Chris Waters ("NightFox" / Fennekin) & Natalie Pence (MoneyBunny / Buneary)
Exploration Team Lucky Strike
Discovery Town Center
Affected RPers: N/A

When Chris and Natalie followed Naomi to find Carla, they noticed she wasn't the only one. Usually, the town square was bustling, felt welcoming, friendly, and warm, and seemed like a good meeting place for players and NPCs to gather and relax before heading out to do their daily tasks. But now, it was like the whole world was coming to an end.

Some players were frustrated, others were angry, and a few were even in tears. The reactions of the NPCs were made to be dynamic and responsive toward current game situations. It was expected that events, both hosted by the GMs and those hosted by players, would have appropriate NPC reactions to make the characters feel as believable as possible.

There was speculation that getting KOed in a random dungeon was one way to log out, but there was no sign of anyone logging back in after that. At the moment, everything was a sea of "what ifs" and "why isn't someone doing something about this?" Chris just tried to remain calm and not jump to conclusions.

Eventually, they did find Carla, who was looking down and glum upon the flower she was resting on. Her username was "MagicGirl777," but Chris felt it would be more personal to refer to her by her actual name.

"Carla..." Naomi told her, trying to help her feel at ease. "I brought some friends."

"Hey Carla, name's Chris," he told her, trying to speak to her in a calm and reassuring voice.

"Hi..." Carla muttered, trying to be polite but still feeling glum. "I guess you're trapped like the rest of us."

"Hey, no matter what happens, we'll be okay, right?" Chris told her. "This is just temporary."

Still, Carla wasn't so convinced. The other problem was everything that was surrounding her kept furthering her negative and pessimistic beliefs. Other players were angry and furious while others were panicking. It was really beginning to seem like more players were getting very discontent than the ones that were still enjoying the game.

"Come on, let's bail out of this hellhole," Natalie told Carla, giving everyone else around her a Bunerary evil eye. "These people are salty over something that's not such a big damn deal and will probably be fixed soon enough. I swear, I bet 99% of these over-entitled tools probably haven't coded anything in their entire life. I've tried that crap, it's hard."

"I guess," Carla muttered, still taking glances at the other discontented players in the central square. "I'm just... I was so excited for this game and this has... really put a damper on it."

"Psh, I know what the deal is," Natalie replied to the Flabébé. "When you program and plan out a game this big, you get tunnel vision. There's probably enough content in this game to play it for decades. The devs were thinking so far in advance that they lost sight of the basics. 'Oh holy crap, we programmed in 500+ mystery dungeons, insanely good NPC AI, with an endless number of possible missions using the most complex algorithms known to man, but crap, we totally misplaced the coding for logging out. Carla, this crap happens. Especially with new releases. I was there when Shadow Battalion just came out and the freaking servers couldn't bloody handle all of the connections at once so players were randomly dying in the middle of matches because they got disconnected. And most of the time, within a day, they'll get everything patched up. Heck, sometimes they even give everyone nice items as an apology."

Carla's spirits were lifted a bit and it seemed to her like everything Natalie was making sense. The game's content was massive, dynamic, and ever-changing. The NPCs were incredibly lifelike, the experience of being a Pokémon felt so incredibly real, and so many attentions to details like the way the wind blew, the way things like temperature, scents, and weather were affected by the game were enough to realize that yes, it was very possible and natural that maybe not every nook and cranny was explored to make sure every bug and flaw had been ironed out.

"So relax," Natalie told Carla. "Enjoy the game, because we all busted our butts trying to get it. It's fun if you ignore all the salt and moaning from all these people. You could join us on our first bounty hunt mission if you'd like."

"That'd be nice," Carla replied, looking a bit more optimistic. "I... think stepping away from this for a while might help."

"Cool, you pick out the mission then," Natalie offered. "Get your mind off this crap."

While Carla selected what mission she wanted to do, Chris just looked around, seeing how things were developing. The situation wasn't getting any better, but he definitely felt Natalie had the right idea. The sooner Carla was taken out of this cloud of discontent, the better off she'd be.