Tari

""When I think of a goal, or a task... I can see the path to complete it."" Tari is the main protagonist of Meta Runner. She is one of many professional Meta Runners, but unlike other Meta Runners, she has an ability that allows her to transfer her mind into any video game she plays.

It is revealed in "Fatal Error" by Derek Lucks that Tari herself is Dr. Sheridan's A.I. program from Project Blue that merged with a fragment of Lucinia Porter's mind during an accident as she was being backed up, with her name actually being T.A.R.I. (Turbo Artificial Rapid Intelligence).

Appearance
Tari wears a blue and white hooded jacket over a white tank top with her Meta Runner symbol, brown khaki pants, white and blue socks, and brown flip flop sandals. She has short blue hair (with a fringe covering her right eye, but half of it is exposed in Season 2), blue eyebrows (as of Season 2), and purple eyes.

Her Meta Runner Arm is on her left.

Her appearance resembles the Blue Jay Bird. In particular, her symbol and the designs on her jacket's shoulders resemble its wings.

During her time as a TAS Corp. representative, her outfit switches to a bare-shouldered, black, white and blue TAS Corp. uniform and black tracksuit pants with white stripes, and navy blue slide sandals with long socks with blue stripes.

Starting from Soft Lock, she once again wears her iconic blue hoodie over her TAS Corp. uniform but with a few differences, including the thicker black lines.

Personality
Tari is a very kind-hearted, insecure and shy girl, shown to be a pacifist, usually trying to resolve problems with words rather than actions, and appears to be very danger prone, as she often finds herself getting hurt and/or in danger.

During her time in TAS Corp., she is shown to have become more mature and "cooler" as stated by Theo due to learning from Belle, as well as more reckless and passive-aggressive as she taunts Evelyn to distract her during their fight in the corrupted version of Ultra Jump Mania.

Tari herself said that the fragment of Lucinia's mind that merged with her original self is what made her "human" so it can be presumed that her sweet yet reluctant nature is actually due to her being a fragment of Lucinia's personality (despite Lucinia not sharing the same personality as Tari), with even her gender likely being due to Lucinia's mind mixing with a program.

In Fatal Error Lucks mentions that Tari's body is Artificial. but that could be false because Tari's body might've belonged to someone else

Season 1
Tari was originally a highly advanced A.I. program created by Dr. Sheridan to get himself recognized in the gaming world, known as the Turbo Artificial Rapid Intelligence program. She was created to complete any videogame presented to her and was meant to be uploaded into a Meta Runner's arm to enhance their gaming performance beyond normal limitations.

The test subject for this project was Lucinia Porter, a Meta Runner at TASCorp who was hanging around the science labs for help due to her belief she wasn't relevant anymore compared to the likes of Masa Shimamoto and Belle Fontiere, but after an accident, while she was being backed up, a fragment of Lucinia's mind was merged with T.A.R.I. to create her current self.

It is unknown what happened after that or how Tari was given a physical body, but she was somehow placed in a medical room located in a back alley of Silica City.

Waking up in a damaged lab, Tari notices her Meta Runner arm. As she struggles her way outside, Tari experiences flashbacks of Dr Sheridan, having troubles with another girl in the lab, before a malfunction caused the explosion.

She arrives outside into Silica City, the video game capital. As she explores the futuristic city, she was approached by citizens who praise her for being a Meta Runner, much to Tari's confusion. She gets away from the crowd by lying that she is a Meta Runner working for TAS Corp. and arrives at the store owned by it.

She then notices the Meta Runner star gamer of said-company, Belle Fontiere, loses a speed run competition of Ultra Jump Mania. Tari started playing the game, initially starting as a mediocre player (which resulted in Belle oppressing her), she becomes better in a matter of seconds. Later, her consciousness got transferred into the game.

She meets the game's main character Theo, who initially treated like a "foul beast" and a "boss". In the end, Tari manages to convince Theo that she's not evil. The pair venture through the game as Tari learns to use her foresight ability to get through obstacles. The two manage to bond over time.

After defeating a hoard of tree monsters (later revealed in Season 2 to be called "Facepalms"), the pair was approached Lucks in the form of a glitched version of Theo. He offers Tari an opportunity to become part of his company, until the situation takes a turn as her arm burns in pain, due to the real-life scientists placing a tracker in her arm.

Eventually, she glitches herself out of the game, unintentionally bringing Theo into the real world as well. She manages to escape Lucks with the help of Theo throwing a coconut to a guard's head.

