Redhawk Caldera there'll be peace when you are done.

The boy's smile broke into a sheepish grin when Finley turned around and admonished him, albeit with a barely composed face. He barely even remembered that nickname. He was occasionally called NJ, but mostly he was just Nightjar. The only wolf to ever call him otherwise was the greyscale woman right in front of him, and it brought him back to when he was a boy fixing for a fight. He'd promised himself back then he would beat her one day. He wondered if that was still an impossibility.

Giving his head a little shake, he beamed and said, "didn'tcha hear? Ninjas are out, being a pirate is all the rage now! Y'arr!" He would always be her little ninja, though, at least in name. The rest of him was ill-suited to the definition of a ninja. He was big and bulky and walked far too heavily to go unheard. Stealth would never be his forte. But she'd branded him a ninja from day one, and part of him wanted to live up to it. Maybe someday.

He reached forward to offer a wet kiss of his tongue to her cheek, if Stern Alphaface would permit it, and matched the tempo of her tail with his own. His gut wobbled a little more than hers; after all, hers was full of children, and his was just full of pudge. "How are you, Aunt Flea?"