Disclaimer: I don't own DP.

BGM: "Keeper of the Seven Keys" by Helloween.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Robert Frost

Rebirth in Ice

Snow crunching under her feet, she crept out of camp as quietly and discreetly as she could. "I'm not afraid," she muttered to herself. "I am also a terrible liar."

She felt a tug at her ankle and froze. Please don't be an imp, she thought frantically. On second thought, please be an imp and not something more dangerous. She stole a look over her shoulder and sagged in relief. Caught on a bush. Wasn't that just one of the oldest horror-story clichés in the book? She smiled to herself, carefully pulling the sharp twig out of the hole it had gotten tangled in. No sense in tearing the worn fabric any further.

She turned back around, flopping back onto her stomach with an "oof!" So much for stealth. Scanning the area, she checked for possible threats. Bushes, thorny brambles, trees, more thorns, dead bird (ew), yet more thorns, and of course the omnipresent snow. The snow and flora were badly disturbed by her little scuffle with a bunch of twigs, but, she reflected, there were advantages to leaving a trail. There had been a storm recently, and it was highly likely that one or more local landmarks had been moved or eliminated altogether. Leaving a trail would make it easier to find her way home, and aid any possible search party if she did not return before curfew. On the other hand, there were things in the woods that she really did not want discovering her presence. Mind made up, she picked up a fallen branch through the cloth of her sleeves and set to wiping her footprints as far back as she could reach without making too much noise. Stupid, rustly dry branches.

Wiping her brow, she forced herself to slow down. She did not want to be sweating heavily in this. The sweat would only evaporate and cool her faster, and her coat would not be enough to stave off hypothermia for long. Either way, she had to hurry.

She looked back in the direction of the settlement one last time before turning on her heel and continuing down the watch trail, dragging the branch along to obscure her tell-tale footprints. The too-precise, obviously machined edges of her boot prints together with the small size would narrow her identity down to only three townspeople. She could not risk recognition by the more cunning of the monsters that prowled outside the heavily-warded and always-guarded borders of the settlements scattered throughout these wilding lands, whether human or otherwise.

She shuddered remembering what had happened to Star, bright cheerful Star who loved playing with children, especially the new helpless camp-born. Now she could barely be trusted to bathe and feed herself, having attempted to kill herself nearly a dozen times since the attack. Poor Star, she thought. I'd better stop daydreaming and keep both eyes on my surroundings. This is not the time to go off on a tangent!

Stumbling over the hem of her undyed wool skirt, she cursed. It would take hours to get all of the mud stains out of it. She'd considered wearing one of her remaining pairs of pants, but quickly reconsidered. Wool skirts could be replaced, if not easily. Many of her old clothes were cotton-spandex or something similar, and man-made materials were more precious than gold, growing dearer by the day. If the skirt was torn beyond repair, she would have to do extra work to earn enough to barter for wool the next time traveling salesmen came through Comity Green. The pants could not be replaced by any amount of effort. Artificial fabrics such as polyester and nylon, once cheap as cotton or wool (and often cheaper), were now reserved for the rich.

The young woman knew she was lucky. Her parents had built weapons before the Great Sundering, weapons that could hurt the creatures that came through the cracks between worlds. The weapons had their own drawbacks. Most obviously, they were powered by the same spectral energy that created many of the strange creatures now making their homes around the ruins of her old hometown.

Ironically, the Sundering itself had not even been noticed by the vast majority of the townspeople, save by her parents who had been considered crackpots of the most pathetic kind. Their alarms and scanners had picked up the activity of malevolent spirits long before the Sundering had spread enough for those powerful enough to do real harm to manifest, and manifest they did, hordes of twisted creatures born of the sorrow of lost souls. Some were intelligent enough to communicate and demand tribute, setting themselves up as overlords (or overladies) of any area where they could gain a foothold. Few had any trouble. How could normal humans defend themselves when their own weapons were turned against them, their only food crafted into a raging behemoth, when sound alone could turn minds and hearts against what they had loved most?

Her parents' weapons, designed by their brilliantly warped minds, used the ghosts' power against them, but at a heavy price. Prolonged exposure to arcane energies of any sort, such as the spectral energy of the Ghost Zone, would eventually warp living things into mindless, crazed things that attacked indiscriminately. The mindless were granted at least that small mercy, energy wiping their minds clean and turning them into something like ill-willed infants. Others retained their minds, but not their hearts, turning their life-force to the destruction and ruin of what they had loved most.

Her parents could not have known of this threat, but mad as they were, they were scientists first, and scientists always took safety measures. The same ridiculous jumpsuits she had scoffed at on a regular basis turned out to have a very practical purpose. They were made using materials that could resist, absorb and dispel spectral energy to a degree, so the discharge from the weapons would not overly affect the wielders. Her father had had a ridiculous supply of "spare" one-size-fits-all Day-Glo orange jumpsuits in the multi-story addition known as the Ops Center, and upon learning of this curse, the jumpsuits had immediately been distributed to anyone capable of shooting back. Their only real downside was that they were absolutely useless for camouflage and only slightly bullet-resistant, so they were generally worn under camouflage gear courtesy of Axion Labs' private security. They made good marksmen, but were no more resistant to warping or bullets than the next people, and if artificial fabric was dearer than gold, ecto-energy-proof materials were second only to water, food and shelter in necessity these days. Men could and would kill just to get their hands on a few yards of the smart fabric, which had led to an abundance of skin-covering fabrics among the adults of Comity Green.