As the pair manage to escape, Tari loses Theo for a brief moment until they hide in an alley. She explains to Theo how his video game powers can't function in the real world. Their relationship grows even further with Tari saying sorry for slightly yelling at Theo. They decide to take shelter in a Streaming Pod building called The Hive.

Theo plays the game with enjoyment as Tari has more flashbacks concerning Dr Sheridan. When Theo starts his own stream, she immediately interrupts it, only to bump into Belle and some soldiers of TAS Corp. Theo throws a coconut to her face and separates from Tari. She eventually got herself caught while Theo managed to escape.

Tari and Belle have a serious conversation in the van. Tari talks about how it's wrong to be forced into a flawed environment, while Belle talks about how she had to do what needed to be done to be adapted into the world where video games are everything. Suddenly, a car crashes into the van, allowing Tari to escape with Theo and Lamar Williams in the car. A car chase happens. Tari immediately realizes Lamar's anime fanboyism, as shown with his body pillow.

The chase ends with Tari using her foresight to evade a barrier of soldiers. They arrive at a ramen restaurant, which was secretly the hideout of MD-5, a group of three aiming to take down TAS-Corp. because the latter "destroyed their lives". The group includes the leader, Masa Shimamoto, a hacker, Sofia Porter, and Lamar. Masa was hostile in the idea of recruiting Tari and Theo, so he challenges her in a game of Battle Blaze.

As she plays (albeit her consciousness in the game), she learns from Masa himself to get better. The gang later takes a rest for the night, bonding over different things. They later realize that Theo is glitching out, so they would need to find his old cartridge considering another copy wouldn't work. Sofia reveals a plan called "Operation: Silent Demon". TAS-Corp. would be hosting a gaming competition focusing on the battle royale game Tempest. Tari would need to execute a glitch for Lucks' files to be hackable. In the end, they might be able to order Theo's cartridge.

The gang later practice Tempest, as Tari learns certain techniques and skills in-game. At one point, she accidentally, yet humorously, killed Lamar's character. The glitch requires her to jump from the top of a cliff and dive through the ground. She fruitlessly practices to the point where most of her friends got bored. Until then, Theo gave her a comment of support that ultimately motivates her to succeed.

On the very big day, Tari and the gang fight successfully through the game, fighting against a gang of other players. When going into the game, Tari saw a brief illusion of Lucinia in a void. Lamar and Theo got defeated. At the top of the mountain, the furious player reveals herself to be Belle, who also explains the truth of Masa, who was formerly the team captain of the TAS-Corp. Meta Runners. After he was defeated, Belle tortures Tari in-game to get information about Lucinia's presumed death, which she doesn't know. She takes the upper hand and initiates a battle against Belle. They constantly cast spells at each other to give a game over for the other. In the end, Tari succeeds in the dive. Under the virtual ground, she sees Lucinia again with a burnt arm and a smile on her face.

The glitch started a panic in the building, which prompts the gamers to leave. The gang was later cornered into a room by Lucks and his soldiers. They were subdued with electric shocks from the soldiers and Lucks bargained for Sofia's laptop in exchange for Masa's life, even going so far as to break the latter's robotic arm.

A teary-eyed Sofia gives in the laptop, and completely breaks down when Belle reveals her sister's "fate". Tari is further accused of murdering Lucinia. Lucks then reveals that he hacked into Theo's eyesight to use him as a spy. When he was about to take the gang back to a TAS-Corp. holding cell, Tari offered to work for Lucks in exchange for her friends to be free, much to their dismay. Lucks makes sure of this by crushing Theo's cartridge and gaining his consciousness as "collateral". As Tari was escorted away by Lucks, she hears her worried friends saying that they will not forget her.

Season 2
For the next six months, Tari was forced to work as a Meta Runner for TAS Corp. Following all of Luck's orders as she was partnered up with another Meta Runner, Evelyn Claythorne under Lucks' directions. This angers Evelyn as she feels all her years of work for Lucks is for nothing as he focuses his attention on Tari.

She is given experiments and exhibition matches along with Belle for Lucks to examine her and her warping ability. On the ride back to TAS Corp, Lucks crticizes Tari's hesitation and expects her to improve on this before the showmatch in two weeks. After talking to Theo, she is left alone as she promises Masa, Sofia, and Lamar that she will figure something out.

The next day, Tari is in simulation while practicing for her showmatch in Hidden Heroes with Evelyn but is easily beaten by her and notices Belle shouting at Theo on the screen, wondering what is going on but she brushes it off.

