’re still on fire!”

Azure’s eyes widen and notices again. Once again, she’s back to gripping her dress tail struggling to put it out.

Golden groans, “This is what I mean! We wait for an Inkling to cause collateral damage, we step in, we have our long transformations, and we avoid getting defeated long enough to shoot paint at its face!”

Orenji speaks up, flying over to them. “Wash the paint, rinse the paint, repeat the process. Yes! She has a point! It would be really great to actually find our last two Cures, or even training would be great.”

Azure finally puts out the fire, and she replies to Orenji’s statement. “That is reasonable.”

“You say that like we’re failing,” Cherry steps in, putting her arms around her teammates to assure them. “Come on guys, we’re doing great!”

“Really?” Golden backs away from Cherry’s touch. “So we don’t need to change at all?! It’s completely fine for you to almost get your teammates killed?!”

“What?” Cherry isn’t sure what she’s getting at. “No, that’s not what I’m saying at all! My plan didn’t work the way I thought it would, that happens sometimes-”

“You didn’t think!” Golden calls out, jabbing a finger at her own head. “For the whole day, you haven’t thought anything through before jumping into a plan! Whose idea was it to jump right into the sheep wool? Whose idea was it to get hit by the anti-gravity ray to make an ‘air attack’?! Whose idea was it to feed to the Inkling’s fire?!”

 “I know what I’m doing!” Cherry throws her hand to the ground in defense of herself. She leans into Golden’s face to emphasize her stance.

Golden keeps her stance, scolding back, “If you knew what you were doing, you’d actually be smart!”

Cherry’s face pops out, with an overly dramatic gasp that follows. “Did you just call me dense?!”

“Did I?” Golden asks back.

Cherry points at her, shooting back with a fuming red face, “You’ve just been arguing and not helping us at all!”

Golden’s face pops out, with an overly dramatic gasp that follows. “I purified the past four Inklings! How am I not helping?!”

“Hey hey hey!” Azure steps in to get in between them. She pleads, “Let’s all calm down and think of our next move as a team. Alright?” At that last part, she gives a harsh glare at Golden.

It’s enough for Golden to call it out bluntly, “You say that, and yet you’re biased.”

“I’m not the one that made you a teammate, okay?!” Azure is also fuming now. Then she clenches her mouth shut to let the steam out of her ears. She takes a calm breath and clasps her hands together. She tries to take this slow. “Anyway, first things first, Keiko-Chan is just angry and tired and not thinking straight. She did not mean what she said, right?”

“What?” Cherry turns her head to Azure, confused.

Azure motions her eyes to silently tell Cherry to apologize to Golden.

“Really?” Cherry doesn’t get the message, putting a hand on her chest. “You’re agreeing it’s my fault?”

“My dress tail caught on FIRE.” Azure snaps in spite. Then she snaps back to calmly ask, “Can you please work with me here?”

Cherry doesn’t. “I think you're just misunderstanding-”

“Are we?!” Golden cuts her off. “I’m not exactly hearing an apology!”

“What do I have to apologize for?!” Cherry asks, visibly confused.

“Akino…” Azure sneers at her. She’s not hiding her bias anymore.

“What?!” Golden asks back.

“Akino.” Azure repeats herself, teeth grit.

“So she can be tired and cranky, but I can’t?!” Golden call out. She states, “I meant what I said!”

“Oh really?” Azure takes a smile to jab, “You know, it’s such a coincidence that we haven’t had issues until you joined and have been a chip on our shoulders the whole time!”

Golden rolls her eyes. “And now it’s my fault.”

“BREAK IT UP!” Orenji shouts, flying in between all three of them. He demands, “Break. It. Up! We can point fingers at whose to blame for a close defeat all we want, but fighting with each other isn’t going to solve anything. So why don’t we calm down, and regroup ourselves before we discuss our next move. We’ve been fighting all day.”

“Fine.” Golden states. She turns her heel and starts to walk away.

“Wait what?!” Cherry’s shocked. Now she realizes she messed up. “Where are you going?!”

Golden doesn’t look back, but she answers. “Orenji said it. We’ve been fighting all day and we’re all tired. I need some sleep. And a weekend!!”

“Cure Golden, wait!” Cherry reaches out, guilt all over her face. 

Golden doesn’t stop walking away, causing Cherry to lean back from her spot to reach out to her.

“Reeeeeiiii-Chaaaaaaaaannnnn!!!” Cherry cries.

“Keiko…” Azure is crouched down below Cherry, holding up her back. “You’re going to break your back.”

Orenji sighs. This team is a mess.

My feet hurts....

Second time to a con/otaku event, and these are what I got! Orenji was quite fun if a bit crowded, spent most of my time just going around the Comiket building (which was where I got all these from)

The Tsukasa postcard is by jerukezi on Instagram, I'm not sure about the AkiKasa pins tho...

Two of the Enstars photocards (Ariadne Niki and Enstage Makoto) were pulled from a gacha pool and the other two were freebies. All four of them came from an Enstars booth manned by the local Enstarrie community group chat I'm in (who are also the same one from my previous con visit). I don't know who specifically drew them and I'm too afraid to ask in the group chat :(

And unfortunately, I also don't know who designed the EmuKasa keychains. I forgot to ask since at that point I was getting tired of circling around the same aisles (that and I'm too shy to ask)