Protected
is the fourth side story to Stranded written by NeoMark. Star is asked to babysit Pierre.
Tropes:
- Asian Fox Spirit: Zoren is a kitsune, a very powerful one, and demonstrates many abilities associated with them, such as shapeshifting, pyrokineses, lightning generation and various abilities associated with ghosts.
- The Baby of the Bunch: Star's half brother Pierre is a literal example, as he is just one year old.
- Big Sister Instinct: Star is willing to face off against the likes of Bullet and Walker to protect Pierre.
- Call-Forward: The events of this fic made it possible for the Ghost Writer to escape Walker's prison and plot his revenge against Danny in "Cursed".
- Children Are Innocent: As one of the arguments to convince Star to babysit her half-brother, Danny points out the kid isn't at fault for his father's actions and she can take this opportunity to make him a better person.
- Diaper Check: While babysitting, Pierre begins crying and Star dreads it when Danny suggests checking his diaper. She is relieved when that is not the case...
- The Diaper Change: However, Pierre later does need a diaper change and Star has to beg Danny to help her, which he reluctantly does.
- The Dreaded: Zoren, Walker's only prisoner in solitary confinement, has this sort of reputation as almost every ghost seems to fear him and Bullet and Poindexter begged Walker not to release him.
- Friend to All Children: Zoren admits himself to be fond of small children, having not once made an attempt to capture Danny around Pierre's presence.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Danny admits to Star that Walker is more of a control freak than someone who does any good with his prison.
- Not Worth Killing: Despite working for Walker at the time and not doing much against him after he took Pierre, the Observants deem that Sydney Poindexter is "Not even worth the effort to go after".
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Not wanting to be anywhere near Zoren after Walker hit his Berserk Button, Poindexter takes a break until the whole mess is over.
- Shout-Out: When asked why Zoren doesn't sound like he's Japanese, he muses to Danny and Star that for all they know, Eastern Dragons really did sound like Eddie Murphy.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Pierre is stated to resemble Stella more than Jean-Luc, much to Star's relief.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: When Danny mentions Box Lunch in front of Star right after capturing the Lunch Lady and the Box Ghost, she assumes "Box Lunch" is "like some weird shipping name people who watch too much cartoons and movies come up with" and Danny, not wanting to tell her about his alternate evil future self, quickly confirms her theory.
- Tempting Fate: After being defeated, Walker says, "This can't possibly get worse". Cue three of his superiors showing up.
- White Sheep: Star hopes that Pierre will grow up to be a better person than Jean-Luc and Colette.
