All right, valiantly onward.
A
S
H
Nick found my hand under all the rubble and pulled me out. A thick layer of dust coated the air. Inhaling the fine powder meant coughing and hacking from both of us, but coughing made me think of Daniel.
My eyes flew to Nick's face in horror, and…well…I couldn't really mime coughing, because I actually was coughing, so I just mouthed Daniel at him. He understood, and we coughed and hacked our way to the tuba section, where we'd last seen him.
The only part of Daniel not entirely covered by rubble was his leg at an awkward angle, on top of which was a tuba. Nick and I digged under the debris to find the rest of him. He was extremely pale, had a nasty cut over one eye, and his breathing pattern was ragged.
Slowly but surely, the dust started clearing, and Peter and Angel made their way over to us. "I've got to get you all out of here."
I pointed to Daniel. "He goes first."
"I've got to get you all out safely. You're all hurt." I suppose it's true. Angel had made it out fairly unscathed, with only a few minor scrapes, but I had a limp, and Nick had several bruises the size of continents where the chimes had fallen on him. But compare to Daniel, we were the healthiest people on the planet.
"He has freaking asthma!" I shouted. "If he doesn't get out of here soon and get somewhere with an inhaler, he'll die!"
Okay, so maybe I exaggerated a little bit, but seriously, given the amount of dust in the air, he really could die from asthma.
Anyway, it must've convinced Peter to get him out of here, because he gingerly picked up Daniel, whose leg dangled limply. I winced, grateful that Daniel was unconscious. If he hadn't been, he would have had one heck of a broken leg on his hands.
Peter staggered his way out the exit, while Angel, Nick, and I searched for any other survivors: namely Mr. Mason, those two kids, and the guy that they were fighting. Luckily the instrument room hadn't collapsed, but entryway was so rubble-strewn that I didn't try to forage my way in. Good, because if all those instruments had gone up in smoke, it would've been all my fault, and Mr. Rowan and Mr. Phillips would've made sure that I'd understood that.
I found the kids under the rubble, cursing, but it looked like they were okay. I called Nick over to me.
"Hey, did you find anyone else?" I asked.
"I found some dust, like something had exploded near where Mr. Mason – pardon me, the manticore – had been standing, and unless the guy they," he pointed at the kids, "were fighting is not only a teleportist, but has several qualities like Tinker Bell, i.e. exploding into dust, I'm going to lay the odds that Mr. Mason exploded into monster dust, or whatever that is."
"So you haven't found him?"
"His name is Mr. Wirth," the boy said. When we both gave him odd looks, he said, "I just thought that you might want to stop referring to him as just him."
"Do you like him?"
"Nope." The girl said, popping the p. "Not really."
"So what do we do?" I asked Nick.
But he didn't have time to answer me because Mr. Wirth exploded out of the debris pile behind us and grabbed him.