SPIRAL: Page 3 of 7

Publication Date: 3rd Jun 2010
Written By: sixhoursoflucy.
Biography

Part Three: “The Body Shoppe. Satisfaction Guaranteed – Or Your Money Back”

The Body Shoppe is Spiral’s personal body-augmentation playground. Within this high-tech laboratory, Spiral performs experiments and body modifications far beyond the capabilities of modern science. Although its location sometimes changes, the Body Shoppe usually exists 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 is also a tesseract - a large space that exists within a much smaller space - allowing Spiral space to store any and every thing she needs. [Beast #3]

Within the Body Shoppe, Spiral can reconfigure her subjects down to the genetic level, atom-by-atom if necessary. She possesses the ability to swap genetic material between subjects, as she did with Elizabeth Braddock and Kwannon. [X-Men (2nd series) #31-32] She can also install cybernetic implants into her subjects, such as the mechanical eyeballs she made for Psylocke, or the enhancements she made to turn Lady Deathstrike into a more formidable killer. [New Mutants Annual #2, Uncanny X-Men #205]

Using nanotechnology, she once imbued Leong Manh with the power to shed and control his skin, while re-growing his old skin with nanites. Similarly, she gave Leong’s sister Nga the freakish ability to instantly create adult-sized clones from borrowed genetic material, whom Nga could then control. Spiral has also used her Body Shoppe to perform more trivial tasks like transforming ordinary squirrels into helper-monkeys; after all, when business slows down, Spiral has to entertain herself somehow. [Beast #1-3] The Body Shoppe boasts the advertising slogan 'advanced body modifications - or your money back'. In truth, Spiral’s Body Shoppe offers more than just this. She offers her patrons the opportunity to fulfill their heart’s desire, even when Spiral knows the outcomes will be monstrous. But why would she offer such a malicious service?

For one, Spiral resents the modifications made to her own body. The fact that Mojo reminds her at every opportunity of how alien she looks to regular humans certainly fuels this hatred. [Longshot #6] Why she would then do this same thing to others is the question. Perhaps she does it for money - but what she uses this money for remains a mystery. Some evidence suggests she does it for entertainment. This is somewhat more likely, judging by how enthusiastically she embarks on most of her Body Shoppe modifications. However, Spiral once admitted the novelty of hearing her subjects scream wore off after the first dozen or so operations, forcing her to install sound-proof containment chambers just so she could hear herself think. [Beast #1] Perhaps, then, the joy comes not from the experimentation itself, but from the horrific effect it has on the life of the subject.

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, through an inner-monologue, acknowledged the folly of their thinking; 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 #205] Lady Deathstrike and her allies came to the Body Shoppe with one goal in mind - revenge - and Spiral gave them the means to fulfill it. With her Body Shoppe, she offered a chance at achieving the most selfish, impossible desires of the heart, something she had the chance to do later with Rachel Summers.

While in Central Park to apprehend the fugitive mutant Rusty Collins, Spiral sensed the mortally wounded Rachel Summers nearby and lured 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. In reality, the portal simply took Rachel to the Mojoverse, where Spiral and Mojo would unsuccessfully try to exploit her power. [X-Factor (1st series) #8, Uncanny X-Men #208-209, Excalibur (1st series) #64]

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. 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] Incidentally, this would not be the last time Spiral used the Body Shoppe to meddle in the lives of Psylocke, Leong Manh or Nga Coy Manh.

The services of Spiral’s Body Shoppe were later contracted by Matsuo Tsurayaba of the Hand. Matsuo’s lover, the assassin Kwannon, had suffered brain damage due to oxygen deprivation and had been battered relentlessly by the waves after tumbling into the ocean. Spiral did the job she was hired to do; she repaired Kwannon’s physical injuries so Matsuo could transfer Kwannon’s consciousness out of her body and into that of his

amnesiac prisoner, Psylocke. However, Spiral did some meddling of her own before - and during - the transfer. She spliced together Elizabeth and Kwannon’s genes and minds before Matsuo and his ally the Mandarin performed the switch. As a result, after the transfer, neither woman was entirely certain of her own identity. In fact, no one, including Wolverine and Professor X, could discern who was who.

To make matters worse, Spiral delivered the unconscious body of Elizabeth Braddock to another man who once loved her, the crime-lord Nyorin. Taunting Nyorin, she told him a portion of Kwannon’s soul remained within the inert body. Nyorin eagerly accepted the gift despite Spiral’s cryptic words and crafted the tabula rasa of a woman into his own personal assassin and lover named Revanche.[Uncanny X-Men #256, X-Men (2nd series) #31-32] This extra modification and trickery conferred no benefit to Spiral other than feed into her jealousy and satisfy her need to be malicious.

Spiral was once ambushed in her Body Shoppe by a group called the Dragons of the Crimson Dawn, who demanded she transport them to Earth. They threatened to augment her body if she refused, and displayed one of their twisted creations as evidence of their cruelty. Even Spiral, a master at body augmentations, had to turn away from this horrifying creature. Needless to say, she consented to help them - at least on the surface. [Excalibur (1st series) #107-110]

Some time later, Shinobi Shaw of the Hellfire Club hired Spiral to kidnap Leong and Nga Coy Manh, both of whom she had manipulated in the past. [X-Force (1st series) #62] Before Leong and Nga’s sister Karma could track them down, the Hellfire Club shipped them off to Viper, who then hired Spiral to modify the two children in her Body Shoppe. She aged them to adulthood and imbued them with bizarre genetic abilities. As usual, Spiral seemed to have her own agenda - even if she didn’t reveal what that agenda actually was. Unfortunately for her, the intrusion of Karma, Cannonball and Beast led to the destruction of Spiral’s cherished citadel. [Beast #1-3]

Spiral eventually rebuilt her Body Shoppe. Within this incarnation, she repaired Lady Deathstrike, who had fallen in battle against Cyclops’s covert team, X-Force. [New X-Men (2nd series) #45] Deathstrike, one of the Body Shoppe’s first customers, felt more indebted to Spiral than ever. She continually referred to Spiral as her “mistress” and acted according to Spiral’s whim. Deathstrike had literally become Spiral’s “magic murder doll.” [Uncanny X-Men #504, 509]

What, if anything, has changed since the first time Lady Deathstrike entered Spiral’s Body Shoppe? Spiral still offers the same service - advanced body modifications or your money back - to the same willing customers. However, the essences of her creations have grown more monstrous over time. Also, Spiral performed the initial body modifications with conflicted reticence; she did her work in spite of the suffering it would later cause. Now, she performs the same operations gleefully, and without reservation. It seems Spiral has come to immensely enjoy her work, even though she knows what it feels like to be tortured, modified and augmented. Therein lies the rub: Spiral’s hatred of humanity stems from her jealousy and her status as an outcast. The Body Shoppe offers her the opportunity to make other humans as tortured and disfigured as she is. It is merely another avenue for Spiral to inflict suffering on a race she believes would never accept her.

Biography