An Old Piece While I Work on Some New Pieces

“Time out!”

The gunfire, blazing fast and hard only moments before, actually tapered off. A machine gun in the distance kept firing, but there was an actual three second pause before someone from the Pellosian side of the line shouted, “You’re…what? You can’t do that!”

“Yeah, well, I just did!” Cole shouted back.

“You can’t call ‘Time out!’ in war!”

Cole, barely paying attention as he helped Jessop shift Barnaby onto his back, yelled, “Take it up with the International Counsel of Dibs and No-Take-Backs!”

“Where is all this blood coming from?” Jessop said to no one, looking briefly at the hand he had pulled back from under Barnaby’s shoulder.

“Let the medics figure it out,” Cole told him. He looked up at Hartman. “Those idiots look like they’re about to rush the line?”

“You won’t believe this,” Hartman said, peering over a concrete pylon, “but I think they’re arguing about whether the International Counsel of Dibs is a real thing.”

Writing Report: been focusing on a novel (hooray) over the past couple days. I pulled this partial scene out of my files because I had nothing of particular note to fill a blog post. Except that I tore it up at soccer last night and I’ve been in a good mood since. Still, that’s not particularly amusing, though I did kick a guy on the bottom of his foot, forcing his entire leg up mid-stride and sending him rolling in agony.

(Admittedly, not all that amusing at the time either; I felt awful, as I’d been aiming for the ball at his feet. The fact that I’m a girl almost certainly saved me from a well-deserved verbal rake-down. He was able to laugh about it ten minutes later and ask that I keep the physical abuse to a minimum as he had a day job in construction.)