Happy trails, Kallisto; welcome, new blood

A couple of days ago, I realized that Kallisto and I weren't clicking anymore.  We hadn't been since she returned in Cataclysm; I just hadn't seen it because I really like her.  The initial problem, which I realized in early July, was that I twitched every time I saw Kallisto in orange, subconsciously expecting the purple she used to be.  So I figured the problem would be solved once she returned to her natural coloration.

Sadly, I was wrong.

I instead had trouble seeing Kallisto as herself; I kept thinking of Praline.  Part of the problem is that I didn't know what to call her.  She couldn't be Kalli; Kalliope is Kalli.  That was always a roadblock, but one that had been cheated around, simply by just using her full name.  The nail in the coffin was that I finally understood that Kallisto had already been reborn a long time ago as Praline.  I had always kind of been aware of the rebirth, but didn't see that it truly meant there was no going back until now.

So I stabled Kallisto and went hyena scouting.  I had absolutely no idea what I was looking for.  The purple was my favorite skin, and my second favorite choice, the orange hyena outside the Caverns of Time, had been moved.  Somehow, I sensed that tracking down a new orange hyena wasn't going to work; it was that one or nothing.  At Caelan's suggestion, I checked on Slaverjaw, but he wasn't up.  I'm not a fan of the white hyena skin and Sandwiches has GrilledCheez, who is an attractive yellow, so those were out.  I flew aimlessly into Uldum, just to check out a few of my options in the wild.

I tamed a mangy gray hyena on a whim, but was surprised that I didn't like the look of the skin once tamed, at least not with Kalli.  Not knowing what else to do and still having Caelan's suggestion in my head, I flew around to try and find the red hyenas, just so I could see them in person.  I'd never really considered the skin before; too many other hunters had a soft spot for it for me to ever even try getting to know it.  So really, I wasn't sure what to expect.

I finally spotted a red hyena fighting a camel, but it lost the battle before I could dismount and get involved.  I flew around the area a bit longer and discovered one on a ledge.  And suddenly, I understood why I was having so much trouble finding them.

I was phased.

Every time I flew close to my target hyena, he disappeared.  I tried blindly throwing some traps into his patrol path, but none of them triggered.

This was when things got interesting.

I landed on the side of the cliff, on a very tiny ledge.  I could target him from here, but he was out of range.

I tried firing some traps up to him to pull him, but he didn't trigger any of them.  It was difficult to see how far off he was from hitting them, so I flew up (ironically, on Hephaestus the red proto-drake) to get a better idea of what the situation was.  He looked pretty far off from the traps, so I tried dismounting and using my engineering cloak to slowfall down to the ledge.  This actually worked like a charm, except the little hyena decided that now would be a great time to hit my freeze trap.  Not wanting to wait 40 seconds for him to break out and run to me, I summoned Atalanta to go poke him.  Yes, I could have gone pet fishing in the first place, but I hadn't wanted to accidentally kill the little guy.  This was a last resort.

I dismissed Atalanta and retrapped the little scamp, just to be certain that he wasn't going to knock me off the ledge, since I couldn't recall offhand what abilities these hyenas had.

At that point, the tame was easy.

You may have noticed that I took screenshots of this process, even though I hadn't committed to keeping this guy yet.  I had done so on the grounds that this was a lot of effort just to try on the skin.  Of course, once he was at my side, I realized that I'd been in denial.  I had already started to get attached.  The skin turned out to be rather attractive as well, though it really only matches the Firelands tier of gear; after this, he is unlikely to match Kalliope again.  But that's never been a priority for me.  I just like pets that fit by my side, regardless of their color scheme.

The name Jason kept wanting to attach itself to him, though I rejected it.  The yellow hyena would fit better, I reasoned, due to the Golden Fleece.  But then, something clicked.  Jason Voorhees was no stranger to blood.  The double reference did it.  Once he had a name, Jason's personality started falling into place.  He's fiercer than Praline, which is saying something, since she was Kallimon's battleground companion back when she had a snare.

He's a keeper.