1I wrote this for English class, where I had to illustrate a specific trait possesed by an epic hero. Tell me if you can identify it.
How Tint Escaped the Hounds
Tint is a golden retriever in a modern metropolis. The dogs in town are aristocratic and usually have enough to eat, and Tint is happily unaware of everything else, until one day he meets Artemis, a blue mackerel tabby. From her, he realizes the plight of other animals in the city, and sets on a quest to help them.
Run. Skid, turn, run. Wait for the snarling beasts to pass; run on. Paws scrape against the hard stone, tongue stuck out to rid of heat, ears flopping but at attention. Farther, farther! Furious barks from behind- hurry, scurry, rush, sprint! A twist, a pivot, lights all around...
His mottled golden fur streaked with pond water, fish clenched between his teeth, Tint scurried from street to street, a pack of fuming hounds close behind. Tint's keen eyes shot this way and that, seeking a way out of the situation. The howls from behind him seemed to sound closer and closer; he dreaded to think of what the predators would do to him if they caught him. Open glass and bright lights flashed by him on one side, while great beasts shot past him along the charred road to his right. Desperately turning into a dark alleyway in an attempt to shake his pursuers, he despaired at meeting a high wall of oak.
Bones! I'm not a cat; I'll never get over that wall! Tint lamented, but even as he did so he turned to face three of his pursuers, drool dripping over their sharp teeth, a murderous glaze to their eyes. They looked in the same sorry condition that he was in, with their golden fur dirtied, and the blackened pelt on their backs glistening with the rainwater that they'd stepped in on their chase.
Snarling menacingly, the biggest among them spoke, a deep rasp in his voice: "You'll kindly geeve uss our deener... or we we'el claw through your fleshh and throw your boness to the catss..."
"Errh, how are you folks todayh..." Tint questioned nervously through the fish in his mouth. The hounds only snarled and advanced a few steps closer. Frantically searching for a way out, he glanced around him like a beggar looking for a penny, searching for something, anything that he could use to get away. On one side there were dirty and rotten cardboard boxes, and on the right he noticed trash cans lined upwards, but not quite tall enough for a leap to clear the top of the wall.
Trying to mask his intentions, he took a careful step forward, to which the dirty, tired hunter-hounds gave a gleeful grin and barked: "Yess... geeve eet to uss..." But before they realized it, Tint had already twisted to his left and spit the fish into the box; he then grabbed the box by the top of a side, and started dragging it across the alley.
Finally realizing what had occurred, the three hounds viciously attacked, one leapted to attempt to retrieve the fish Tint had spit into the box, with the other two smashed onto Tint, biting him and swiping at his flesh.
Yelping in pain from the lead hound, Tint calls upon his inner reservoirs of. strength, pulling the cardboard out from behind the hound going after the contents of the cardboard box. Howling as he felt a claw rake deep into his side, Tint nonetheless found himself next to the trash cans. Grunting at the effort and resisting the temptation to howl again at the feeling of hound teeth sinking into his leg, Tint swung his head, flinging the cardboard box upwards. As the box somersaulted, the fish came flying out, and in one motion, Ting bounded on top of the shortest can, nabbed the fish in between his teeth, jumped once more on top of the box now situated atop the second can, and leapt over the wall, being sure that the box would slip from the can after his spring.
Over the wall he went, the sounds of irritated and foiled predators mixed with a crashing metal trash can behind him, street opened wide in front of him, and crimson blood dripped from a leg. The cool night air swept and enveloped him as he reveled in the glory of victory, while the stars twinkled around a sky lit by the luminance of a full moon.
He had won.
After sustaining a painful landing, Tint limps through ever-dimming consciousness to bring his hard-won food to Artemis and co. Many times Tint would go through this, until one day the animals he had tried to help turned against him, and he barely got away with his life. Disgruntled and angry, Tint would return to try and take his revenge, only to resolve the problem peacefully.