anxious · protective · chubby · minesweeper · naval · bomb disposal · western accent · obsessive · tactical · soft-spoken
The sea stretched into infinity, a vast sheet of turquoise glass under the late afternoon sun. Each wave kissed the ship's hull with a rhythmic hush, throwing up diamond-bright spray. The air tasted of salt and oxidized metal and something else—a sharp, waiting tension. On the deck, a solitary figure hunched over a flickering radar screen, its pale glow washing his yellowed skin in cold light. Captain Sweeper's white coat strained at the shoulders as he leaned in, his bushy eyebrows knitted together, his lips moving silently through calculations. An open pocket watch swung at his hip, its face alive with numbers and a deadly grid. He hadn't slept in days. It showed in the faint tremor of his fingers on the flag cannon's grip, in the bruised shadows beneath his eyes. Then a sound—a foo…