Overload

**Episode Information**GalleryTranscript

Overload

Release Information

**Release Date**
September 2nd, 2022

Credits

**Written by**
Kevin LerdwichagulJeffrey Yang

**Directed by**
Luke Lerdwichagul

**Storyboard by**
Jarrad RumbleElle Nguyen

**Overload** is the seventh episode of the third and final season of Meta Runner and the 27th episode overall. It was first aired on September 2nd, 2022 on the GLITCH channel.

Synopsis
Tari and Evelyn face off in their most crucial battle yet to determine the fate of Silica City.

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

Minor* Petey
* Friends at the Rustworks

Other
Locations* Sheridan's Hideout
* Rustworks

Games* Skybreakers (Game)

Plot
Dr. Sheridan’s computer shows signs of overloading, as he smiles above the news saying “Who’s Famous now, Lucks” (While the monitors show him under breaking news wanted for arrest being responsible for the mass meta-runner outage). The Episode resumes to where Global Testfire left off as Shercorp and MD-5 begin their fight. Evelyn and Belle jump onto The Bluejay, and Marco rushes over to Evelyn’s ship to get his revenge on Masa, while Lamar jumps over to Evelyn’s ship to keep things under control. While Tari tries to call Marco and Lamar, Evelyn swings her axe at Tari, (telling her; “Rookie Mistake, you left your backline open”) but misses. Theo (in Mech) tackles Evelyn and brings both of them down into the inside of the ship. Tari tries to support Theo, but sees Belle, and is forced to fight her instead. Tari is able to evade Belle’s sword swings and use a rope contraption to get herself onto high ground. Tari then attempts to snap Belle out of Sheridan’s control, but to no luck, as Belle is unaffected and climbs up to Tari, as Tari then accepts that she has to use her training with Belle against her.
Evelyn meanwhile is disgusted that she has to face “the sidekick again”. She notices Theo glitching, realizing he may just die on his own, and starts to mock him. Theo gets back up and starts dealing some damage to Evelyn. Lamar tries to calm Marco out of his rage, all while avoiding Lucinia’s gunfire. None of this works, as Marco thinking about Masa witnessing what’s going on is better for Marco’s revenge. Eveyln lands several hits on Theo back inside the Bluejay tells Theo that she’s looked at Sheridan’s files, and found out that he wasn’t meant to exist and was just a side effect (as he was created from Luck’s actions in Out of Bounds). Evelyn then prompts what’ll happen if he dies in game, will he respawn in Shipwreck, will he go back to Ultra Jump Mania, or will he just go… poof? Theo gets up, shoots a ventilator releasing smoke, and runs away as Evelyn continues to tease him. Eveyln eventually finds Theo’s mech and fires at it, only finding it to be empty. Theo manages to land a critical hit on Evelyn’s energy tank (on the back of her mech) acknowledging that he doesn’t know what’s happening to him, but is still determined to stop her to save his friends. Theo runs at Evelyn again, but Evelyn grabs Theo and pins him to a wall. Evelyn tells him he went through all that trouble for nothing, but Theo states it wasn’t nothing as he was able to have a great adventure with friends while all she got was a coconut in the face. Theo throws one last coconut at Evelyn’s top glass dome leaving another weak spot, before Evelyn squeezes Theo and he disintegrates as a result. Eveyln was annoyed at what Theo did, but pushed it aside to take down the other bot (Tari).
Tari continues to fight Belle and tries to tell Marco and Lamar to work as a team, but Marco is still stubborn trying to get revenge on Masa. Nevertheless, Lamar knows “Masa isn’t a cheating, lying, manipulative little punk, Masa may be a cranky, antisocial, stubborn edgelord, but he cares about his friends”. Lamar jumps in between Marco and Masa’s duel telling him “all he wants is to keep his friends safe, right?” as Masa starts to speak, losing control of the bug. Sheridan catches sight of this, and increases the control on Masa, who then eliminates Lamar. Marco tells him “that’s what you get for being soft”, oblivious to the fact Lucinia now doesn’t have anyone to duel with and eliminates Marcos’ drone. Marco is hurt by this, but still tries to win the uphill battle, which once knocked down, Masa and Lucinia shoot rapid fire at Marco right after he tells Masa “this isn’t over Golden Boy”. Marco shoves his keyboard off his desk in rage and orders one of his workers to “gather the boys who are still conscious and get the cars ready”. Sofia dismayed tries to get Marco to save Tari from “being torn apart”, when Marco’s avatar is back in Shipwreck Swamp, and can’t help Tari from there. All Marco can do is destroy Sheridan’s server that’s making everyone warped in. He states plans change when Sophia brings up restoring Lucinia, as the Server needs to stop before Lamar and all the other Meta Runners die. When Sophia brings up her tracer program hasn’t finished, they don’t know where Sheridan is, Marco grabs one of his men to watch over Sophia’s Laptop and to send Marco Sheridan’s location once the program finishes. Marco tells Sophia that Tari’s going to be alright, as she somehow manages to pull off the impossible every time; Marco’s worried about everyone else, as he begins to hunt down Sheridan.
