Friendly Fire

Friendly Fire is the 7th episode of Meta Runner Season 2 and the 17th episode overall.

Summary
Tari and Evelyn continue smashing their way through hoards of enemies in a 2 v 50 match when things take a terrible turn.

Plot
Resuming from the previous, Hack and Slash, Tari fends off the crowd of minions with the help of Lamar and Masa. Her meta runner arm agains gives her an UI, guiding her on the best route. Lamar informs Masa Tari's surrounded, and Masa tells Lamar to catch up reinforcements and guide her path. Tari start fighting the robots, while running and destroying any minions that get in her way, also avoiding spears and swords in a wall, until she gets stabbed a in the leg, and thrown inside the house, breaking the window. The minions entered, but she's nowhere to be found, meaning she escaped and is hiding in a tiny area behind barrels and crates. Tari suddenly kills a spear minion, and when the archer minion tries to hit her, she avoids it and another spear minion gets hurt by the arrow. Another spear minion is searching for Tari, looking around barrels and crates, until she kills him by the back and finishes him with a stab. An archer and spear minions of the same team searches for Tari in another area, and suddenly Tari grabs it from the ceiling, killing it. The archer minion is still searching for her, while she sneaks slowly through it's back, and when she tries to finish him, a giant minion appears and throws a crate at Tari, smashing her in the wall. Weak, she can't defend herself and gets hit again by a cannon, breaking the wall and falling in the ground of what seems to be a training area. The monster fires the cannon, but Tari successfully avoids it, it tries to hit her, but she avoids it again. When Tari is finishing the archer minion suddenly hits her in the leg, making her vulnerable, and the monster attacks by surprise smacking her in a wooden pillar. They both are aiming at her, but Tari, faster, grabs quickly the archer and switches places, making the monster turn friendly fire on for a brief moment. Tari then gives multiple hits on the monster, finishing it with a powerful head stab. Suddenly, a spear minion tries to attack Tari, but Masa hits it through the back, defeating it. Tari notices the hatless spear minion is Masa, and thanks him for the help. However, Evelyn heard all the conversation, and they both spot her. Tari starts getting worried, and Evelyn just walks away. Cutting out of the game, she calls Lucks and say he won't believe what she just heard.

Cutting to Belle, she's well on her way to free Theo from Glitched Simple Flip Island (AKA Crazy Nightmare Island), doing many glitches and comemorating in the process. However, she dies (again, from how Belle was mad) in a wall that needed to be glitched, but she never glitched it right. She asks herself how she'll go through that, and when Theo respawns, he notices a big cyan cube glitching, and he asks to Belle what is going on everything, but Belle just says everything is hard with the phone server transfer thing going on. Suddenly, he notices some pink sparkles floating, and after the sparkles guide him to a glitchable wall, he suddenly gets an idea. He asks Belle if he can try something, and he successfully glitches through an shortcut, getting to the lava world flag, and comemorating with Belle, mocking the lava. Belle asks how he did that, and he answers it was just a feeling. Theo thanks Belle for being there to save him, even if she's cranky and don't wanna be there. Belle says for him to thank her when he's back with Tari, and the Coconut Boy just agrees with an okay. They go back to playing the game, and Sofia's phone screen turns pink for a brief moment and glitches. Back to Evelyn and Lucks, Lucks doubts about Evelyn's sudden thought, and she affirms she saw Tari talking to someone on the enemy team, and says it explains everything that happened until then. The power cut, the friendly fire, and finishes it saying she told him Tari is not to be trusted. Lucks gives a look at the big screen, and notices it's MD-5. Cutting to Lamar, he says Lucks is looking around like someone spit on his designer shoes. Masa notices what it is about, says they were prepared for that, and asks Sofia to initiate backup phase. Sofia says she's already on it, and starts hacking even more the stadium systems. Back to Lucks, he says it doesn't matter what their asinine plan is, and finishes saying he'll reforce the security and shut them down. However, Sofia's holographic drone appears, displaying a message that reads "STAY RIGHT THERE LUCKS". Then a unknown call appears in Lucks's screen, and the drone displays "PICK UP.". Without options, Lucks accept the call, and Sofia says it's the tech support. Lucks notices the voice, and yells to Sofia if she's out of her mind, also reminding what he promised to do with her and MD-5. Sofia yells back saying for him to shut it, and says she's not afraid of him anymore. She explains he is a big bad guy in the shadows, but that right now he has more people watching him and a e-girl on cosplay. She explains to Lucks TASCorp. is swimming on conspiracies, while the drone displays conspiracies about many stuff, even Lucinia's "death". She explains she can even confirm it, and the media will eat him to the very end. She tells him he'll stay on the phone with her, stay right where he is, and smile to the camera. She turns up the speakers volume, and starts asking for everyone to thank Lucks for being responsible to all of this. Lucks, without options, obeys Sofia, and send a signal for Evelyn to defeat Tari. Back to Tari, she is looking for Evelyn, and suddenly her UI shows the threat message again. She avoids Evelyn's sword for a trace, and tries to explain it's not what Evelyn thinks it is. Evelyn obviously never believes her, so she calls her a traitor, and they start a fight. Tari avoids another attack, and Evelyn tells she thought Tari wanted to be alone, calling her a traitor again. Tari falls from the building, but falls in another and starts running, avoiding Evelyn's fire crackers. After jumping and running through houses, Tari lands on the ground and at the exact moment is hit by a fire cracker. Stunned, Evelyn appears and tries to attack her with more fire crackers, but Tari still is able to use the hook. However, Evelyn cuts the cable, and Tari hits the ground strongly, getting more hurt in the process. Evelyn lands in front of her, and the UI shows Tari that the best option is to fight. Tari simply accepts Evelyn got her, and ask her what now. Evelyn says she can think of some things, and both the runners take out their swords. While they fight furiously, Lamar tells Masa Tari is fighting Evelyn, and asks if they should blend in. Masa says that Tari is already doing what she needs to do, keeping Evelyn busy, and says they'll take care of the rest. The scene cuts to a team of minions, one archer saying he found them, but asking why they are fighting each other. A monster minion says it's maybe some pro gamer move, a spear minion says they look distracted, and leads the team to kill Tari and Evelyn. Lamar comes up with a plan, and says he'll hide while Masa gives backup. Masa agrees, and they start the plan.

