I can't take credit for this one, but I found it on the Bendis Board and after participating in it myself, I felt extremely satisfied with the result.
Write a scene where one character asks "So, what is it you do?" within the first 5 lines.
FRANK stands in the corner of a living room during a dinner party. He rifles through the owner's book collection. TED saunters up to FRANK casually.
TED: Ted.
FRANK: I'm sorry?
TED: Ted. My name is Ted. Yours?
FRANK: Frank.
TED: So, what is it you do, Frank?
FRANK: Really?
TED: Pardon?
FRANK: I don't know you from atom, kid, and you think you can just walk up to me and ask what it is I do? Some fuckin' balls.
TED: I'm sorry, I'm new to the company.
FRANK: Really? Never woulda guessed. Let me ask you first. What is it you do, Ted?
TED: I'm not really sure yet, sir. They recruited me straight from Harvard. My thesis was on Transtemporal Displacement Theory. I can only guess it has something to do with that.
FRANK: Oh, fuck me. You're Theodore Hausman, aren't you.
TED: Uh, yeah.
FRANK: Shit.
TED: Is there a problem?
FRANK: You're my new partner, kid.
TED: Sorry?
FRANK: On Monday, the big boss is gonna come down to your little shit cubicle and send you to me. I'm Frank Trinkle.
TED: The Time Cop?
FRANK: Lesson #1: Don't ever fuckin' call me that.
TED: Sorry, sir. I had no idea they were putting me in the Enforcement Division. So, what is it we'll be doing?
FRANK: Huh?
TED: In the Enforcement Division? What is it we do exactly? No one's told me the specifics. Do we arrest people for manufacturing unlicensed time-jumpers, or do we just regulate time steam travel?
FRANK: Kid, you got no fuckin' idea what you're even talking about. There is no time travel.
TED: But...
FRANK: It doesn't exist, kid. You want to know what I do. Really?
TED: Uh...
FRANK: Anyone who tries to build a time-jumper, anyone who even thinks of how to make a goddamn flux capacitor work, I go and put a bullet in their teeth, kid.
TED: Why?
FRANK: 'Cause of Lesson #2: if anyone ever did time travel, even one second into the past or future, we'd all fuckin' die, kid. And I don't just mean West America, or Earth. The entire fuckin' universe as we know it would shatter into a million different pieces: past, present, and future. That's why.
