Batman Beyond Season 2, Episode 9: Rats

1

Splicers

The latest teen craze is "splicing" -- incorporating animal DNA into a human body. While some kids just get cosmetic changes like cat eyes, many opt for more major transformations. Batman investigates Dr. Cuvier, the founder of splicing, and discovers his plan to kill D.A. Young before the process can be outlawed. Cree Summer makes her first appearance as the voice of Terry's classmate Max Gibson.

21 min

2

Earth Mover

Terry's friend Jackie, the foster daughter of wealthy industrialist Bill Wallace, is being stalked by a creature that can reform itself out of the earth and control the earth around it. When an attack reveals canisters of radioactive toxic waste from underground, Batman tries to find the connection between the creatures, Wallace, and Jackie's late father, Wallace's former partner.

21 min

3

Joyride

An experimental military warcraft makes an emergency landing in the middle of nowhere, where it's seized by a bunch of Jokerz out initiating a new member. Batman and its designer, Dr. Price, race to stop the Jokerz before they lay waste to the city -- and before the nuclear core goes critical.

21 min

4

Lost Soul

When executive Robert Vance was diagnosed with a degenerative brain disorder, he arranged to have his consciousness digitized. Now, 35 years later, his grandson Bobby has awakened him before his computer is shut down. Searching for a temporary home before he can find a human host, he infects Batman's costume. Terry goes after him, hoping to answer the question -- is Batman the suit, or the man inside it?

21 min

5

Hidden Agenda

Maxine "Max" Gibson, one of Terry's classmates and a bona fide genius, has created a computer program to figure out Batman's secret identity. When Max is targeted by the Jokerz, she rewrites the code to find the Jokerzs' identities, which only puts her in more danger. Michael Rosenbaum and Jill Eikenberry make their first appearances as the voices of Carter Wilson, another one of Terry's classmates, and his mother.

21 min

6

Bloodsport

The Stalker, a cybernetically enhanced big game hunter who combines technological and primitive methods to stalk dangerous prey, comes to Gotham to hunt the most dangerous prey of them all: Batman. After their first encounter, the Stalker extends the hunt by pursuing Terry. Unfortunately, Terry is taking care of his younger brother Matt than night -- and must find a way to save himself without endangering his brother or revealing his identity. Carl Lumbly makes his first appearance as the voice of the Stalker.

20 min

7

Once Burned

The Royal Flush Gang's Ten returns on a mission to rescue her family, who have been captured by the Jokerz. When Melanie approaches Terry for help, he is forced to decide whether or not to put his relationship with Dana at risk, and if Batman can really trust Ten.

21 min

8

Hooked Up

When several Hill High students end up comatose in the hospital, Batman's subsequent investigation leads him to Spellbinder, who is getting teenagers addicted to virtual reality fantasies and forcing them to steal for him.

20 min

9

Rats

Dana, who feels she has been ignored and let down by Terry once too often, begins receiving roses from a secret admirer. When she is abducted by the mystery man, a boy named Patrick Fitz who lives in the sewers because of his rat-like appearance, Batman may be the only one who can save her.

20 min

10

Mind Games

Terry has mysterious visions of a young girl asking him for help. His search for her leads him into confrontation with a group of people with incredible psychic powers known as the Brain Trust.

20 min

11

Revenant

When strange things start happening around the school, the students are quick to blame the ghost of Garrison Jacobs, a student who was killed during the construction of the school's new wing. Terry is suspicious but skeptical until Nelson, one of the jocks, interrupts a séance the girls are having for fun. Everything in the gym comes alive, threatening to kill Nelson until Terry intervenes as Batman. When popular cheerleader Blade later receives a mysterious message from the ghost, Terry begins to put the pieces together.

20 min

12

Babel

When all of Gotham's animals start getting agitated at the same time, Terry and Bruce Wayne figure out that sound frequencies beyond human hearing are to blame. That points to one man: Shriek. The animals prove to be the tip of the iceberg when people suddenly lose the ability to understand each other's speech. Shriek eventually turns off the interference, but makes a demand of Commissioner Gordon: the city's safety for Batman's life.

