Kino has been down in the dumps lately as it seems whenever things went wrong during his missions with Aqua and Max, he feels as though he's the cause of Team Pride's misfortunes. Their most recent mission, which involved planting several fields on a farm with berry seeds, went pretty smoothly all things considered with very little hick-ups during said mission. The worse thing that happened, which in hindsight was relatively minor, was that Kino bit off more than he could chew by carrying more buckets of water on his Vine Whip than they could handle, spilling water all over the place, soaking Aqua, Max, and their client with water. Kino felt bad for the mishap and apologized profusely to everyone whom he soaked while hanging his head down in shame. Everyone forgave Kino, including the client thankfully, which was good considering what transpired. The client then went inside of his home and grabbed some bath towels to offer Team Pride to use to dry themselves off with, but when they returned to Team Pride with the towels in hand, they were already dried off as Max used his Fire Spin move to dry themselves. Aqua thanked the client for the offer, but explained how Max dried himself, Aqua, and Kino off and offered to have Max dry off the client as well with Max's Fire Spin, but the client kindly, (but nervously,) refused her offer and dried himself off with one of the bath towels he brought out with him. A few hours later, the mission was completed without any further incidents. Team Pride received their pay in full, despite accidentally giving their client a bath when they didn't mean to. As Team Pride began heading back home to Dekumoria, Aqua and Max talked to Kino to try and cheer him up by ensuring him that mistakes happen from time to time and that nobody is perfect. As they were talking, Max notices a portable balloon stall on the road which was ran by a Charazard and their 2 Charmander children and then, he gets an idea. Max told Aqua and Kino, "I'm going to grab something for us real quick. I'll be right back." "Oh, okay. Don't take too long." Aqua said to Max in response. "What's up with Max?" asks Kino. Aqua responds to Kino, "Max is grabbing something for us real quick. Don't worry, he'll be back soon. Why don't we wait for him over there?" as she points to a nearby log bench. The two of them sat down on the bench and patiently waited for Max's return. During that time, Kino held his head downward towards the ground, looking more blue than a sad Marill who's scoop of ice cream rolled off their ice cream cone and landed on the dirty ground in front of them on a hot summer day, looking as if he's about to cry. When Aqua looked into Kino's sad eyes, she asked him why he looked so sad and if there was anything she could do to help make him feel better. Kino assured Aqua that he was feeling fine and that she doesn't have to worry about him. Aqua knew that Kino was putting on a brave face and a fake smile and asked him to be honest with her. She assured him that she wouldn't be mad if he vented on her and that she's more than willing to listen to him rant about whatever's on his mind. And so, Kino took her up on her offer, unloaded everything he had bottled up deep inside of himself and let it all out in the open right in her face. Once he finished, he began crying and ran off somewhere. "Kino, wait! Come back!" Aqua shouted to Kino as she reached out to him as he ran further and further away from her. The rest of the story can be read on my DeviantArt page here as it is more than double the character limit [here](https://www.deviantart.com/therealgeneralsnivy/art/Kino-s-Coming-Down-1071966587). I swear, 5K characters is not enough for deviations most of the time! I like writing these long stories for my characters, dang it! This took longer than anticipated, but it's finally done! I created my new PFP for myself once again and I am very happy with the way this turned out! Honestly, the thing that took the longest to draw was Kino's fists so that he can grip onto the balloon string as he descends from the skies above! I had a hard time figuring out how to make them look correct as there isn't very many pieces of official media on Snivy clenching their fists. After sharing a WIP of this drawing online, Mitoid shared with me a reference from the Pokemon manga, Pokemon Adventures, that helped me figure out the best approach to drawing Kino's fists. They may not have turned out the way I wanted them to be 100%, but it was the best I could pull off while still making them look good enough, which is fine by me. It was a learning experience at the end of the day. When it came to Kino's bandana, I decided to go back to drawing the different colored stripes individually as it not only looked better in my opinion, but it was more consistent too. This was a fun challenge and I'm glad that I was able to pull this off, despite the setbacks!