"We should rest up a bit, get something to eat, meet up and start working on a plan," Ororo said. 

"We don’t have time for that," Jean answered, her voice grim. "Look!"

Everyone followed Jean’s gaze and saw a network of veins forming a few feet away. "The bounty hunters followed us!" she cried.

"Not just them," Zoe gasped. They realised that there was a bigger-sized body beginning to form – the boss hunter.

"How long will it take you guys to open the wormhole?" Scott demanded.

"We don’t know," Zane admitted.

"Go upstairs and start on it," Scott ordered. "Your dorm is pretty much over the main hallway. We’ll lure the bounty hunters there. The three of you go open the hole above him."

"How are you going to –" Zack began to protest.

"Let us worry about that!" Scott exclaimed. "Now go!"

Zane, Zoe and Zack ran for the staircase. Scott checked on the bounty hunters. Their organs had formed, but they still had no eyes. "Marie! Make us all look like the boss hunter!" he cried.

"What good will it do?" Marie yelled.

"I don’t know. But we have to try something, and maybe we can confuse his partner," Scott explained in a rush. "He won’t attack us if they think there’s a possibility we’re his partner."

Marie stepped up and in front of him and put her hands on his face. Scott felt his face begin to shift, his bones softening and re-forming in a new configuration. "Done," she announced. He then went on to shape shift Jean and Ororo.

"Do yourself. Hurry!" Scott urged. Flesh was covering the long, thin frames of the bounty hunters. But the dozens of little bumps that were the bounty hunters’ eyes hadn’t formed yet.

"Now what?" Marie asked after she shape-shifted herself into the boss hunter.

"Now we have to buy your cousins some time," Jean answered. She forced herself to stand right next to the boss hunter, and she was the first thing he looked at when his eyes formed.

"I’m tired of games," he told her. He reached for her throat.

"Are you going to just stand there while he attacks me?" she yelled at the bounty hunter, striving for the boss’s arrogant tone. "Kill him!"

The bounty hunter responded immediately, so fast on his long legs. He grabbed the boss by his head. "Touch me again and I’ll turn you into ash right now," the boss barked. The bounty hunter let go. The boss pointed at Jean. "That one is an imposter. Destroy it!"

"Both of them are imposters!" another voice that sounded like the boss’s called from behind her. "Leave them alone and follow me!"

The hunter hesitated, then moved up to Jean. It leaned closer and closer.

The Charmed Ones were one. The Power of Three. They felt the spiritual consciousness pulling the power out of them, stretching it out and up as it frantically tried to construct a tunnel between the two worlds – Earth and Hell.

Zoe was exhausted, and she wasn’t sure she had enough power to make this work. She tried to resist as the consciousness yanked more power from her. She thought she felt her blood and other vital fluids had been somehow sucked out of her, too.

There’s no other way to get rid of the bounty hunters, she coaxed herself, gritting her teeth as the power was drawn out of her even more rapidly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Zack’s jaw muscles go taut, and Zane's eyes were squeezed tightly shut.

They heard a sucking sound, and realized that it was the sound of the wormhole beginning to open.

"Look!" Scott shouted – at least Jean thought that she was pretty sure it was Scott – pointing at the ceiling. They all sounded exactly alike with the changes in their vocal cords. Marie had done a good job.

An invisible spoon was stirring the plaster that was once there had been turned into a thick pudding. It had to be the wormhole beginning to open. Anytime now, Jean thought as the swirling spot turned almost transparent.

The bounty hunters made gibbering sounds of fear and darted to the far wall. Jean bolted over to Ororo’s side. The boss hunter stared up, motionless, transfixed. Then he began to back away, his eyes never leaving the ceiling. He knocked into Marie, but he didn’t seem to notice.

With a deep sucking sound, the spot in the ceiling opened completely. Logan’s ears popped as the pressure of the room changed.

"No! I’m not going back!" a voice screamed as a table slid across the floor, spun around under the hole, and flew straight up and disappeared. Jean grabbed Ororo by the wrist and pulled her down. "Lie flat on your stomach," she cried. "It will be harder for it to suck you in."

Ororo glanced over her shoulder. "The bounty hunters are just standing there. What are they doing?"

The boss hunter gave a howl of anguish as Scott and Marie crept beside them, lying low. "Help me!" he wailed. But he started sliding towards the spot below the hole, like some kind of barefoot water-skier. The force of the wormhole had him.

"Help me!" the boss cried. "Help me!" His arms pinwheeled as he struggled to fight the suction. "No…"

But it was too late. His feet were lifted off the ground as the suction of the hole pulled him up. His partner let out shrill screams, darted over, and grabbed his friend by the legs. The boss shrieked as if his body was being ripped in two, but his partner didn’t let go.

An instant later the both of them disappeared into the wormhole.

The horrible sucking sound of the wormhole lessened, and then the hole snapped shut.

Marie was already halfway to the staircase, whooping with joy. Jean checked over her shoulder. Two boss hunters were right behind her. Good, no one got sucked!

"She looked a lot better than I do," one of the boss hunters complained later on. Marie rolled her eyes as she shape-shifted Ororo back to her own beautiful African looks.

"I can fix that," she said. She reached out and touched the whiny boss’s face. A few moments later Jean had her own look back. She gave her dark red curls a happy shake.

Marie reached up and pressed her fingers against her forehead, disgusted by the feel of the oily, bumpy skin. She started to shape shift herself back. "Those hunters should rethink their facial products," she joked, the words coming distorted as the bounty hunter lips changed into her own.

"I don’t think he’ll have to worry about it where he is," Zack chuckled. "I wonder if he’d brought some money to pay Charon the Ferryman?"

Marie glanced around. Only one boss hunter left to go – Scott. She reached out and cupped Scott’s face in her hands.

Scott snickered.

"Am I tickling you?" Marie asked.

He didn’t answer. He just narrowed his eyes and glared at her as she began concentrating on moving the molecules back in the right place.

Marie stared at him. She couldn’t get his face to change back.

"Having trouble?" he snickered. "That’s because there’s no point in trying to change me… into me!"

He threw back his head and laughed, his eyes bulging. "I hope your friend likes the underworld!" He laughed and blinked out of the picture.

Everybody stared at the empty space in front of Marie, stunned, letting the pieces of the puzzle fall together. Marie's lips started to tremble as she felt her legs giving way. "What have we done?" she asked quietly, her voice quaking.

Nobody said anything, and with a blank and distant look, Jean slumped onto the floor, silent. Nobody bothered to help her up because...

"I think…" Jean stammered, her voice breaking fast. "I think we've just sent Scott through the wormhole."