I am apparently in a good mood tonight <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle">
First of all... I changed something in your game, it would work as you made it, but its not the way C2 was intended, so though I would throw that learning in here as well, hope you dont mind <img src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0" align="middle">
You had 3 seperate sprites for your ninja. I changed that to be 1 sprite with 3 animation frames, which is really how you should do it. (Edit: as littleStain mentioned in an earlier post)
To your list of questions:
1. I have changed the attack of the ninja to be on a timer instead and then make the timer look at if the ninja is dead, if he is dont attack basically.
2. I have altered your smoke create object a bit. I looked at the width and height of your ninja sprite and used that instead in the position creation.
3. You need to set the font after you create the object.
all in all:
.capx