Back to the swordfight, Tari and Evelyn are still clashing their swords, with no one seeming to win. The fight goes to what seem to be a training area, and when a wooden shield and a sword fall, Evelyn quickly takes the sword and throws both at Tari, but Tari avoids them, and when Evelyn throws the wooden shield, Tari catches it, while Evelyn uses the swords. Evelyn quickly attacks with the swords, but Tari successfully defends it and hits Evelyn. However Evelyn is still strong, and tries to hit Tari again, only for her to put the shield up again. Tari tries to hit Evelyn but she avoids it, and in a double attack, Tari almost get hit. Evelyn slides from the window to the ceiling, while Tari still follow her. Evelyn tries a surprise attack, but Tari avoids it, and Evelyn tries once again to strike multiple hits, without any effect. She then jumps, and when trying to break the shield, Tari swings it, sending Evelyn to the border of the ceiling and making her vulnerable. Tari says for Evelyn to give up, that everything she's trying is pointless. Evelyn agrees with Tari, but in a different way. She says she'll kill everyone else instead of Tari, and goes on to hunt Lamar and Masa. Lamar and Masa finished dealing with the group that was hunting Tari, then suddenly, Tari screams from the top of a house for them to look above, and Evelyn jumps from the top to attack them, hitting and killing Masa in the process. Tari gets desperate, and Masa quickly says for Lamar to look out. Lamar quickly throws Evelyn's second sword away with a arrow, and Tari grabs him up. Evelyn says Tari can't protect him forever, and runs off to kill the remaining minions. Tari gets really worried, and Lamar says sorry to Masa. Masa says it's okay, and when Lamar asks what he's going to do, Masa answers he'll prepare for when this is over. Then the episode ends with Masa leaving the game pod.

Characters

 * Tari
 * Evelyn
 * Robot Minions
 * Archer
 * Spear
 * Monster
 * Sofia
 * Lamar
 * Masa
 * Lucks
 * TASCorp Fans
 * Theo
 * Belle

Trivia

 * The title of this episode is a reference to a mode in some competitive video games where turning on Friendly Fire allows team members to attack and hurt each other.
 * The opening has been given an update at the end giving Masa his Meta Runner arm that he got in Unreal Engines.
 * This is the fourth episode where Tari does not appear in the thumbnail, the first three being Bad Split, Firewall, and Unreal Engines.