SITS Cliff Notes – Era Two A New Decade (Ch 31): A prologue told through the perspective of the Eye of Thundera, we’ve fast-forwarded about ten years after the events of Era One. Everyone is older, the children in the Lair are growing up, while Kit and Kat have become adults. Panthro has taken WilyKat under his wing. Age has marked everyone in its own way – Tygra, for example, needs glasses when he joins Felina for a lesson. Velouria copes well with her deafness and can communicate through signing as well as lip- reading. Thanks to the invention of the Braille board, she and Lynx-O can also communicate through touch. She does sometimes feel isolated and spends time with the Sword until one day the Eye showed her all she’d missed in the world of sound. However, where Velouria was curious and bonding in her own way with the Eye, Lion-O had lost interest over the years. The relative peace they’d enjoyed since Mumm-Ra remained out of commission, was lulling him into a state of complacency, given even the Mutants or Grune weren’t posing much of a challenge lately. He had become an involved and loving father to his children, however, and was grooming his son, Leon, for the Lordship already. Meanwhile, Jax had wandered his way back to Third Earth but now he was a lanky teen. He came across Felina and her offspring along a path, and when unable to recognize him, she turned away in fear; he felt rejected. The rejection was quickly turning to much uglier emotions which the Eye knew may not bode well for the Thundercats in the future. Heavenly Nobodies (Ch 32): Worlds away from Third Earth, survivors flourish on a planet they dubbed ‘New Thundera’. On it, one young teen named Torr still holds vigil hoping the heroes he’d heard about called Thundercats would someday find their way to their new home. Though some suspect they died with Thundera – and while others even hoped it might be true, happy to shed the old ways and old woes with it – Torr remains hopeful. Lynxana, once-ousted Thundercat, was also there and in a position of leadership. She surely was among those that hoped the nobles of the old days were long gone. Back on Third Earth, the Thundercats discuss a signal Tygra had picked up on some time ago….a homing signal that served to guide Thunderians to their original destination planet. Elation soon gives way to problems and questions as the Thundercats discuss leaving Third Earth undefended. Or worse yet, the possibility of their troubles following them to the new settlement. Lion-O becomes driven to find a way to leave Third Earth secure and yet not drag their problems through space with them either. He proposes rounding up the Mutants and leaving them to the mercy of their courts on Plun-Darr, but the others are lukewarm to it, knowing it’ll probably mean death for the incompetent failures. Grune is another matter entirely, and Lion-O leaves the meeting in a huff, obsessed anew with rejoining his people and fulfilling his entire destiny as not only Lord of the Thundercats, but also Lord of Thundera – or rather, the ‘new’ Thundera. Cheetara in particular is bothered by Lion-O’s attitude and mindset and asks WilyKat to keep tabs on their Lord to make sure he doesn’t do anything too rash. Otherwise, Jax lingers in the forests near the Lair, unsure of where to go or what to do now that his last refuge had rejected him. He is just about to move on when he encounters Grune, someone he would have been happy to live his life having never seen again. The Slim (Ch 33): Lion-O awakes hurt and alone in the evening and makes his way back to the Lair in the rain. When he arrives, everyone is clearly upset with him for trying to handle Grune on his own. But what was worse, was realizing another Thundercat paid the price for his stubbornness. As memories of the prior day come back to Lion-O, he concludes it had to be WilyKat that didn’t survive the battle that followed Grune’s ambush. Lion-O feels beyond horrible, but it seems it’ll be some time before his friends forgive him much less speak to him. When it is decided the cubs in the Lair will go down to the infirmary to view the body and say their final goodbyes, Lion-O quietly follows, telling himself he too must see with his own eyes what his misplaced determination wrought. Once there, Felina pulls back the sheet and Lion-O can’t look right away. To his shock and surprise, he instead sees a very much alive WilyKat enter the room with his sister. Puzzled, Lion- O cannot figure out who then is lying dead on the gurney beside him, for the other adult male Thundercats had been accounted for with his own eyes. Steeling himself to look, he’s doubly shocked to see himself lying lifeless. However, his friends ‘ignoring’ him now made sense because apparently, they could not see his spirit. Still, Lion-O has a hard time accepting this even as he goes to the Astral Plane where Jaga waits to confirm the grim truth. He has great difficulty letting go of the material world he must leave behind. That night, Felina must cope with the loss of her good friend and father to her children. She’d often heard Lion-O reference Jaga appearing to him from beyond the grave and bitterly wondered why then he would not appear to offer comfort to his own family. Your Ghost (Ch. 34): A short time of a few days has passed, during which the business of Lion-O’s successor was determined. Tygra would fill the shoes of Lord of the Thundercats until young Leon came of age, to which Tygra was of mixed emotion. He worried his age would count against him, as well as worry that the Sword of Omens would not bond with him powerfully enough to stave off their enemies. To take his mind off his weighty new responsibilities, he resumed work on one of Lion- O’s last ordered projects, which was the building of the ThunderStrike to aid them in returning home with other refugees. But the day had arrived in which the traditional ceremony must be performed to surrender Lion- O’s remains to the beyond. He and Cheetara discuss his self-doubts, and her worries about vague premonitions and her inability to foresee all they try to tell her. Both decide they must simply do the best they can and carry on. Meanwhile, Grune and Jax wait out their battle wounds and the rain in a cave on Third Earth. Grune mulls his victory over Lion-O, and Jax’s role in it. The jackal teen had been taken under his wing since their meeting in the forest outside the Lair. It was he that tipped off Grune that Lion-O was in the area so that Grune could set up the ambush, and it was Jax that kept WilyKat from interfering until the damage was done. Like many of his race, Jax wasn’t physically that powerful but he could be quick and cunning when it most counted. Grune rightly figured he was wise to appeal to the boy’s obvious hunger for acceptance and belonging, rather than control the lad through brute force. He knew he had at least one ally whose loyalties he could be sure of. Grune planned to take revenge on the remainder of the Thundercats, certain it would be easier to accomplish with Lion-O out of the way. Back at the Lair, Tygra oversees the Ceremony of Rites inside due to rain outside. The book and Sword commit Lion-O’s still body back to the stars, while the ghosts of Jaga and Lion-O bear witness. Seeing his own funeral, Lion-O is once again faced with the hard reality that he has passed on and Jaga hopes this means Lion-O will give his soul a rest and come to accept its fate. However, Lion-O desires to communicate with Felina and give her some comfort, but Jaga knows Lion-O does not have the mastery to appear to her in ghost form as he could do for Lion- O when Lion-O was alive. Instead, Jaga offers an alternative way to communicate with the living that he hopes will work. The other kids learn that Jonca can see the ghost of her dead father but cannot hear what he’s saying. Leon angrily accuses Jonca of lying, and Velouria seems skeptical too, causing Jonca to wonder why it’s only she that can see him. In the Control Room, Felina sits idly by pondering how her family would cope with Lion-O’s death when she hears Lion-O calling to her over the static of the radio. Cheetara comes by to bear witness to the phenomenon, but the voice is gone leaving Felina feeling foolish. Cheetara suggests Felina try to get some rest, to which she complies. Lion-O comes to Felina in a dream and at first it is comforting. But then, Lion-O’s presence is pushed out by a nightmare of the Lair crumbling and Grune’s mocking laughter. In the dream, Felina catches a note fluttering in the wind where Lion-O had been. Awakening, she realizes she’d been dreaming yet there is a note in her hand with comforting words penned by Lion-O.