Later, as Evelyn insults Tari for having the "charisma of a malfunctioning Bot-Boy", she bumps into a TAS-Corp employee playing a game called Pocket Gakusei, an anime dating simulator. As Evelyn criticizes the employee for being an otaku, Tari gets an idea.

Tari sneaks into Evelyn's room (and is greatly disgusted by the decorations) to get the game Evelyn took from the employee. She gets caught by Evelyn, but is soon rescued by Belle, who pretends she "caught" Tari. Knowing very well that Tari was trying to contact MD-5, she tells Tari that no one would care "because it's just a dating sim" before warning Tari not to get busted.

Tari warps into Pocket Gakusei and meets Kizuna AI, who introduces her to the game. Unable to guess Lamar's screen name, Tari leaves her classroom and tries and fails to find Lamar's class on her own. She then remembers that Lamar was obsessed with an anime girl named Satsuki-Chan and asks AI-Chan to summon her, but soon learns that she has to fill her relationship meter by taking her on dates first before she can get help.

After painstakingly filling the relationship meter (and breaking Satsuki-Chan's heart afterwards), Tari finally gets Lamar's screen name and is able to contact MD-5. While talking with them about their next move, Tari is abruptly pulled out of the game by Belle, who had just obtained a copy of footage proving that Lucks knew what happened to Lucinia the whole time. After apologizing to Tari for believing that she killed Lucinia, she sends her back into the game to convince the rest of MD-5 to let her join the plan. Although reluctant at first, the team agrees to let Belle in.

At the announcements right before the showmatch, Tari gets the signal from Sofia and proceeds with the plan. After thanking "all of her friends" over the mic (she was really addressing to MD-5, not the crowd) she "clumsily" trips over a wire, causing a power outage. Lamar (disguised as a TAS-Corp employee) gets sent to fix the problem, but he instead swaps the Hidden Heroes cartridge with their own to collect the server data during the match. Afterwards, Sofia turns the power back on, allowing the showmatch to commence.

During the showmatch, Tari attempts to stall Evelyn from killing the enemy players too quickly so that MD-5 would have time to steal TAS-Corp's server data and rescue Theo, whom Belle was trying to get to beat the game so that Theo can leave it. Unfortunately, Evelyn catches Tari talking to Masa and reports the situation to Lucks, forcing MD-5 to use their backup plan.

While Sofia puts Lucks in the spotlight to prevent him from catching Masa and Lamar, The rest attempt to keep either team from winning so that they can continue to steal the server data. Masa gets eliminated and he prepares for "when it's all over", while Lamar stays with Tari.

Evelyn eliminates the rest of the players until only Tari and Lamar are the only ones left standing. Evelyn tells Tari that she's figured out her power and that Tari's strategies have become predictable. She stuns Lamar and makes Tari lose her weapon, making her seemingly defenseless. Just when Evelyn was about to deal the final blow, a mysterieous pink glow merges with Tari, causing a sudden increase in skill and Tari quickly eliminates Eveyln, allowing Sofia to safely finish the data transfer. When Tari gets rescued by Lamar after Evelyn tries to stop Tari for ruining her special day, she realizes that Theo didn't make it out of the game, but is forced to leave anyway.

After Tari Escapes TAS Corp. with Lamar, she reunites with Sofia. Tari tells Sofia that Masa and Belle (and Theo) got captured and they cannot release the server because Lucks will delete Theo if they do. Tari makes a decision to get her friends back, in an "All or Nothing" play. Sofia then remembers that she brought Tari a new hoodie that looks exactly like her old one.

When Lucks tries to wipe the data of the server from the Hidden Heroes cartridge, it turns out it wasn't the same one as the one MD-5 used to copy the data. Tari had warped into the cartridge and jumped into the server as soon as Lucks tried to scan it. She lands in the glitched "crazy nightmare" version of Ultra Jump Mania and quickly saves Theo from some monsters, causing Theo to ask when Tari became "cool" before they faced the quarantine drones and fought them off thanks to Tari's newfound knowledge of the game's exploits which she learned from Belle.

The two proceed to make their way through the game, discovering new exploits along the way, when they spot the final flag in the distance. Unfortunately, Lucks had given Evelyn access to the game in an attempt to prevent Tari from beating the game, having her appear in the form of a glitched monster made of all the characters in the game. Tari quickly discovers that Evelyn enabled an infinite lives cheat, making her unbeatable. Down to their last lives, Tari comes up with a plan and shares it with Theo.

