that tree came outta nowhere

As Maverick watched the perfect little blend of himself and his darling Venom slowly begin to grasp what he was telling him to do, a mischievous grin of his own appeared on the sire wolf's muzzle. Realization dawned on Renegade's face and Mav gave a slow, almost wicked nod of approval, silently confirming his boy's hunch and giving his wordless consent to misbehave. Of course Maverick wanted to instill all the best life lessons into his children that he could, but there were times for being the serious parent to educate his children and times to let them learn by having fun. Showing Ren that some rules could be bent or skirted more easily than others might not have been the most pragmatic lesson, but it was the most real. Real life was messy, real life existed in shades of gray. Besides, skirting and bending rules had been how the dire brute had met his beautiful wife-to-be and made this perfect family with her. How bad could they possible be?

A barking laugh erupted from the older male as his son yapped in glee and began to tear at the sapling's roots with feral savagery. He could see that pristine white coat of his son's turning browner and browner as it was stained with dirt and sod, even some of Maverick's white toes getting caught in the crossfire and turning green and brown in the mayhem, but he couldn't care less. Renegade was having fun and learning an important life lesson about seizing every advantage and opportunity he could to do things the easiest and most efficient way. "There ya go, Ren! Show that plant who's the alpha wolf here!" he cheered his boy on, keeping those thorny branches held out of the way of the manic paws of the pup. The more he dug, the looser and looser the sapling began to feel as its roots were torn out beneath it. "It's getting there, you've almost got it!"

The sapling buckled and bent under the dire wolf's paw, losing its strength as it was torn from the ground by the father-son duo. Not long after, the ground underneath the sapling crumbled away at Renegade's paws, and the plant buckled completely, now pinned flat to the ground under Mav's paw as Ren decapitated it, leaving torn up roots and unearthed soil in his wake. Maverick gave a whooping cheer to his son's success, lifting the slain plant up between two toes to show off the trophy to Ren. "Whew, look at that! You took its head clean off!" Mav exclaimed with a laugh, then passed the sapling over to Ren to claim. "Congratulations, little plant killer, you defeated your greatest foe yet!" Renegade was positively filthy now and it made Maverick grin with barely contained humor. Oh, Venom was so going to kill him if she found out about this! "Let's get a little more war paint on you, mighty warrior." Grinning his roguish smile, Mav lifted his own soiled paw to paint a stripe of dirt straight down Ren's alabaster muzzle from forehead to nose, then gave the pink padded nose a little boop for good measure, speckling it brown with mud. "Ha! If we keep this up, you might start looking like Rampage!" Maverick teased, a flash of playfulness in his teal eyes as that same giant, muddy paw went to dance his toes along his son's sides to tickle him and further muck up his handsome coat.

"Maverick"