Originally Posted by
Huntsman Spider
Hmm, wasn't that fling how we got Carmilla Black? (Maybe.)
That said, I promised I'd be doing more 2099 revamp ideas. Starting with . . .
Daredevil 2099
I take my inspiration from Mark Waid's original DD2099 concept, but I'm gonna be throwing in my own twists. It starts with a young hotshot lawyer named Eric Nelson, sarcastically nicknamed "Daredevil" because he only takes low-to-no-risk cases that are easy money for him. One day, a strange man comes into his office claiming he created a sense-enhancing technology for which Alchemax stole the patent and denied him any credit or royalties, and he wants Eric to sue Alchemax on his behalf. Eric laughs him off and has security remove him when he gets a little too insistent for "his own good," but then he gets a message through his virtual assistant that the strange man has died. Furthermore, when he's about to start yet another day of sure bets and easy money, he's surprised by a computer virus in his optical interface that leaves him temporarily blind while throwing his other senses into total overload. The virus eventually clears itself out of Eric's system, leaving behind a message on his optical interface that says, "Open your eyes and see."
Indeed, Eric begins to see, all right, his senses becoming significantly sharper than usual, sharp enough to detect certain electromagnetic frequencies from spy tech set up in his home and his workplace, sharp enough to notice he's being followed and watched on his way to and from work and at his favorite hangouts. He becomes something of a recluse at first, having to adjust to his newly sharpened senses, but also dealing with uncovering the extent to which he's being spied on and who around him might or might not be reporting to someone about his daily comings and goings. In the process, he flushes his virtual assistant and rebuilds it from scratch to shield it against spy hacks, only to get more mysterious messages telling him stuff like, "Open your eyes and see the truth" and, "Only the wise can see without eyes." Eric starts trying to track down the source of the messages, and finds himself doing a deep dive into cyberspace as the messenger begins taunting him about how empty and shallow his life is and asking whether he's finally gotten tired of it. Eric snaps at the mysterious messenger, demanding to know who the messenger is and what s/he wants from him, and the messenger replies, "For you to finally open your eyes . . . but if you'd rather shoot me instead, come down here and look me in the eye first."
Eric takes the bait, as it were, and finds himself meeting the Fearless Defenders, an underground resistance of innovators, inventors, and thinkers who've been screwed out of credit for and control over their innovations and inventions by megacorporations like Alchemax and then silenced and disgraced by those same megacorps who then use those inventions and innovations to tighten their grip on the populace. Eric learns that the strange man who came to him weeks ago, the man who had his sense-amplification technology stolen by Alchemax sent him a virus made of the raw code behind that technology as a final act of spite towards Alchemax. Of course, if or when Alchemax finds out that the sense-enhancing tech has been wirelessly implanted inside Eric, that'll be the end of his life as he knows it unless he can turn the tables somehow, and with the Fearless Defenders willing to supply and equip him as an agent in their battle against the megacorps, he might have the chance to do exactly that.