Tari distracts Evelyn by facing her one-on-one. When Evelyn finally catches Tari, Tari drops the pineapple hammer she was using to fight Evelyn into the lava below "on accident" and gives Theo the signal. Theo is revealed to have been setting up a "Coconut Burst Jump" glitch and launched himself towards Evelyn. He throws his coconut and "misses", only to reveal that he was performing another glitch with Tari's dropped hammer, trapping it in an infinite spin and dealt continuous damage, overloading Evelyn's arm due to her struggle to keep her balance. Theo reaches the flag, beating the game and resetting the cache.

After Tari sent Theo out of the game, she finally gets a chance to properly meet Lucinia, who was revealed to be the pink glow from earlier, "in person". Tari asks Lucinia if she knew "what" she was, so Lucinia told her everything she knew.

Tari woke up in Lamar's car where her physical body was hiding the whole time. Glad to know that Theo was safe, she told Lamar to move on to "Phase 2", which turned out to be the same tactic that Lamar had used to save Tari in Season 1: crashing into TAS-Corp's van. It works, but the recoil was strong and Lamar comments that TAS-Corp must have upgraded their vans after what happened last time before passing out.

Lucks angrily threatens Tari that he'll shoot Masa if she didn't surrender the cartridge, but it was too late, the data was already released. When Masa tells Lucks that he's going to jail for being responsible for Lucinia's death, Lucks simply laughs and explains that Lucinia wasn't dead, but they couldn't wake her up. Lucks correctly theorized that her consciousness had been stolen by Sheridan's A.I. program during the explosion. When Belle asks why Lucks hadn't found the "A.I." yet, he reveals that he had, it was Tari the whole time.

Tari explains that while she was in the server, she learned that when the explosion occurred, Lucinia's mind was fragmented; most of it ended up in the server while the rest got absorbed into the A.I., which eventually led to the creation of Tari's current self. She's still unsure how she got her body, but Tari explains that she thinks that she can still revive Lucinia, she just needs to return the fragments of Lucinia's consciousness to Lucinia's body. Despite Tari's true nature as an A.I. program, her friends still accept her despite what she used to be.

Masa's still fed up with Lucks and waits for him to screw up, but Tari and friends manage to convince Masa to put the gun down. Unfortunately, Masa's arm malfunctions and points the gun back at Lucks, causing Lucks to confirm his thoughts about "the one behind it" before he's shot dead. Seeing how traumatized Masa was, Tari tries to help him, but Lamar tells Tari that they can't help him if they're all in jail, but Belle decides to stay behind to help Masa while everyone else flees the murder scene. Just when the rest of MD-5 thought they were cornered, Marco shows up and offers them a ride.

Trivia

 * As stated by Luke and Kevin, she is a separate character in a separate continuity to SMG4's Mario Bloopers.
 * She is biologically 22 years old according to the episode, Wrong Warp. However, she is technically at least two years old since the day Lucinia's mind was splintered by the accident.
 * She was heavily implied to suffer from amnesia. However, it's been revealed in Fatal Error that the reason for this is because she's actually an A.I. merged with a fragment of Lucinia's mind, with her having no memories prior to becoming "human".
 * Her identity was foreshadowed behind the appearance of her flashbacks, which appear to be glitching heavily during the crisis right before the explosion. The flashbacks also match with the Project Blue files.
 * This also means that the files missing from the Project Blue memory card likely would've given away Tari's identity, since Dr. Sheridan refers to T.A.R.I. during the flashbacks.
 * While it is confirmed that this Tari is an A.I., this issue has never been confirmed nor denied for her SMG4 counterpart
 * The purpose of her iconic hoodie is to block off the tracker that TAS Corp. installed into her arm. Ironically, the left sleeve is rolled up, exposing her arm, but the hoodie still works anyway.
 * When put under extremely painful conditions during a game warp (whether she feels it in real life or the video game), circuitry under her skin glows (specifically under her eyes and her left chest and shoulder, which possibly extends even further under her chest), revealing itself. It also happens when Tari removes Theo from Ultra Jump Mania so that he would be safe from TAS Corp. Lucks found this appearance astounding, hinting that Tari is unusual for even a Meta Runner.
 * She made a guest appearance in Kizuna AI's music video of "Under The Sea."
 * Tari's blood type is AB based on the vitals screen in Firewall.