When the Master and Mistress and Little Master went to bed, the appliances got ready to leave. Toaster, Kirby, Radio, Lampy, Ratso, and Sheena were going to find Airika and bring her home. Blankie had been taken to bed with Robby and couldn't come, so Sheena was going in his place. Mike pouted as she hopped down from the counter; if anything happened to the percolator, who was going to call him Mike and get on his nerves? Okay, he admitted to himself, she wasn't that annoying, she was even kinda cute.

"Be careful," Blenda and Melody whispered to the friends. Lampy winked at Melody, "We do this kind of thing all the time!" Kirby brought Telly down from her mount in the wall so she could say goodbye. Toaster packed the paper with the store address in his crumb tray, and he and the group headed out the door, Kirby pulling the chair the others had piled onto.

It was not a very long trip to the city, but it seemed obvious they would not make it home before daylight. At midnight they reached the outskirts, but the secondhand store was on the other side of town. Carefully moving from alley to alley, the friends made it to midtown before stopping to catch their breath.

"Never realized how darn big the city is!" panted Sheena, waving her cord next to her face.

"We're halfway there, we just gotta catch her before the store sells her," puffed Lampy. Kirby nodded, not allowing himself to wonder what would happen if they arrived and his friend was not there. Toaster looked around the corner to check if the coast was clear before they hurried on.

"Your attention please, THAR SHE BLOWS!" called Radio as they caught sight of the store. There was a vacuum that looked like Airika in the front window. Unfortunately, when the friends got to the alley next to the store, a human walked out with the vacuum under his arm. He looked to be middle-aged, balding, thin, and very friendly. He held the vacuum in front of his face, looking it all over. "You look just like the vacuum we had when I was a kid. I didn't have a race car to race with the other kids, so I used the vacuum. I painted the name 'Air-wrecker' on the side," he paused, looking carefully at Airika where black paint was chipping off. The man tucked her under his arm again and started walking down the street.

"Darn it all!" muttered Kirby. Toaster ushered the group to follow, keeping a safe distance behind the man.

Eventually he came to a brick house and sat on the front stoop, looking at Airika's side again. The appliances watched as he chipped off more paint, revealing the name "Air-wrecker" in white. "It is you!" he cried, delighted. The appliances felt horrible; what were they going to do now? Airika had told them about this boy, the son of her fourth owner. How could they separate the two? The human got down on the sidewalk on his hands and knees, pushing the handheld vacuum like a toy car. After a few minutes, he took Airika inside.

"Now what?" Sheena looked at the others sadly. "Should we try to look in a window or somethin'?" The appliances went around to the back of the house. Toaster pushed Lampy up to a window so he could look inside.

The man placed Airika on the kitchen table, then searched around a cabinet until he found some white paint and a small brush. He repainted the name on the vacuum's side, pushing her and calling "Vroom, vroom!" once in a while. When he was finished, he went to the sink to wash his hands. No water came out the faucet, so he went to the bathroom to try that sink. Lampy watched as a middle-aged lady came in, saying, "Honey, a water main busted so they shut off the- oh, what a mess! What is this thing?" She picked up Airika by the cord and held her out at arm's length, a look of disgust on her face. She tried to plug in the vacuum to test it, sucking up the paper her husband had placed on the table to keep paint from dripping on the furniture. It was too much for Airika, she choked and after a few seconds of mercilessly being kept on with paper in her mouth, started to smoke. Lampy reported everything to his friends.

"Honey, what are you doing!" the man cried when he came back in. Grabbing Airika, he shut her off, pulling the paper out of her mouth, "Vaccums can't pick up paper!"

"What use is it then? It's so old, it's probably broken," she sniffed.

"My family had this vacuum when I was a kid, I used it for a toy race car."

"You're not a kid anymore, throw it out."

The man looked sadly at his wife, seeing she wasn't about to change her mind. He sighed, walking out the back door and placing Airika carefully on the ground next to the trash can. When he went back inside, the appliances gathered quietly around Airika. She kept her eyes shut, trying to keep the tears in. "Airika?" whispered Kirby, "Are you okay?"

"110!" burst the smaller vacuum as she sobbed. "No one wants me!"

Kirby wrapped his cord around her as Toaster replied, "We want you, Airika! And so do the Master and Mistress!"

"They were looking for you all day yesterday!" added Ratso. "They're probably looking again today!"

Airika's sobs diminished to sniffles, "You've been out here all night?" Her friends nodded, then talked her into coming home.

Rob and Chris and little Robby were very happy to find their pet rat and missing appliances that evening behind the barn. "But how did they get out here?"

The next day, the "For Sale" sign was taken down from the house across the street. Jenny, the lady who had given Chris the little vacuum, began installing solar panels all over the roof of the house. When Rob and his family came out to say hello, she offered to put spare panels on their house and the barn as well. "We couldn't ask-" he started to protest.

"Nonsense!" interrupted Jenny. "I'm an environmentalist, and I have plenty of panels here, installing them is my job! Just think, you'd be saving the planet and saving money on your electric bill!" After a week or so thinking about it, the family agreed.

That Christmas, the family invited Jenny to dinner. The appliances were in the living room where Robby had left them, although some had moved in pairs to stand under the mistletoe.

"I gotta admit gang," Airika smiled, "I'm surprised to be spending a third Christmas in the same location!"

"And this is where you're going to spend the rest of your Christmases!" smirked Kirby.