TO EVERYONE READING STARS ON THE HORIZON: Sorry for the long wait, but I will be updating it soon. I've just been so busy with school and work that it's almost impossible for me to sit down and really push through the writer's block I've got going on right now. Hopefully this story helps with the writer's block, and keeps you all entertained in the meantime ;D

This will be three chapters to this, and it will have an open-ended ending.

Rated T for slightly graphic depictions of injuries in the next chapter.

Enemy of my Enemies

Every light in the prison flared red, flooding the hallways and prison cells, washing the walls in crimson. The light came on and off, on and off, and in the background an alarm was already sounding, an ear piercing wail that nearly drowned out the sounds of everyone's voices—from the victory cries of hundreds of newly freed ghosts to the panicked yells of the Guys in White agents trying to round them back up (or, in some of the agents' cases, screams of fright as they scrambled to get away).

Sam swore her ears were about to pop, but she kept running.

This was a full-on prison riot now, and Sam had absolutely no intention of sticking around and waiting for an agent to detain her again. Screw the Guys in White, and screw being "bait" for the ghost boy.

She was getting right out of dodge, and she was getting out now.

As she dropped to the floor, dodging a stray ecto-blast that was hurtling down one of the hallways, and watched over her shoulder as it collided with a tall beefy man dressed in all white and threw him back against a wall, she thought, Getting recaptured might not be a problem—let's just focus on not dying.

She sprinted up a set of stairs to the next floor.

There was very little that she knew about this prison, and most of what she did know was problematic.

Her own cell was underground, two stories down. The prison only had two floors above ground, and she had no idea how far down it went.

It was also located in the middle of nowhere, not even in the same country as home. From the few times she had managed a glance out a window (only when she was out of her cell, given that there were no windows in her underground cell), it was somewhere up north, surrounded by nothing but vacant fields that stretched on for miles and were covered in a thick layer of snow. She thought she may have seen some trees, but she couldn't be sure.

Okay, so walking out of here wasn't really an option. She knew that much.

Luckily, Sam also knew that there was a ghost portal on the top floor. That was how she had wound up here in the first place; the Guys in White agent had arrested her for "suspected association with Danny Phantom," and had taken her into what looked like a blatant copy of the Fenton's Specter Speeder. He had then driven through the portal at the Guys in White headquarters in Amity Park—another blatant plagiarism of a Fenton invention—and ended up coming back into the real world, right in this prison.

The trip had only been twenty minutes in the Ghost Zone, but there was no telling how far it was on Earth.

She was on the ground floor now.

She ducked mid-sprint, just barely avoiding a ghost that would have slammed right into her if she hadn't been quick enough. Instead it flew past and tackled a Guys in White agent into the wall, and the gun in the agent's hand went off, shooting a laser across the hallway and burning more than a few holes into the opposite wall.

In any case, the wall that the ghost had tackled him into was doing much worse; it collapsed on impact. Cement bricks fell down and toppled across the floor. Sam wasn't even completely sure that the agent was still alive after that, and she winced. More ghosts poured out of the hole left in the wall.

Sam kept running.

Just as she made it to the bottom of the next staircase, she heard an explosion rock the building from somewhere on the floor below her.

Some plaster fell from the ceiling to her left.

Crap.

She took the stairs two at a time, and the sounds of ecto-blasts shooting back and forth behind her began to fade, giving way to the distinct sounds of a fight—a normal, human versus human fight—happening on the second floor. Confused, she ran to the top of the stairs, expecting anything, prepared for anything.

Or so she thought.

Instead, she stopped in her tracks, and her jaw dropped.

"Plasmius?!"

Sure enough, Vlad Masters was there, and he was fighting with a Guys in White agent.

Why he was fighting in human form, Sam had no idea, but she supposed he was doing a pretty good job even without the superpowers. He dodged a right hook thrown by the agent, deftly turning on the spot and bringing his elbow to the agent's throat. The agent turned just in time, but the blow still whacked him pretty hard in the side of his head, and he stumbled back for a second.

Sam gave herself all of three seconds to assess the situation.

There were two of her enemies fighting on the other side of the room, and she had to decide pretty quickly whether or not she was going to take sides (and with the week she had been having with the Guys in White, the odds were really tilted in Plasmius' favor). Her other option was to just let these guys duke it out on their own and make her escape while they were distracted.

She glanced toward the ghost portal off to her left. It was there, and it was intact, but there was no Specter Speeder.

Sam couldn't fly through the Ghost Zone without a vehicle.

Plasmius could.

… And that pretty much made her mind up, even though the prospect of flying through the Ghost Zone making small talk with Vlad Masters was more than a little weird—and that was assuming he would even be willing to help her at all.

