While working in the night shift at the Daily Planet, Chloe receives a distressed phone call from a woman claiming that she is in danger. Chloe and Lois schedule a meeting with the woman, but a car runs over her and the cousins witness the murder. Meanwhile, the close friend of Jonathan, Senator Jack Jennings, visits the farm to rest from his campaign for the senate against Lex Luthor. Jonathan is surprised by the visit of Detective Maggie Sawyer, who is investigating the death of the nineteen-year-old stripper that Chloe and Lois witnessed last night. She found a picture of Senator Jennings with the girl and is following the lead. Clark believes Lex is involved with the crime, but Lex helps him in the investigation. Lois decides to go undercover by working at the nightclub as a stripper to investigate the murder. When Lois meets the criminal, she is abducted and her life is in danger.

Clark gets an inverse make-over from Lois, in order to become a gray mouse when the Blur goes public. Just then, a flashy media-hungry new superhero emerges: Booster Gold, who systematically steals the show. Clark discovers Booster came from the future with a Legionnaire's ring, probably stolen. Generally bullied, shy schoolboy Jaime Reyes is inadvertently infected with the alien scarab which Booster was hired to retrieve for industrialist Ted Kord, hence transformed into the Blue Beetle, an uncontrollable monster. Clark could just expose Booster as a fake coward, but chooses to educate him in superhero ethics.