Punisher (2099)

Jake Gallows was a dedicated Weapons Specialist in the Public Eye police force in the year 2099 when street thugs, with a distaste for happy families, murdered his. When his family's killer, Kron Stone, got off in court by paying a fine, because his father was the head of Alchemax, Tyler Stone, Jake got fed up with a society that only protected citizens who paid their dues to the police, and where the rich “black carders” could simply buy their way out of justice. Taking up the challenge of the 20th Century’s Punisher, as written in the dead vigilante’s diary, Jake Gallows decided to continue his fight against all crime as the 2099’s Punisher.

He immediately revenged himself upon Kron using a low-tech knife to stab the killer through his expensive energy shield. The new Punisher then began his war on crime with the aid of fellow Public Eye employee Matt Axel; along with a collection of antique and high-tech weapons his fallen brother had collected with him. With Axel’s help he set up his family’s brownstone with a scanning system which is able to search through police and corporate files, as well as a fully equipped prison system to replace the jails that had gone out of use in the year 2099. He even included a Molecular Disintegrator to bring back capital punishment.

While still working as a Public Eye officer, Jake Gallows fought criminals as night, and pretended to be a well-adjusted police officer during the day. This act eventually brought him to the attention of the Public Eye’s psych-officer, Kerry Dowenn. On her first visit to his house she interrupted him in the middle of a jailbreak, but he manipulated her into believing he was distraught only on the inside. Only later, when she felt obligated to resign for her mistake, did he reveal to her that he was the Punisher, and they began an affair.

At the same time, a group known as the Cyber Nostra launched an attack on the Decred Barrio, during a parade to honor the 20th Century’s heroes. Though the leader of the Decreds, dressed as Barrio Man, refused to fight off the Cyber Nostra, the Punisher showed up and defended them by killing most of the Cyber Nostra, except for the cyborg Multi Fractor. Before the Nostra could come after him, the Punisher tracked them down and killed Multi Fractor in a fight by overloading his cyber driver. The Punisher soon discovered a link between the Cyber Nostra and Alchemax when he found the criminal group cleaning up Alchemax’s genetic experiments. He eventually uncovered an experimental facility that used degens as lab subjects, and destroyed it, leading the subjects to a sanctuary that Axel created.

In response to the threat of the Punisher, the head of the Cyber Nostra, the Fearmaster, found and attacked Kerry at her apartment. He caught her about to erase proof of the Punisher’s identity and threatened to kill her using his powered hand that aliens had gifted to him. In the end she refused to give up Jake Gallows identity and he used his powers to turn her into solid glass.

When the Punisher found her he lost complete control, treating criminals harsher and executing them in groups. He murdered a kid named Sky Boy, a member of a group called the Young Blades, who rode bladed anti-gravity boards and would cut I.D. implants out of innocent drivers in order to pay for name brand fashionable clothes. Shortly afterwards he ran into Maxine Sanos, called Blue Max, the head of the Young Blades. But before he could shoot her she threw herself off a building and seemingly died rather than let him kill her. Later she appeared alive, competing in a yearly tournament to decide who would ride Blue Dagger, her personal sword blade. The Punisher competed in the tournament himself, trying to discredit Blue Max, but in the end she beat him by a few feet, and he was forced to give her up when the crowd of innocents surrounded him.

As Jake Gallows, the Punisher was warned of a hijack plot surrounding a massive flying ship called Skyliner. When the Punisher responded to the call he found a group called Wire-Heads, literal adrenaline/pain junkies, who drove the ship into a cloud farm operated by the Synthia Food Corporation, which sends out bacteria to grow on radiation and be picked up to make hamburgers. Before he destroyed the terrorists and saved the Skyliner, the Punisher discovered that the hijackers were hired by Alchemax to discredit Stark-Fujikawa.

When a being called Avatarr created a floating city called Valhalla, and nano-engineered a group of super heroes in order to fight the city’s vigilante heroes, the Punisher, as Jake Gallows, was assigned to look over the city’s security. He ran into the man beast known as Ravage, and after a fight that was interrupted by the security forces, he slipped away. Soon he was invited to join a group consisting of Ravage and 2099’s Spider-Man and Doctor Doom. Together they destroyed the created heroes and the Punisher distracted the engineered Thor when he recognized him as his family’s Thorite priest, and used Thor’s hammer to shutdown the city before it crushed New York.

After being nearly destroyed, the cyborg Multi Fractor was rebuilt with one ape arm and one mechanical claw arm, becoming 2099’s Jigsaw. He lured the Punisher into a fight, but the Punisher froze him using a grenade, and locked him up in his prison. But when the Punisher came back to execute him, the Fearmaster and his Cyber Nostra goons ambushed him. They put the Punisher in his own Molecular Disintegrator and cut off his hand in order to operate it, but it still backfired, blowing Jigsaw out of the building. The Fearmaster attacked the Punisher using the newly enhanced strength of his powered hand, but he escaped through the wall rather than continue the fight. Soon the Punisher hunted down the Fearmaster himself, equipped with a cybernetic hand, and was able to turn the Fearmaster’s own hand against him, turning him into clay, when the Fearmaster's alien lord, Kelmizadek abandoned him.