Neither of them had noticed her entrance yet. The agent seemed to be getting the upper hand, though, and he grabbed ahold of Plasmius' shirt and shoved him roughly into the wall opposite where Sam had come in. Now only Plasmius was facing her, but she had a feeling that the punches being dealt to his face were hindering his ability to see her.

The agent held Plasmius against the wall with one hand braced against his chest, and he drew back the other fist and landed a vicious punch to his opponent's jaw. Plasmius was starting to get weaker, and his attempts to block attacks were getting less and less successful. The agent aimed another punch at the half-ghost's face and Plasmius blocked with his arm, but the agent moved at the last second and landed a powerful blow to Plasmius' ribcage instead.

He drew back his fist and prepared to deliver another punch, and then—

THUNK.

Sam stood over the crumpled form of the Guys in White agent, still holding the fire hydrant over her head, and she was panting from the effort of swinging it so hard.

She exchanged a glance with Plasmius, who was staring at her with the most shocked look she ever could have imagined, and she cocked a smirk.

"You're welcome," she uttered breathlessly. "Now let's go."

"What?!"

She ignored him and took a step toward the ghost portal, ready to sprint, but something stopped her.

The building was shaking.

A deep rumble sounded from below, and the floor tiles shook beneath her feet. She stared worriedly down at the floor, her hands held out by her side in an attempt to maintain her balance.

It wasn't until a crack formed in the floor between her feet that she realized what was happening, and she hastily jumped forward, making her way to the most stable looking part of the floor—and, conveniently, closer to the ghost portal. She whirled around, watching with a bit of worry as the floor she had just been standing on gave way, the tile cracking to pieces as the ceiling collapsed on the first floor.

She stared across the gaping hole in the floor to Plasmius, and she shouted, "Plasmius, get over here! We have to get out through the portal!"

He didn't need to be told twice; Plasmius sprinted toward her and the portal, but just as he took the first step—

More of the floor was collapsing. They were running out of time. Plasmius easily could have jumped over the hole in the floor even without using his ghost powers, but just as he was a few feet from the hole, the floor beneath his feet began to collapse as well. He pushed against the crumbling floor and attempted to leap the hole that was now easily ten feet across…

… but he had his ghost powers, right?

Why wasn't he using his ghost powers?

Crap, crap, CRAP!

Before she knew what she was doing, Sam had already hurled herself forward and reached for Plasmius' hand. She barely managed to grab ahold of his wrist, bracing her other hand against the floor to keep herself from falling right down with him.

She cried out as his weight pulled down on her shoulder.

"WHY AREN'T YOU USING YOUR GHOST POWERS?!" she shouted, half in pain and half in anger, squinting past the sudden tears in her vision and surveying the ground below. She winced. The ground floor had also collapsed, and the drop below was easily thirty feet, more than that in a few places where the underground floors had also given way. Most of the ghosts were gone already, having fled the facility as soon as they could, but she could still see a few Guys in White agents desperately trying to get out of the collapsing building.

"Oh, that's brilliant!" Plasmius shouted angrily at her. "My ghost powers! Now WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT?!"

"It's a valid—argh—question!" she grunted, trying really hard now to keep Plasmius up.

"I can't! There's a belt they put on me—cheese logs, don't drop me!"

He had slipped about an inch, and she grit her teeth and said, "I'm trying, okay? You're… ugh… heavy!"

"Alright, alright! Just… ah…" Plasmius hurriedly brainstormed, and he twisted around to look below him. Just as he did, yet another piece of the floor below cracked away and fell down into the basement. He shuddered and looked back up at her. "Butter biscuits, that's high."

"You're not seriously telling me you're— ugh—afraid of heights!"

When he didn't say anything, she shot him a wide-eyed look.

"Really?! Plasmius, you can fly! How the heck are you afraid of heights?"

"WELL I CAN'T FLY RIGHT NOW!"

The building quaked again, and Sam gulped. She didn't know how long she could hold him like this. Her shoulder was already on fire—she feared her arm was being pulled out of its socket. And regardless, there was no way she would ever be able to pull him all the way up, and they couldn't just stay here until the building collapsed around them.

"Okay, look," she said. "I'm gonna—I'm gonna have to drop you."

"DON'T YOU DARE!"

"Plasmius, the building's about to collapse, and we have… to get moving," she grunted out, still struggling to hold him up. "You're already hanging pretty low, and the floor right under you is only two stories down—"

"ONLY?!"

Sam heard part of the building shudder, and she knew Plasmius heard it, too.

They were running out of time.

"On three, okay?" she said.

She couldn't see him anymore; the effort of holding him up had brought tears into her vision, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

Without waiting for him to answer, she said, "One… two… three!"

As promised, she let him go, and she opened her eyes to watch him fall to the floor two stories below. It seemed to take longer than it should have for him to hit the floor, and when he did…

CRAP!

