The day crawled, as the girls knew it would. All of them daydreamed about getting away from their duties with nothing to worry about except how to cram as much fun into the weekend as possible. Who knew when they might get another chance? Concentrating on their lessons was hard and it wasn’t helped any when, for some odd reason, Ms. Keane turned a simple math problem she was illustrating on the blackboard into a dissertation on Einsteinian physics. Thankfully, it was interrupted by the final bell. At last, the clock read 3 P.M.!

The teacher told her class to have a nice weekend and excused them, and the kids stampeded from the building.

"Free at last!" Buttercup sang out, floating on her back with her hands behind her head. "Oh, boy, a whole weekend in the Bahamas! I can’t wait!"

Bubbles struck the same exact pose. "I’m gonna lay out and work on my tan!"

Blossom smiled, saying almost to herself, "And a whole weekend away from…the city of Townsville."

Buttercup heard her and pointed to the hotline phone inside the building, visible through the window. "And that!"

Bubbles closed one eye, pretending the open one was a monocle. She held a hand to her ear like it was the phone. "Powerpuff Girls, this is the Mayor. Get over here right away. I seem to have accidentally flushed myself down the toilet!"

The three broke up over that, but Blossom suddenly realized they were doing what the professor warned them not to…dawdling.

"Oh no! We better get going!"

Buttercup hopped down to the ground and looked up at her sisters challengingly. "So. Which one of you slowpokes wants to race me home?"

"Who you calling a slowpoke, fathead?" Bubbles shot back.

Buttercup grinned and crouched down like a sprinter in the starting blocks. "On your mark!"

Blossom returned the grin, narrowing her eyebrows and crouching herself. "Get set!"

Bubbles was up to the challenge. "Go!"

Ms. Keane waved and called out to them as they soared away. They turned the corner and a man yelled at them to slow down. Each girl’s concentration was on nothing but beating the other ones home. They flew faster and Blossom pulled into the lead. As she turned another corner and down a street, Bubbles was right behind her but she didn’t see Buttercup. Suddenly, the green streak blasted past her and both she and Bubbles had to give something extra to keep up. Then something strange began to happen. Blossom felt like she was inside a tunnel, for that’s what the blurring images of the buildings she was passing looked like, the sides of a tunnel, and all she could see straight ahead of her was a small spot of light. She, and her sisters, she knew, had felt this sensation before, because they had talked about it. But now, the tunnel seemed to suddenly become airless and soundless, like she was in a vacuum. But she could breathe just fine.

Bubbles felt the same thing, straining to keep up. It was very strange. Then she heard Buttercup’s mocking "I told you I’d win!" But her sister, who was just barely ahead of her and Blossom, hadn’t opened her mouth! Still, the words spurred her to fly even faster, determined to get home first.

Buttercup had confidence in herself, but her sisters were keeping right up with her. She gave it even more, her grin becoming a sneer. She glanced to her left to see Bubbles, and couldn’t believe what she saw. While she could feel the wind whipping her face and saw the sides of the tunnel zipping by, Bubbles appeared to be standing still. Yet she was right there. She snapped her head to the right. Blossom was motionless, her face fixed in a determined grimace. But Blossom actually seemed to be pulling ahead, or was it that she was falling back? She strained as hard as she could just to stay even with them, but she had never felt anything like this before.

Blossom looked to her left and Bubbles looked to her right. Both had the same thought at the same moment: "Th-they’re not moving!"

Professor Utonium looked at his watch. It was quarter after three. If they had been let out right at three, they should be home already. He strode angrily for the phone and called the school.

Ms. Keane was a bit taken aback by the tone of voice coming through the phone. "Why, no, Professor, they left right when school let out!"

He thanked her and hung up. He went for the TV remote and began racing through the channels, expecting to see them in action somewhere. But not a single one of the news channels carried anything out of the ordinary at the moment. He called Townsville Hall.

"No, Professor, we haven’t called the girls today." he was told by the mayor’s assistant, Sara Bellum.

Now he was getting worried. And by four-thirty, any thoughts of the vacation were gone. A massive search got underway. Mojo Jojo had been questioned and his observatory torn apart, as had been the hangouts of Townsville’s other most notorious felons. But nobody knew or had seen anything. The Powerpuff Girls were missing, vanished into thin air.