This Time Round: Trouble In Store

[john_amend_all]

Title: This Time Round: Trouble in Store
Author: John Elliott
Characters: Second Doctor, Jamie, Victoria, Zoe, Samantha Briggs, Isobel Watkins, Gia Kelly, others
Disclaimer: None of the characters belong to me.
Word count: ~15,500
Summary: A mysterious department store has appeared in Nameless. The Society for Prevention Of Chain Stores investigates.

On my fanfic pages: [ Trouble in Store ]

Who's Who?

OK, I'm not going to explain the Doctor or his companions. But some of the other characters may need elucidation. In order of appearance:

Isobel Watkins

Zoe's friend from The Invasion.

Beatrice Eliott

From The House of Eliott. For her previous exploits in the Round, see A Tale of Two Fashion Houses.

Julia

An original character, created by B. K. Willis in Like Water For Adric. She tends to believe that everyone she meets is gay, which is why she describes Zoe as Isobel's sweetheart.

M. Bruce

What the Roberts Master likes to call himself when he's trying to run a fashion house.

Samantha Briggs

Jamie's friend (and companion-that-never-was) from The Faceless Ones.

Gia Kelly

From The Seeds of Death. A brilliant and emotionless young woman from the late twenty-first century, rather like a grown-up version of Zoe.

Francois the Ogron

One of the bar staff at This Time Round. Despite his mangled grammar, not as stupid as he looks. His sister Charlotte is the cook. Francois and Charlotte are original characters created by B. K. Willis.

Influences

The SPOCS were introduced by lost_spook, in Chain Store Massacre. That story had fast food outlets cropping up all over Nameless, with UNIT and the Doctors destroying them as fast as they appeared. And the rest of us had our bite-sized fun with the idea too.

So this started off as just another drabble in that series, containing the scene at the end of chapter 3 where Zoe shows the others what she's found. But then it grew a bit. And a bit more...