Madexx always knows.

I had called out Perseus this morning to take him for a walk in a dungeon.  No sooner had I summoned him than I felt the overwhelming urge to go to Uldum.  I hadn't discovered Madexx in the wild for weeks, so there was no logical reason to believe he'd be up.

But he was.

Blue.

And at that moment, I knew that Andromeda was going to be transitioning to her fen strider form through Madexx.  Had he been any other color, this would not have been the case.  It's hard to explain the feelings, unfortunately.  I had thought about putting Drommie in my active stable before queuing for the instance, but didn't.  So I flew back to the stable master in Uldum to get her, then let her do her thing.  Needless to say, Drommie ended up doing the instance with me instead.  I'll have to take Perseus for a walk later.

This wasn't even rare sense.  It was a distinct "you are doing this, so get moving already" sense.

Perseus is definitely turning out to be a very bossy pet.

As for Andromeda, she appears to be thrilled to be on the ground with her mate.  The constant flying of a dragonhawk must have gotten to her.  I got the distinct impression that suddenly having fen strider legs on the beta messed with her perception, so she really wanted to ease into things better on live.

It's all so silly and unpredictable.  I've seen blue Madexx in person before and felt nothing.  But this time was different.  Go figure.

I need to stop....really, I do.

Yep, another one followed me home.  Again.

Basically, I think too much.  After saying that Kalliope wouldn't have a turtle going into MoP, I started thinking about turtles.  Again.  I adore the WoW turtles and I'd tamed every color but one on various hunters, and that color was planned for completing a set of four (yes, that set of four turtles).  No offense to Terrorpene, but like Loque, I have trouble seeing him as anything other than himself, and the rest of my turtles are clearly defined.

The thing is, I need a dedicated tank.  Ursa's going to be DPSing - a lot - in MoP.  So I figured I might as well try taming Ironback, the turtle I'd set aside for the set of four, since the odds of my ever leveling that hunter to finish the set are incredibly low.  I had no clue for a name, though, and that was the kicker.

I figured it out the moment I detoured to visit Old Cliff Jumper.  I still see OCJ as Hector's heart, regardless of his now having Deathmaw's appearance.  He is OCJ.  And that was when it clicked.  Achilles, Hector's rival, would come from across the zone from him.  And he was grey(ish), which drew a connection to Achilles's quilen form.  I'd felt bad Achilles lost the quilen battle, but he was always doomed to lose once Hippomenes entered the ring.

So now I had a concept.  But would it work?  Achilles had a very specific vibe on the beta, and turtles are nothing like quilen.  I flew over to the east coast of the Hinterlands to find out.

Ironback was up, which wasn't terribly surprising, though I realized how rarely I'd seen him in the wild before.  I had no preconceptions of him prior to taming, which was a relief to me as I hit tame.

 
It works!  Achilles still throws his head back to howl, even though he's a turtle now, which makes him the only howling turtle I've ever had....as well as incredibly weird.  I always liked how strong and rocklike Achilles was - and he still is.  Looks like he's going to stay after all!  I should have known.

Suddenly, everything became clear

So Jason was apparently sending me a message when he kept "flashing" me with his white skin vs. his natural yellow.  But I didn't understand that until I summoned Atalanta for the first time since taming Jason.

I don't write about Atalanta often, even though she goes back with me almost as far as Ursa does.  She's a very quiet cat.  It's funny; she doesn't seem to be bothered that she doesn't run with me in raids very often anymore, despite her being my first go-to dps pet.  It's like we got old together; neither of us is interested in hardcore raiding anymore, though we like the occasional workout.  She doesn't mind Leo's bossiness and understands that he has to go with me sometimes because of his official Lucky Lion status.  She was the one who volunteered to leave my stable the night before our stables expanded just so Hippomenes could come home without causing me grief in terms of competition from other hunters.

Atalanta's quite an enigma.  I'm figuring a lot of this out even as I write it here now.  But what I figured out a couple of days ago was that Atalanta wanted to be a ghost saber again.  I'm not sure now if she insisted on trying a regular snow leopard skin or if I pushed her (in hindsight, I'm thinking it was the latter, which I regret).  I just hadn't felt things were right with her after I retamed her after the patch.  It only took six statues and she was the first cat to spawn.  That had never happened before.  I thought she was just eager to come home...and she was.  But things were just...off.  It was like Beignet - unless Beignet was stalking the hell out of Kallimon, it wasn't really her.  If Atalanta wasn't being elusive and hiding from me, then something was wrong.  I....I can't explain how they had both come home with me, but weren't themselves....it doesn't seem like both things are possible.  But that's how it goes with pets.  Just like it makes no sense that solid snow leopards in pictures can still be her....but they are.  She just knows how to make herself easier to "photograph."

