Testing Room

**Episode Information**GalleryTranscript

Testing Room

Release Information

**Release Date**
July 29, 2022

Credits

**Written by**
Jeffrey Yang

**Directed by**
Kevin Lerdwichagul

**Storyboard by**
Jarrad RumbleElle Nguyen

**Testing Room** is the second episode of the third and final season of Meta Runner and the 22nd episode overall. It was first aired on July 29, 2022 on the GLITCH channel.

Synopsis
Tari and Theo meet the horrors of a madman with too much time on his hands.

Characters
Main Characters* Theo
* Tari
* Dr. Sheridan
* Evelyn Claythorne
* Belle Fontiere
* Masa Shimamoto
* Marco
* Lamar Williams
* Sofia Porter
* Lucinia Porter

Minor* Derek Lucks (A.I.)
* Petey
* Bot-Boy
* People in the Rustworks
* People in the unknown room

Other
Locations* Rustworks
* Sheridan's Hideout

Games* Skybreakers
* Turbo Crash 9

Plot
The episode starts with Theo warping into a storage room, filled with humanoid models of Meta Runners. Thinking he is in another glitched game, he attacks the humanoids as if they were glitched enemies. Suddenly, he hears Tari, screaming in pain as the fragments of Lucinia's consciousness are being sucked out of her.
He immediately tries to get to Tari by making a catapult from the humanoids he defeated to fling him into the window that leads to the lab Tari was in, however he ends up inside a vent duct, which drew the attention to Masa and Belle. They try to communicate with Theo to get Tari out of there but end up summoning Sheridan. Theo ignores them and ends up saving Tari on his own while Masa and Belle try to distract Sheridan from noticing by telling him what he likes to do, to which he happily replied to by saying he likes to torture the A.I Lucks. A.I. Lucks alerts Sheridan that Tari has escaped, which Sheridan did not take very well. Evelyn follows the two and promises Sheridan to bring Tari back, however he insists on her stabbing Tari and hands over to her a special knife that can remove consciousness fragments from a person to which she joyfully compliments Sheridan and heads into the portal.
Tari and Theo end up back in the testing room where Theo first got here. Suddenly, Evelyn attempts to stab Tari, however Theo manages to shove Tari out of the way and block the incoming stab with his coconut. Tari then gets confused over why she wasn't able to detect Evelyn only to find that her Meta Runner vision has been tampered and damaged. Evelyn makes another attempt to stab Tari, but she is blocked by a humanoid model of Lamar, who she criticizes Tari for using her friend as a shield, to which Tari replied that she panicked.
Back at Rustworks, Lamar is seen playing Turbocrash 9 on two controllers due to the absence of Tari and Theo, annoying Marco who decides to end the match temporarily to see what's going on. Sofia that tells Marco that she can know where Tari is if she had a laptop in her hands to monitor Tari which he annoyingly complied to and ordered for someone to look after her since he knew the last time Sofia got her hands on a laptop, she changed his name to “Princess Hotpants”.
Tari and Theo continuously fight Evelyn with Evelyn coming on top, however she is soon distracted by a portal that randomly opened within the room to which Theo threw Mr. Tomato at her to give him time to pull Tari out of there. The two make it in the portal with Tari thanking Theo for saving her, however Evelyn manages to catch up to them. Tari then tells Theo to tell their friends what had happened while they were gone and throws him upwards into the vortex. Evelyn manages to get to Tari and slashes her in the abdomen. Tari manages to dodge another attack as she ends up falling backwards, eventually vanishing.
Tari then wakes up to a setting she is familiar with however she is then approached by Petey who then tells her that she is in the game of Skybreakers on an island called "Shipwreck Swamp". Tari then cuts off Petey to tell him where she can find Theo but is interrupted by the immense pain caused by the wound she endured by Evelyn, eventually bleeding out and knocking her unconscious. Evelyn then teleports to her ship who then orders her crew to set sail for Shipwreck Swamp.

Trivia* This episode features a game design reference where Theo turns metal after touching an orb like Metal Mario.
* Looking closely at the monitor before the extraction program crashes reveals Tari's name is also an acronym for "Turbo **Assisted** Rapid Intelligence." It is unknown whether this was a retcon or a second name of Tari's.