After this incident, Spiral soon found herself spending a large portion of her time on Earth as an agent of the United States government. While on the hunt for Longshot, Spiral became separated from Mojo and trapped on Earth. [Longshot #1] Temporarily without a means of getting home, she decided to make the most of her situation and learn more about the planet and its inhabitants. Despite not having any legal identity, Spiral joined up with Dr. Valerie Cooper’s new government team Freedom Force, led by the former leader of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Mystique. Since the entire team was composed of convicted felons, Spiral’s presence on it was not too far-fetched.
Mystique’s Freedom Force apprehended criminal mutants and high-profile targets. Early on, the group encountered the X-Men twice: once in Washington, D.C. to arrest the former terrorist Magneto, and again in San Francisco to detain the X-Men. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #199, 206] Spiral’s magical prowess made her an asset in both of these battles, almost single-handedly tipping the outcomes in her team’s favor. During these early missions with Freedom Force, Spiral behaved herself and acted within the constraints of the law. For instance, while attempting to apprehend the X-Men in San Francisco, she resisted the urge to absorb the nearly limitless energy supply of Rachel Summers, the acting avatar of the Phoenix Force, which would have most likely killed the young mutant. Spiral instead chose to bide her time.
While working legally with Freedom Force, Spiral devoted much of her spare time to what seemed to be her true passion: kidnapping innocent people and augmenting their bodies in her Body Shoppe. The Body Shoppe was Spiral’s personal body-augmentation playground. Within this high-tech laboratory, Spiral performed experiments and body modifications far beyond the capabilities of modern science. Although its location sometimes changed, the Body Shoppe usually existed in a top-secret location within the Wildways outside of Mojo’s influence, making it a personal sanctuary for her. [Excalibur (1st series) #109] The Body Shoppe was also a tesseract - a large space that exists within a much smaller space - affording Spiral storage for anything she needed. [Beast #3]
Spiral’s first-known application of the Body Shoppe occurred when Lady Deathstrike, Cole, Mason and Reece solicited her help in their quest to get revenge on Wolverine. Spiral inwardly acknowledged the folly of their thinking, as it seemed her patrons believed that selling their bodies to help themselves commit murder would allow them to regain their humanity - something Spiral doubted they ever had. In spite of her moral reservations, she dispensed the service and transformed them into ruthless cyborgs. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #205]
Her next target was the twin sister of the United Kingdom’s Captain Britain, Elizabeth “Betsy” Braddock, who had recently been left blind after the villainous Slaymaster gouged out her eyes. Spiral and Mojo shattered Elizabeth’s body and brought the remnants to the Mojoverse, where they rebuilt her. They made her a prosthetic set of cybernetic eyeballs that recorded everything Elizabeth saw and broadcast it back to the Mojoverse. They dubbed this new creation “Psylocke” and put her to work. Neither Spiral nor Mojo had any particular grudge against Elizabeth; they simply needed a star for their new TV show designed to bait impressionable children. Using this show, she captured Sunspot, Wolfsbane, Karma’s younger siblings Leong and Nga and three members of the Bratpack. Spiral transformed these willing captives into her own personal bodyguards and used them to defeat the New Mutants, who she expected would attack. In the end, the New Mutants proved victorious. They restored Psylocke’s will and teamed up with her to defeat Spiral. [New Mutants Annual #2]
Further propelled to stardom by Psylocke’s X-Men broadcast, Mojo decided he wanted to bring the merry mutants to the Mojoverse so they could perform in the flesh. Spiral helped Mojo recapture Longshot sometime after he returned to the Mojoverse to lead the failed rebellion. They wiped his mind and used him as bait to capture the X-Men. Using some cytoplasmic goo that reversed the aging processes of all who touched it, Mojo lured the X-Men into the Mojoverse and reconditioned them into becoming his personal warriors. Fortunately for the X-Men, the New Mutants deduced that Mojo and Spiral were behind the kidnapping and traveled to the Mojoverse to rescue them.