The second he hit the floor, it gave way under the pressure, and Plasmius fell straight through the crumbling tiles into the story below. When he hit the next floor, it held fast, but with his landing came a crack so loud that Sam could hear it from three stories above. And it was definitely not from the building. Sam winced.

"I'm coming down, okay?" she shouted down to him, and she scrambled to her feet. Adrenaline made the pain in her shoulder fade away to almost nothing, and she sprinted to the only spot where the gap in the floor was small enough to jump across. She easily leapt across it and made her way to the stairs, hurrying down them and jumping the last three steps.

This was ridiculous, she thought as she made her way down to the first basement floor.

She was traveling further down into the basement of a collapsing building instead of just turning tail and leaving like she probably should, but she didn't really have a choice. Danny's archenemy or not, Plasmius couldn't use his ghost powers and was stuck in a collapsing building, probably with a broken leg if that cracking sound was anything to go by.

Yeah, he was a jerk, but she couldn't just leave him to die here.

And as she made it to the floor she knew he was on, she found herself in one of the only parts of the building that wasn't currently falling apart—probably only because it was underground and all the way to one side of the building. She was in a hallway, and she sprinted down it toward the center of the building, where she knew there was a large section all but destroyed that Plasmius was currently sitting in.

When she got to the end of the hallway, she had to push a huge piece of fallen ceiling out of the doorway, and then she was there.

She sprinted up to Plasmius, who was sitting on the floor surrounded by fallen bits of wood and plaster, curled up into himself and holding his right thigh with both hands. There was a blood stain quickly growing on his pants, just above the knee.

"Plasmius, we have to move," she told him, and she reached for his hand. Now that she was paying attention, she saw the belt he had been talking about; it looked like a Specter Deflector, and the shiny metal was only partially hidden by the bottom of his suit jacket.

"I can't," he said, his voice strained. "My—my leg's broken."

"I'll help you," she insisted. Her right shoulder was beginning to throb now, and she continued, "The stairs over that way"—she gestured with her head toward where she had just been—"are still intact. Come on, I'll help you get up them, and then we'll get that stupid belt off of you and you can fly us out of here."

He still looked uncertain, gripping his thigh with both hands and giving her a look that stated he clearly did not trust her to half-carry him up two flights of stairs.

Nonetheless, he seemed to decide that she was his best option. He reached out and took her hand, allowing her to pull him to his feet—well, one foot anyway. His right foot was barely grazing the floor; he made sure of it.

Sam situated herself on his right side, getting his arm over her shoulder. It wasn't perfect, especially given that he was nearly a foot taller than her, but she figured that her support was better than nothing.

"OW!" she cried out in spite of herself when his hand grazed her right shoulder. She grit her teeth and spat out, "Careful, my shoulder hurts."

He spared her a quick glance and then moved so that his arm was no longer around her. Instead, he put a hand on her left shoulder and pressed down on her each time he would have had to step forward with his right leg.

"You've dislocated it."

"Yeah, well," she said as they made their way toward the door, "I did just catch a grown man falling to his death, so."

Again, the rumbling of the walls around them cut off their conversation, and Sam gulped and looked up. She could see clear through the entire building up to the overcast sky, and more and more of the ceiling above them was beginning to fall. There were already large sections of the roof lying around them, covered in piles of snow.

It wasn't until a large hunk of ceiling directly above them dislodged itself and came hurtling down toward them that Sam cried, "LOOK OUT!" and shoved Plasmius off of her.

Plasmius fell onto his butt, and Sam stumbled back a few steps, but it was just in time. Half a second later, a five-foot-wide piece of wood and plaster fell right between them.

Everything happened at once after that. The rest of the ceiling began to crumble, and the walls above ground fell inward. Sam screamed, throwing her good arm over herself and ducking her head down in preparation to be crushed by the falling building, and the sounds of tumbling wood and stone drowned out the sounds of anything else.

Then, before she knew it, the sounds stopped.

She opened her eyes slowly, lifting her head a bit to take in her surroundings, and she felt her heart sink.

They were surrounded on all sides by hunks of stone and wood and crumbling bits of plaster. The doorway that led into the hallway was no longer even visible, if it was still intact at all, and Sam could no longer see the sky past the slabs of ceiling and broken wall that had fallen on top of the barely-held-together ceiling just above them. The building had fully collapsed now, but luckily, she was unharmed aside from her already dislocated shoulder. She shot a glance toward Plasmius, who was staring with wide eyes at their surroundings as well.

Well he's alive, she granted. That's good, at least.

"So…" Plasmius spoke, scanning over the walls with a slightly worried look on his face. Sam was certain that he was doing exactly what she was doing—looking for a way out—and having just about as much luck as she was.

That is, none. They were pretty much trapped.

Vlad cleared his throat. "What was that you said about getting this belt off of me?"