BIOGRAPHY -- Page 18
Still operating without his radar sense, Matt became desperate and decided to seek out Stick again after all these years, hoping his old sensei could help him. Although he was back with Heather, he wouldn’t listen to her fears that he was risking himself more than usual by going into action without his radar. Heather’s concerns were realized once Turk’s boys actually managed to get a hit in on Daredevil when he started asking around Josie’s for a lead on Stick. Turk thought 
he smelled weakness on the Devil and snuck into Cord Industries to steal one of the Mauler prototypes. At Duke’s pool hall, Daredevil caught up with Stick and, even with super-armor, quickly proved Turk was nothing even remotely resembling a threat. [Daredevil (1st series) #176]
In his own gruff way, Stick agreed to renew his teachings with Matt to help coax his radar sense back into action. For three days, Matt fired an arrow at a target, missing every time, as Stick broke down his defenses and forced him to confront the subconscious obstacles keeping him from recovering. Matt dealt with the unrealistic pressure his father forced on him at home to succeed and the torment he felt from never standing up for himself as a boy to the other kids. He 
addressed the constant lying and justification he needed to do to operate as Daredevil, even after swearing to his father and over his mother’s grave he would never fight. He let himself blame the blind old man crossing the street for costing him his sight. All these things he accepted and moved past, until his radar sense reactivated and he hit Stick’s target. [Daredevil (1st series) #177]
While Matt was dealing with self-care, Foggy and Becky Blake got Nelson & Murdock back off the ground. Ben Urich wrote an expose for the Daily Bugle, tying Randolph Winston Cherryh, the leading candidate for mayor, to the Kingpin and organized crime. Cherryh sued the Bugle, so J. Jonah Jameson reached out to Nelson for their defense. Foggy negotiated / blackmailed Jonah for an advance to secure new offices downtown for the reformed Nelson & Murdock partnership of law. A kid named Sheldon got his hands on checks from Wilson Fisk to Cherryh and wanted to sell them to the Bugle to help their case. Kingpin’s legbreakers tried to capture Sheldon and Foggy decided the partnership had had too many brushes with organized crime. He hired Power Man and Iron Fist of Heroes for Hire to protect his poor, blind business partner until the conclusion of the case.
Matt wasn’t consulted ahead of time and found Luke and Iron Fist an impediment to his own investigation of Cherryh. He even threw himself down an elevator shaft to escape his “bodyguards” and change to Daredevil. Sheldon was playing both sides and convinced Cherryh to pay him in diamonds for the checks, passed in plain sight during a parade. It turned into a Marx Brothers routine as a kid took the diamonds from Cherryh, leading Sheldon to chase the kid, Cherryh’s men to chase Sheldon, Matt pursing them before changing to Daredevil to avoid the Heroes for Hire, who were looking for THEIR client… and the whole thing fell apart. Both the checks and the diamonds were lost in the shuffle. [Daredevil (1st series) #178] Sheldon arguably had good intentions, 
trying to raise money for an operation to save his sister Tammi Lu’s career as a ballerina. Nelson & Murdock helped Sheldon sue the ballet program for firing his sister prematurely, and Daredevil helped Heroes for Hire protect the program’s Russian understudy, who was being harassed by KGB agents. [Power Man & Iron Fist (1st series) #77]
The Kingpin had not been idle. With Bullseye still in prison, he hired Elektra to be his new enforcer. She murdered Ben Urich’s informant next to him in a theatre and left Urich with a 
warning about further reprisal. Matt was furious when Ben told Daredevil what had happened, and together they continued pressing on Cherryh. Kingpin set an ambush for them, forcing Daredevil and Elektra to fight directly against one another for the first time. Their fight was more than just a dance, for Elektra was prepared for Daredevil’s interference. She snared him with a bear trap and then toppled a wall over on him. Urich’s smoking cough gave his position away, and she threw a sai into the reporter’s stomach for ignoring her warnings. [Daredevil (1st series) #179]
Urich folded after that, leading Jameson to retract the Bugle’s story against Cherryh and Nelson & Murdock without a paying client. However, in his surveillance of the Kingpin, Ben had photographed a homeless woman who looked surprisingly like Vanessa Fisk. Chasing the lead, Matt and Ben ventured into the underground tunnels of Manhattan and found a community of the homeless led by the King of the Sewers. Vanessa was among them, shellshocked and nearly 
mindless. Daredevil defeated the King and brought Vanessa back to the surface. With her wedding ring as proof, Daredevil forced the Kingpin to remove Cherryh from the mayoral race on the precipice of victory in exchange for the return of his wife. Kingpin was beaten but unwilling to leave the matter settled. As a final retaliation, he ordered Elektra to murder the Daily Bugle’s attorney, Franklin Nelson. [Daredevil (1st series) #180]
There was a confluence of events as Bullseye escaped from prison, intent on reclaiming his role as Kingpin’s master assassin. Elektra kidnapped Foggy with the intent of following her orders but, when Foggy recognized her as Matt’s old girlfriend, she relented and let him escape. Bullseye then stepped in and fought Elektra for his job. Elektra resisted valiantly, but Bullseye was better in the end and impaled her on her own sai. Elektra managed to crawl to Matt’s brownstone where he held her in his arms on his front stoop as she died. Later at the morgue, Matt jumped when he 
heard Bullseye’s voice as Elektra’s body was being tended to. This reaction didn’t escape the assassin’s notice. Bullseye threw a blade at the blind attorney, and Matt was forced to intercept the lethal strike. Bullseye ran off before he could react further, and now his greatest secret was in the hands of his greatest foe.
Matt reasonably concluded Bullseye would soon come after him on his own or be sent by the Kingpin. He used a stuffed body double with a tape recorder to arrange for Bullseye to see “Matt Murdock” and Daredevil at the same time in the brownstone, hoping to discourage the assassin from believing they were the same man. Once that was done, however, Daredevil was fixated on bringing Bullseye in. As they fought across the rooftops in Manhattan, the Man Without Fear didn’t even bother trying to talk to Bullseye. No threats, no reasoning, just raw hatred. They were knocked off the elevated tracks by a passing subway car and took the fight to an electrical wire. Daredevil’s superhuman sense of balance kept him upright, but Bullseye began to fall. Matt 
instinctively reached out to catch him, supporting the assassin’s weight. Bullseye hated Daredevil for sparing his life last time in the subway, however, and was prepared to strike him with Elektra’s sai. And then, Bullseye dropped. Whether he wrenched himself free or Daredevil deliberately dropped him is an important, unanswered question. Either way, Elektra was still dead. [Daredevil (1st series) #181]
Or was she? It would be an understatement to say Matt Murdock did not take Elektra’s passing well. Despite feeling the life go out of her body at his brownstone, despite the identification and the autopsy, Matt convinced himself she could be alive. Perhaps her ninja training allowed her to fake her death. His obsession cut into other aspects of his life – he began neglecting clients at work and ignored Heather’s concerns that the board of Glenn Industries was trying to cut her out of her father’s legacy. Even the Kingpin was more stunned than amused when Daredevil broke into his office demanding to know where Elektra was hiding. Finally, Judge Coffin called Foggy in 
the middle of the night after Matt tried to get him to sign an exhumation order for Elektra’s body. Foggy found Matt in the cemetery, digging up Elektra’s body by himself. It wasn’t until the blind man put his own hands on Elektra’s face that he was convinced. His first love was truly dead. [Daredevil (1st series) #182]