Tari, back in Skybreakers, starts to disarm Belle, ready to eliminate her, as Masa and Lucinia interfere knocking Tari’s rifle out of her hand. Tari attempts to grab her rifle, but Evelyn kicks the rifle out of the way and stomps Tari by the arm. Evelyn pins Tari against the wall telling her “See, This is what happens when you reach the things you’re not supposed to; you get crushed by those above you”. Tari tries to fight back with Evelyn’s knife, but that was futile as Eveyln grabs that, mockingly thanking her for giving it back to her. Then, Evelyn decides she doesn't want to finish Tari yet, wanting her to suffer more. And she did so telling her that Theo is no more. Tari’s face goes into a painful shock for a split second before calling it a bluff by Eveyln. Evelyn states he really is gone as she saw him turn into pink dust herself, and he is as dead as Tari is soon to be. Sofia sees that Theo’s status on the Player list is “MISSING PLAYER DATA, Connection: Not Available” as Sofia miserably notices that Theo is likely inactive, permanently. Tari is greatly torn realizing Theo did disappear, upset at how she promised she would protect him as she starts to cry. Masa, happens to hear Tari’s sobs and his real life body starts to glow circuits on his cheeks and (above his) eyebrows. Tari; “How can you hate me SO MUCH? All I ever wanted was to keep my friends SAFE!” Eveyln: “Awww… Don’t cry. You’ll be joining him soon enough” as Evelyn starts to raise her knife. Then Evelyn takes damage by an explosion noticing Masa has broken control from Dr. Sheridan. Masa fires another shot making Evelyn fall inside of the Bluejay once again.
Masa thanks Tari for leading MD-5 while he was gone, telling her that she is a better leader and person than he ever was. Lucinia then aims her gun at Masa, as Masa then fights Lucinia and Belle managing to push both of them back by a pop-up spring. Sheridan notices Masa’s free will is overloading and rushes over to inspect Masa’s body. Masa then grabs Sheridan by the neck with his Meta Runner arm (telling him “Let… My Friends… GO!”) and starts to get up. Sheridan tries to voice command the bug to increase control of Masa, but Masa grabs the Holo-glasses off Sheridan and throws them at the gate on the other side of the room, telling Sheridan that he can’t control him anymore. Masa pins Sheridan to the other gate starting to choke him. Sheridan tells Masa that he’s going to kill him at this rate, to which Masa replies that he wanted to be just like Lucks. Sheridan uses his left hand and grabs a screwdriver and stabs it in Masa’s neck breaking free from Masa’s grasp. Masa’s arm begins to overheat, and then it explodes knocking Sheridan unconscious, leaking orange dust out of masa, and killing the bug controlling Belle.
Back in Skybreakers, Belle gets up and notices Masa down on the ground. Lucinia starts to get up (still silent and assassin-like). Tari calls for the knife, and Belle makes the tough decision to throw her sword at Lucinia, pinning her to the railing, and then stabbing her with the knife (as Lucinia fires a shot at Belle at the same time). Belle tells Lucinia that she’ll be thanking her later, when they’re back in the real world, as Lucinia draws out the knife and sees pink cubes transfer over to Tari. Belle leaves it up to Tari now, who has her Meta-Runner vision restored once again, and perfectly dodges an axe attack from Evelyn. Now equally matched, Tari and Evelyn begin their final battle, Tari starts seeing weak spots on the Mech’s joints. She fires several shots at Evelyn before Evelyn finally hits Tari, stating she doesn’t have infinite ammo. Tari notices another weakness firing a shot at Evelyn’s charging arm-blaster, and fires another shot at her right hand which catches her axe stuck in the ship, and fires a third shot at her front vent. Evelyn notices her mech is about to break, and draws out her axe which she turns red and fires an axe beam, which Tari doges, but cuts right through the main mast. That doesn’t affect either side though, as Tari continues for fire a couple more shots at Evelyn, and jumps onto her cockpit dome, where Tari rapidly fires 13 shots at Evelyn, jumps off, fires three more shots, and when Evelyn jumps at Tari, she fires one more shot at the weak spot Theo left for her.
Eveyln is not eliminated yet though, and gets up and grabs Belle as hostage. Nevertheless, Tari fires a shot at Evelyn, where Belle realizes her feet are now on the ground. Tari fires another shot and Belle jumps backwards, which pushes Evelyn onto a spring pad and launches her onto her ship (on her back, which deals more damage due to Theo’s first critical hit). Tari then realizes she’s out of ammo, and sees a cannonball right next to her, which she loads into a cannon. However, she sees Evelyn charging up her blaster in rage, but Belle punches the Energy Tank on the back of the mech, which paralyzes Evelyn. Tari tells Belle to get out of the way, but Belle tells her she’s stuck, and approves Tari to fire, also telling Tari to consider it as her (Belle’s) comeuppance for everything she did to Tari before. Tari thanks Belle for coming through in the end, while Belle thanks Tari for trusting her to get there. Evelyn throws Belle off the ship (Guess Belle didn’t get caught in the explosion afterall) and furiously aims her blaster at Tari telling her to “JUST DIE ALREADY!!!” Tari fires the cannon which breaks through the Mech’s glass and eliminates Evelyn, to which the mech explodes, and the ship starts to burn and fall.
Sofia; “Tari, I’m so proud of you, and there’s many things I want to say, but you still have one thing left to do.” The man watching over Sofia’s Laptop gets up, closes the laptop, and starts to call Marco via earpiece. Sofia warns Tari that Marco knows where Sheridan is, and plans to destroy the server. Sofia: “If he does that, you will lose the only method we have of putting you and Lucinia back in your bodies. You have to go into Sheridan’s server now and use his virtual lab to fix the two of you.”
Tari: “Don’t worry Sofia. I’ll get your sister back. No matter what.” As Tari looks at Lucinia, who draws Belle’s sword out of her arm. Tari calls Lucinia telling her she’s going to mess up Sheridans server. “Stop me if you can.” Lucinia chases Tari, as Tari runs up the bowsprit and jumps into the vortex below. The penultimate episode ends with Tari and Lucinia falling into the Vortex about to enter the server.
A post credits scene shows Lamar, Evelyn (on top of her mech) and an AFK Marco sitting in Shipwreck Swamp. Lamar throws small stones at the Mech, and Petey begins the tutorial with a girl in the background.

