Thankfully, Rictor’s repowered status stuck and he soon relished in having them by hiring himself out to a local council that wanted to have a building demolished. Now that he had his powers again Rictor was reluctant to go back to being the team's computer hacker. When Siryn pressed him on it he told her it reminded him of the time when hacking was the only way to make himself useful. It wasn't just his job that began to suffer as Shatterstar felt Rictor was beginning to drift away from him too. When Shatterstar brought up the subject, though, Rictor lost his temper and the two got into an argument. [X-Factor (1st series) #225-226]
The team went through a lot of upheavals in a short span of time. Both Strong Guy and Madrox were killed and then subsequently resurrected and the team gained Havok and Polaris as their co-leaders. So, when Wolfsbane expressed a desire to track down her son, Rictor and Shatterstar decided to tag along. 
After finding a mystical amulet to track the child, they eventually found him running for his life from Darwin, an ex-member of X-Factor. Darwin had absorbed some of Hela’s death abilities and he could foresee that the child, now called Tier and looking like an 8-year old, would be the cause of a great many deaths in the near future. Darwin was so set on his task of killing the boy that he fought Rictor, but was shocked to see he had his powers back. After saving Tier, Wolfsbane decided to stay with him and so she and Rictor parted ways. [X-Factor (1st series) #238, 242]
When the team was attacked by a number of supernatural beings, it soon became apparent that Tier was a lot more important than anyone realized. The various lords of Hell had made a deal where the one who killed the seven billionth soul born on Earth would get to rule over it. That soul turned out to be Tier and the likes of Satana, Mephisto and Pluto all wanted him dead. 
Wolfsbane and Tier made their way back to X-Factor for protection but not even the combined forces of the whole team could stop the carnage. As the Hell gods unleashed their hoards at each other, the team could only run and hide from the carnage. Eventually, Mephisto managed to defeat the other lords and then turned his attention to Tier. In the final showdown between X-Factor and Mephisto, both Rictor and Shatterstar were seemingly killed by the godly being. In the end, it was Strong Guy who killed Tier and claimed dominance over Hell. With many team members dead or missing, the few who were left went their separate ways. [X-Factor (1st series) #248-256]
Actually, Rictor wasn’t dead, he had simply been transported across time and space. He woke up on Mojoworld and was immediately captured and put into the gladiator arena. Many weeks went by and Rictor did what he had to do to survive. One day he was summoned to fight but, when he got into the arena, his opponent seemed rather familiar. 
Using his powers to blast the man’s helmet off, he saw that it was Shatterstar, but unfortunately his lover did not recognize him. Thankfully, he was spared death by a group of rebels showing up and knocking Shatterstar out. The rebels’ leader, Longshot, also didn’t recognize him and had come specifically for Shatterstar. Still, as Rictor made himself useful and aided the rebels in their escape, they invited him to accompany them. The rebels took Shatterstar to a scientist named Arize, who explained that the man simply fell out of the sky not long ago. He had used Shatterstar’s DNA to create the perfect being, who just happened to be Longshot. Arize then used a device and managed to restore Shatterstar’s memories, just in time for Mojo’s forces to storm the area. Rictor began to question some of the things about Mojoworld from what he knew about it. It was only when Shatterstar told him that Mephisto had thrown them through time as well as space did he realize that they had travelled back a number of years.
Using Shatterstar’s teleportation power, the two leapt forward in time and came across a heavily pregnant Dazzler. She was in labor and, with no one else around, the two men had to help deliver the baby. The baby turned out to be Shatterstar, which Rictor had a rather hard time trying to figure out the logistics of. Shatterstar informed him that to maintain the timeline, his infant self would have to be taken 100 years into the future and be raised there. So, the Rictor and the two Shatterstars made another jump into the future to make sure things happened the way they were supposed to. [X-Factor (1st series) #259]