21 min

13

Terry's Friend Dates a Robot

Howard Groote is one of Terry's classmates who isn't terribly popular. Desperate for acceptance, he plans for a blowout party at his place while his parents are away, but the popular kids laugh at his obvious attempts at coolness. Howard longs for a gorgeous girlfriend or cool car so that popular kids will notice him, and so jumps on the chance to get an illegal synthoid to pose as his girlfriend. However, her programming makes her a little too protective, putting the party -- not to mention the kids -- at risk.

21 min

14

Eyewitness

Batman's already tense relationship with the law gets tenser when he accidentally messes up a major police sting operation. Fed up with Terry, who she sees as a hothead, Commissioner Gordon warns Bruce that she'll be keeping an eye on him to make sure he doesn't get into more trouble. Her worst fears are realized soon enough when she sees Batman bludgeoning Mad Stan to death with one of his own bombs. When Terry returns home, he finds the Commissioner's men looking for him, but he doesn't know why. Fleeing to Max's house, he tries to understand: how could people have witnessed him perpetrating a crime he didn't commit?

21 min

15

Final Cut

Curaré is back, and she's hunting members of the Society of Assassins before they can kill her for failing to assassinate Gotham's district attorney. Mutura Bootha, the last Society member still standing, enlists Batman's aid in stopping her, adding that if he falls, Batman is next on her list. As further incentive, he's planted a bomb in Gotham that will go off if he doesn't enter a code every 12 hours. Unfortunately Bruce Wayne is in Malaysia, unreachable due to a hurricane. Batman enlists an eager Max to help, leaving him to protect Bootha, find the bomb, and -- hardest of all -- keep Max from getting too involved.

21 min

16

The Last Resort

When Dr. David Wheeler, a prominent child psychologist, opens a new ranch/group home promising to help troubled teenagers, parents jump on the bandwagon and start sending their kids away for even the most minor infractions. Max encourages Terry to investigate as Batman when their friend Chelsea is sent away for writing a letter of protest to the principal. Batman discovers that the kids are being held prisoner and brainwashed, but he is spotted and fired on. Since Batman can't get admissible evidence, he decides to get it as Terry by visiting Chelsea with a pocket recorder. When Terry is captured, he's forced to rely on a delinquent he's never gotten along with.

21 min

17

Armory

Jared's stepfather, Jim "Big Jim" Tate, is a top weapons designer who likes to splurge his considerable salary on his family. When he's laid off from Wayne-Powers and hard up for work, he starts designing new weapons illegally for foreign governments. In order to steal the plans and parts he needs, he puts an array of untested weapons and his Special Forces training to use and becomes an unstoppable one-man army: Armory.

20 min

18

Sneak Peek

Ian Peek is a muckraking journalist who gets footage from seemingly impossible locations, no matter how tight the security. When there's a disturbance at city hall during a secret meeting between an organized crime witness and the district attorney, Batman encounters a man who can pass through solid matter at will. In short order, he puts two and two together and realizes this new villain is Peek. Confronting Peek, however, leads to him using his power to find out Bruce and Terry's secret -- and he threatens to expose them live on the air.

20 min

19

The Eggbaby

Terry's Family Studies teacher gives the class an assignment: to learn about the responsibilities of parenthood, they have to take care of an egg. The familiar exercise is given a high-tech twist -- each "eggbaby" has sensors which register the amount of care it receives and a computerized feedback system causes it to coo, cry, and giggle like a real baby. When Terry's assignment partner, vain cheerleader Blade Summers, unceremoniously dumps the eggbaby on him, he's forced to carry it with him when he's out as Batman -- even while chasing the notorious Ma Mayhem and her gang as they commit a series of daring ruby thefts.

21 min

20

Zeta

Terry becomes suspicious when his biology teacher starts acting oddly. The strange behavior culminates in a manic chase and shootout with federal agents after school, leading him to get involved as Batman. When Commissioner Gordon and her men find the teacher gagged and bound in her home, the truth comes out: an intelligent synthoid code-named Zeta is on the loose. Designed for stealth and assassination, it has the ability to disguise itself as any person using a holographic generator. Batman joins in the hunt for Zeta, but when he corners the robot he discovers that Zeta ran away from the federal agency because he doesn't want to kill. Gary Cole makes his first and only appearance as the voice of Zeta, before Diedrich Bader assumed the role for the Zeta Project spin-off series. Joe Spano makes his first appearance as agent Bennet.