During the climactic fight that followed with the New Mutants, who came to rescue the X-Men, Spiral grew jealous of the attention Mojo was getting from the crowd and began reflecting on her own life. She recalled that it was once her in the spotlight - a reference to her former life as stuntwoman Ricochet Rita. This longing reminded her once again of what she lost, which of course she blamed on Longshot. She leapt off the stage to kick him in the butt, actively suppressing her affectionate memories the whole time. Mojo didn’t approve of his servant attacking a member of her own team and punished her accordingly. He reminded her of her enslavement to him and his complete control over her life before removing her from the battlefield. Eventually, the New Mutants and the X-Men united and defeated Mojo, after which they bargained with Spiral to return them to normal in exchange for her freedom. Spiral accepted and left, possibly returning to Earth, where she could be away from Mojo for a while. Back in the Mojoverse, Mojo gloated that Longshot’s presence among the X-Men on Earth would aggravate Spiral and possibly teach her a lesson. [Uncanny X-Men Annual (1st series) #10]
While in Central Park to apprehend the fugitive mutant Rusty Collins with Freedom Force, Spiral sensed the mortally wounded Rachel Summers and abandoned her assignment without permission so she could lure her into her Body Shoppe with promises of beauty, personal gratification and freedom from her Earthly responsibilities. Rachel didn’t recognize her magically cloaked seductress. In the end, Spiral convinced her to follow a new path and Rachel entered the void, never to return to Earth - at least according to what Spiral believed at the time. Although abandoning the mission meant defying her employer, it gave Spiral the opportunity to kidnap Rachel in secret - and going AWOL was probably more forgivable than kidnapping and murdering a civilian in plain sight while on the clock. Nevertheless, Spiral’s behavior here was merely the first instance in a long history of insubordinate behavior while working for Freedom Force. [X-Factor (1st series) #8, Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #207-209]
With her target captured and held in the Mojoverse, Spiral returned to Freedom Force, somehow regaining Mystique’s favor. The team’s next assignment was to arrest the Avengers. Spiral proved to be a crucial part of this mission, taking out both Captain Marvel and Iron Man. The Avenger Wonder Man even acknowledged her as Freedom Force’s most powerful member. It seemed her prowess in battle and her worth as a soldier more than made up for her occasional insubordination. [Avengers Annual (1st series) #15, West Coast Avengers Annual #1]
When the X-Men and Freedom Force converged to thwart the threat of the Adversary in Dallas and Spiral once again came face-to-face with the amnesiac Longshot, she hoped he would not recognize her. Some part of Longshot found Spiral familiar, however, which angered her. As soon as a fight broke out between the two teams, Spiral - in her mad desire for revenge - ignored the rest of the X-Men and went straight for Longshot. He recognized the attack as driven not by her diligence as a government agent to arrest a fugitive, but out of some deranged desire for revenge - yet he had no idea why. Afterwards, she performed her most heinous act of the fight on Dazzler, whom she had never before met. After Freedom Force defeated the X-Men and took them prisoner, Spiral placed Destiny’s mask to Dazzler’s face and stabbed it with a magic knife, adhering it in place. While the spell did not kill Dazzler, it certainly did not make it any easier for her to see. When Freedom Force and the X-Men had to team up to defeat the world-threatening menace of the Adversary, Spiral tried to reverse the spell she put on Dazzler. However, she found could not, possibly due to the interference of the Adversary’s magic. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #225-227]
Freedom Force succeeded in protecting the civilians of Dallas from the menace of the Adversary. Similarly, the X-Men succeeded in defeating the Adversary himself, thanks to the help of Forge. However, this victory appeared to cost the lives of the X-Men and their ally, Madelyne Pryor. 
Shortly after the events in Dallas, Illyana Rasputin, the New Mutant known as Magik, came after Forge in hopes of achieving vengeance for her brother Colossus, who had been among the X-Men who appeared to die in Dallas. Thanks to Destiny’s precognition, Freedom Force was ready for Magik and her fellow New Mutants to attack. Destiny’s powers also gave her advanced warning that, during the battle, Sunspot would crush Spiral with a brick wall. Because Destiny found Spiral insufferable, she permitted this act to happen, as Spiral’s humiliation was like a balm to her soul. When Freedom Force defeated Magik, Spiral’s malevolent nature arose when she asked Mystique for permission to kill the young, incapacitated girl. [New Mutants (1st series) #65]
Freedom Force later became primary enforcers of the Mutant Registration Act, and Spiral accompanied the team on several missions to arrest mutants who had not yet registered with the U.S. government under the mandate. For the most part, she displayed good behavior in concordance with her boss’ orders. Even though Spiral had already abandoned at least one mission and had earned the disdain of Mystique’s close companion Destiny, Mystique appointed her to oversee a mission to apprehend an unregistered mutant girl named Amanda in a small, Midwestern town. [Daredevil (1st series) #269] As Spiral suspected would happen, her subordinates Blob and Pyro failed in this mission and she had to return home to report their failure. Nonetheless, she retained her influence over the team.