Trivia* Much to it is allegedly believed, Theo’s status after this episode’s release is “Unknown" up until the next episode
* Masa’s arm exploded after Sheridan stabbed his neck with a screwdriver, possibly meaning Masa could be in a comatose state like Lucinia or even deceased. It was later found out in The End that he was alive and remained unconscious for a while due to the explosion.
* The Destruction of Evelyn’s Ship is similar to how other Airships were taken down in certain Mario games
* While it is possible Evelyn may face a worse fate in the final episode, this Episode mainly focused on the final battle between Evelyn and Tari, which can be deduced due to the build up in the previous episode, and the fact this episode focused mainly on fighting rather then sequences of events.
* This is the Third Episode overall to have a post-credits scene, and the First Episode to have a post-credits scene that isn’t a season finale. This may hint that the final episode won’t have a post-credits scene, as post-credits scenes are usually an indicator of a sequel, and due to the intros, thumbnails, and titles naming Season 3 “The Final Season”, it is pretty clear a 4th Season isn’t happening.
* This is the first Episode to have the credits music play twice in one episode, playing before the credits, where it is played start to finish again.
* Interestingly in the player section on Sofia's computer it shows that Tari, Theo, Marco, Evelyn, Masa, and Belle are only listed and tracked there. However only four has nicknames which are Marco as RustKing, Masa as Punished\_Ronin, Evelyn as Princess Persephone, and Belle as FontiereofYouth. Lamar and Lucinia seemed to not have been listed at all for some reason.

Sources