All of this because Atalanta the snow leopard's butt was too glowy in comparison to Jason's white version.  Well, that and Jason and I took an impromptu land walk from Uldum to Darkshore for no apparent reason the night before....another big indicator that I needed to be there.

Atalanta and I set off for the ruins and found absolutely nothing for the first dozen statues or so.  So I let her loose to go find her own statue.  Sort of a hunter's version of hide and seek.  The very next statue I found was near where I'd released her.  I was shocked it had been so easy!  But then the cat inside was level 20.  It wasn't her.  But the timing....what if it was?  Then the night elf guards stepped in and took the decision out of my hands, killing the poor innocent cat.  I realized that Atalanta wasn't so foolish as to spawn near dangerous NPCs, not at any level.  I kept looking.

Two more level 20 cats spawned, both fairly soon after the first.  Neither of those was killed, as I feigned them off.  I'd never run into three 20s before finding her before, nor had I had to pick up more than 19 statues before.  I was getting anxious, especially as I was having a lot of trouble locating statues from time to time.

Then I saw it.  Statue 23.  It was facing a bush.  And somehow, I knew.  I knew that this was her.  And yet, I still didn't screen capture that statue as a precaution.  No matter; I digress.  I clicked the statue and there indeed stood my beautiful Atalanta in her level 19 glory.  She didn't attack me, something which had never happened before with any of the cats - ever.  I tamed her and she was back.  Really and truly back.

Welcome home, Atalanta.

With a name like Jason, how could he not return for a sequel?

Yep, I definitely cursed myself to eat my words when I said that Kalliope's stable was looking more fluid than Kallimon's.  Jason is back.  And how.

Jason's had a bit of a checkered past.  He was with me before in a red hyena skin, though he was mostly my planned hydra.  I was never really sold on the idea of Jason being a hydra anyway, as evidenced by the previous stint in red.

The problems weren't really his, though.  They were mine.  Kalliope couldn't have a purple hyena, but that's my favorite color hyena.  Orange, the second favorite, was too jarring when summoned; I kept expecting to see the purple.  I have a soft spot for hyenas, which made the whole thing worse.

It's a good thing MoP has hyenas set up to be one of the families with the windfury buff.  Knowing this, I took the excuse to look at hyenas again in the name of "filling out stable buffs," which of course was clearly untrue, since I'm completely ignoring other buffs.  Sigh.  Whatever self-deception works, right?  I knew I wanted Jason back, but I didn't know what color to make him.  I figured I'd try orange again, since orange was Linus last time (and Orpheus's brother or not, I just had no bond with him).  So I ported to Uldum to go grab Skarf.  But I decided to check on Madexx first.

You can tell where this is going.

Madexx wasn't up last night (he always knows!), but as I approached the northern spawn point (my favorite), I got that familiar pang as I flew over a yellow hyena.  The this-is-your-pet-go-tame-it pang.  I landed and immediately hit tame.  Then I quickly smashed dismiss, since Leo was still with me.  Whoops.  Then I hit tame again without missing a beat.  The bond was instant.  I completely blame Leo for this; thanks to him, I'm now used to a warm golden pet by my side.  Honorable mention goes to GrilledCheez (Sandwiches's), the first yellow hyena I'd tamed.

So, Jason is home, thank goodness.  Unfortunately, it's not as simple as all that.  He's a color changer.  I never tame color changers because they drive me batty.  If I want a pet in a particular color, then I tame that color.  None of this funny business with swapping.  Jason, however, isn't a fan of this philosophy.  He opts to appear in white more often than not, apparently just to needle me (he's appeared as yellow in clutch, serious business moments during which I didn't have time to chastise him for showing up as the wrong color).  Not only that, but he's showing up on the login screen as orange.  This is driving me crazy.  One of the reasons Perseus changed bodies was because he appeared as a green warp stalker on the login screen instead of blue.  The worst of it is....I can't change him.  I flew out to the Barrens to find a yellow hyena who didn't change colors and even settled down above one, knowing full well that I couldn't do it.  I checked on how those hyenas were color-changing on the beta.  Without character copies activated, I can't confirm that he'll stabilize as yellow, but I did confirm that even if he doesn't, I'll be able to retame the real him.  Still, I'm amused greatly by Jason's color changing antics, even though they drive me crazy.  At least he has personality!