However, Spiral demonstrated both her ruthlessness and the scope of her influence over Freedom Force shortly thereafter, when the team dispatched to the unregistered mutant Firestar to arrest and possibly recruit her to Freedom Force. When Firestar tried to elude them, Spiral retaliated by skewering the young girl’s father on one of her swords, despite Mystique’s orders to do no harm. The unapologetic Spiral rubbed salt in the wound by telling Firestar she hated her from the first moment she saw her. Firestar later took Mystique hostage, but by then Spiral was fed up following her absentee boss’ cushy orders. She proposed to the rest of Freedom Force that they rescue Mystique and kill Firestar as an act of vengeance. During this quest to kill Firestar, Spiral ended up having to challenge a rival villain for the right to slay the mutant girl. She might have won had not a freak accident knocked her unconscious. Mystique realized she could never put Firestar and the humiliated, vengeance-fueled Spiral on the same team, so she struck a deal with Firestar in exchange for her freedom. This involved helping Firestar fake her death so the world would leave her alone. However, she feared what would happen if Spiral were ever to discover the ruse, indicating just how much of a liability Spiral had become to the team. [Marvel Comics Presents (1st series) #82-87]
Her time on Earth had done nothing to make her miss Mojo, as Spiral was still quite clearly annoyed to be working for him. She remained as disobedient as ever and delighted in the opportunity to wail on him with a mallet as part of his latest ratings-grubbing effort, the Mojo Face Show. [Marvel Comics Presents (1st series) #89]
At least one of Mojo’s plans went too far for Spiral’s tastes. For some reason, he time-traveled to the Crunch, the antithesis of the universe’s Big Bang, in order to stop it from occurring. For this, Spiral renounced his employ. At this same time, Mystique was struggling with a way to handle the renegade Spiral, whom she had employed on Freedom Force and for whom she still felt partially responsible. Instead of outwardly dismissing Spiral, Mystique employed the rather passive-aggressive method of keeping her on the payroll without actually dealing with the problem. 
Fortunately, Spiral never bothered to show up for any more of Freedom Force’s missions. Although the team crumbled and disbanded during this period, the Spiral problem lingered, making Mystique quite nervous. Exasperated, she finally went to Wolverine, one of the few people she trusted, for help in dealing with Spiral. She confessed that although Spiral was never quite sane to begin with, she had now gone completely off the deep end.
When she met with Wolverine in a motel room to glean advice on how to deal with her reckless employee, Wolverine made the grave error of uttering Spiral’s name aloud, inadvertently alerting the time-dancing menace to his and Mystique’s location. Spiral arrived an instant later. Much to her misfortune, Wolverine and Mystique’s motel room turned out to be a cardinal locus for five different strings in the timestream - meaning it was easy for Mojo to monitor from the end of time. Mojo sent back a plasma wraith to slaughter them. Meanwhile, Spiral observed multiple, temporally displaced versions of herself traveling to the future to stop Mojo. She took Mystique and Wolverine to the Crunch to save the universe, explaining to her reluctant companions that, if the Crunch didn’t happen, the Big Bang could not have happened, and therefore existence would be undone. While Spiral and Mystique suspected Mojo wanted to prevent the Crunch in order to prolong his own broadcasting and ratings monopolies, Mojo indicated he wanted to prevent the Crunch to eliminate most of existence except for him and a few others - strange for someone who craved power, not solitude. Nevertheless, with the help of an enslaved Jubilee and the two robots Albert and Elsie-Dee, Spiral, Mystique and Wolverine managed to restart the Crunch and return to their time period, thus saving all of existence. [Wolverine (2nd series) #51-53]