Suddenly, the young woman stopped stock still and smacked her forehead with one hand, then rubbed to ease the stinging. Her skin had gone hypersensitive with the cold. Looking around, this time specifically for predators of the human variety, she nodded, satisfied that she was alone. Reaching under the collar of her charcoal-gray wool coat, she tugged at the flexible hood of her borrowed jumpsuit, yanked her hat off and pulled the teal-blue smart fabric over her head, reaching up to tuck stray locks of her bright carrot-colored hair under the edges. She pulled a pair of black goggles with red lenses that both filtered light-based spectral attacks (and, they had discovered, optical magic) and provided a constant feed of information to the main computers at the Fenton Ops Center. As she had no way to turn off this feature, she had timed her little outing to coincide with the changing of the watch.

Only Foley, her mother and a few higher-ups from Axion Labs were qualified to deal with the computers in the Ops Center in a crisis, which meant at least one of them was on watch at the main control panel (which was, incidentally, the final destination of the feed from her camera). Her mother was too driven, too set in her ways after years of constant fighting, and the woman simply did not trust the former research scientists any farther than she could throw them. She knew it was underhanded and sneaky, but Foley was one of two people certain to be sympathetic, and he was in a position to further her plans. Even if his deception was discovered, she had arranged things so that it would seem he was a mere dupe, too distracted by a pretty face to realize what he had become accomplice to. Manson served a different purpose. She had spent the last several weeks carefully (or not so carefully) sowing dissension in the proper circles so the current leaders would be too busy sniping at each other to notice one extra girl in the forager's group on their way out of camp. Odd that she still thought of it as an encampment even after living there for three years. She supposed it was because nearly everyone lived in insulated ready-tents, yet another side benefit of paranoid genius parents (or neighbors, in everyone else's case).

Shuffling her weary feet uphill, she gripped a nearby tree for extra support on the steadily steeper slope, now around forty to forty-five degrees. When the ground was slick and treacherous with melting snow and potholes, any bit of stability gained could make the difference between a minor slip and a short, painful fall. The branch had been abandoned a ways back in favor of a free hand, in case she needed to reach something in a hurry. Her fingers twitched towards the standard law-enforcement shoulder holster, modified to fit an ecto-gun, which was assigned to the town guards, especially the ones on the especially hazardous Last West Watch.

The morning light at her back threw long shadows ahead, shifting and swallowing the light reflecting off the snow. She was alone with her worries, breathing into the dust mask tied loose around her neck and the faded brown scarf that hid both the mask and the blue of her hood. Her brown beanie hat hid the rest of her hood, and the goggles and ecto-gun were standard-issue. There was no reason to think she would be recognized. She was just a nameless young woman sent to join the morning watch, a replacement for poor broken Star. She moved with the economy of a trained fighter, courtesy of being drilled in every form of combat her mother could simulate nearly every day since Comity Green's establishment. She was dutiful and quiet when necessary, and had been trusted with less hazardous camp watches before. Last West Outpost was the worst watch, abandoned outright from sunset to sunrise. No one would risk the witching hours here.

She huffed, pulling herself the last few inches to the top of the ridge where the trail ended. Gulping and swallowing, she took her canteen out of her coat and took a short drink. She couldn't risk dehydration or waste water. Although the high ectoplasm concentrations here tended to retard microbial growth, the tainted water was just as bad for humans, and could hasten the onset of a warp. To her left, Mr. Gray mirror-signaled to her, unwilling to turn on the emergency radios so soon after Technus' latest theft. He wouldn't risk losing much-needed equipment to the technology-hoarding ghost, which meant she didn't need to risk his recognizing her voice. The former head of security for Axion Labs knew exactly what he was doing, and made a point of taking Last West Watch at least once every two months. Damon Gray flat-out refused to assign his subordinates any task he himself would not do, save for specialized tasks he could not do. He dressed just as they did, sturdy natural fabrics in grays and browns shielding him from the weather and covering the orange jumpsuit that shielded him from the malignant energies that swirled around what had once been a thriving, if not very large, city. Mr. Gray, a former police officer who had gone into private security for the higher paycheck, still truly believed in leading by example and "to serve and protect." He had earned many people's respect, including her own, but right now he was in the way.

The young woman flashed an all-clear back at him, sending her own query down the line. She was almost there, now. Please, nothing go wrong.

The reply flashed back all-clear.

She took a deep breath, checking her gun and goggles and fastening her mask on tight. She screwed up her eyes, looking into the eye of the spectral storm just above her childhood home, an oasis of calm besieged, a faint and treacherously brilliant glimmer of hope. She stepped forward, down the hill that led into the dawn.

Please, let me be right. Please be there. Please be yourself somehow, my dear strange little brother.

After three years, Jazz Fenton was coming back to Amity Park. No matter how scared she was, she would not abandon him again. One way or another, she would bring Danny back.

A/N: Obviously, this is AU. Nothing to do with the Spirits Rise Verse, this is a post-apocalyptic AU where the opening of the Fenton Portal didn't just let the ghosts out, it let other things out too. Even worse, the damage spread. This is a snapshot of the result, a few years after things went all to h*ll. Most of the early episodes happened more or less as canon, including (most importantly here) My Brother's Keeper.

Honestly, in canon Jazz acts more maternal to Danny than their mother does at times. Especially where his little secret is involved. As far as anyone knows, anyone caught in a storm like that would have long since lost their mind at the very least - but Danny hasn't been quite human since the Sundering, and Jazz is holding out hope that he's okay. She's a Fenton, which is synonymous with crazy and stubborn, so of course she's going after him. Yes, I know she's a bit OOC, but she's spent the last several years living in a World Half Empty. She could either stay sweet and innocent and a lousy liar, or she could live.

The world I've come up with here is great and all, but I already have one big project, and even less idea where the story would go. I might write more oneshots set in this verse, but for better or worse this story is done (although I may go back and polish up a bit later).

Please read and review.