21 min

21

Plague

High school jock Nelson unwittingly smuggles a glass vial with an unknown green fluid into Gotham, which is seized at customs. In the parking lot, he's attacked by the Stalker, who demands to know the whereabouts of the vial. Batman interferes with Stalker's flight, but is in turn stopped by agent Bennet, who tells him Stalker is helping them track Falseface, an identity-switching mercenary working for Cobra, a secret organization holding Gotham hostage with a horrific chemical weapon. Despite his misgivings, Batman teams up with Stalker to find Falseface and stop Cobra's plans.

20 min

22

April Moon

When Batman foils a late-night bank heist, he's surprised to see that the four ordinary-looking punks all have expensive -- and dangerous -- cybernetic enhancements. When one of the criminals leaves a damaged servo-motor behind, Bruce Wayne recognizes it as the handiwork of the man who created some of the parts for the Batman suit, Dr. Corso, who specializes in prosthetics. After confronting the doctor, Batman discovers that Dr. Corso is being forced to help the crooks because they've kidnapped his wife, threatening to kill her if he doesn't enhance them as they ask.

20 min

23

Sentries of the Last Cosmos

One of the hottest virtual reality arcade games is Sentries of the Last Cosmos. Max and Terry's classmate Corey Cavaleri loves the game, sometimes better than real life. When he beats the arcade's all-time record, Corey is summoned to the secluded Sentrycroft estate by the game's creator, Simon Harper. There, he and two other kids become real-life Sentries, complete with flaming swords and flying discs. After a raid on Gotham's hall of records, Harper tells the kids that Sentries of the Last Cosmos is more than a game; in a nod to The Last Starfighter, Harper -- calling himself the Wise One -- claims that the Sentries' war against the Dark Regent is real, and that the game is used to recruit trainees. Batman learns of Harper's plot to send the kids after the Dark Regent -- the equally reclusive Eldon Michaels -- and tries to stop the kids and find the connection between the two men.

20 min

24

Payback

A hooded vigilante calling himself Payback, armed with a bullwhip-like laser, has been terrorizing people under the pretext of helping the city's kids. Bruce Wayne discovers a link between two of the kids and the Gotham Youth Counseling Center. When the Center's computer proves inaccessible, Terry has to enter the Center under the guise of being dissatisfied with his treatment by Bruce. However, when his later impulsiveness as Batman gets him in hot water with Bruce, he vents at his next session at the center -- and unwittingly sets Bruce up as a target for Payback.

21 min

25

Where's Terry?

After a rare night out with his friends, Terry follows a suspicious figure out in the subway. Everyone is worried when he fails to reappear the following morning, and Bruce Wayne takes it upon himself to find him. When he asks Max about Terry's last whereabouts, she insists on coming along, despite his protests. Meanwhile, Batman wakes up in an underground tunnel under the hostile glare of a young boy, a runaway who lives in the tunnels. The boy wants Batman off of his turf as soon as possible, and tries to help him leave. It turns out that the suspicious figure is none other than Shriek's assistant, who is helping the twisted sound genius with his new plan. Shriek causes a cave-in to trap Batman and the boy, who starts to express his long-standing hostility toward Batman. As Max and Bruce work toward finding Terry, and Batman and the boy try to escape, each learns to appreciate the others' skills -- until Shriek reveals himself from the shadows.

21 min

26

Ace in the Hole

While Terry is out walking Ace, Bruce Wayne's dog, Ace savagely attacks a suspicious-looking man on the street and then runs away. When Bruce traces the serial number on the man's gun, he discovers the man is none other than Ronny Boxer, a longtime purveyor of illegal sports, including dog sports. Boxer is also Ace's former owner; Bruce took him in when Boxer's dog-fighting ring was busted by the police. While Terry goes undercover to get close to Boxer, Bruce looks for Ace, all the while wondering exactly what Boxer did to Ace in the past.

20 min