Also, much like how Symphony 1 started, beginning with Anne's story provides a fresh new view on familiar faces. Symphony One gave a new perspective on the founders of the WDF and the protagonists of the original UF stories, viewed through the lens of Utena's interactions with Kaitlyn and her family. Symphony Four provides a new view on the participants of Symphonies 1-3, and how the past five years have shaped them. PJM

33 Carida is, among other things, the home of GENOM's Military Arm Academy, where White Legion officers and MILARM Navy officers are trained, but the academy is a considerable distance from Carida City. The city itself is a manufacturing center where many of the Legion's implements of war are made. (In the books tied to the Jedi Knight computer games, the planet is named as the site of the Imperial Naval Academy.)

65 The sonic stunner comes from MechWarrior, the Battletech RPG. Psi Corps agents prefer sonic or electrical stunners (shock rods) over phasers because phaser stun can cause neural damage - which heals over time, but makes the subject's brain a hassle to work with in the interim.

164 Utena and Anthy's wedding photo, of course, and a portrait of Wakaba.

172 A painting by T'skaia Vorokoshiga'ar Ixtixtaaqitl't'chl'Vraihelt Ishkarat, depicting the Cephirean dueling floor during Saionji's first duel with Utena Tenjou, at the start of the Lost Tournament's final iteration.

Modeled and rendered in Bryce 5 by yours truly, then manipulated in Photoshop to give it the right quality of "oil paint" effect. PJM

190 Even if Anne had ever encountered him before, Roger Tremayne never wore his lightsaber with his Psi Cop uniform, for obvious reasons.

195 Foreshadowing: Your key to fine literature.

209 Given how many survivors of sexual violence Saionji knows and cares about at this point - and how close he came to becoming a perpetrator of same at the lowest point of his life - it is perhaps unsurprising that Anne's question strikes a nerve.

Of course, that's kind of what she was hoping for, though she didn't really think about it consciously. It's very hard to pretend your illicit underage sex slave is at all willing when she starts the conversation with, "Are you going to rape me?" Stripping away the illusion might get her shoved rudely out the door, but that's better than the alternative. ALC

249 These jumpsuits were originally developed by the Wedge Defense Force.

258 Hair is a funny thing. You can brush it every day, but get one bit of foreign matter in there for it to knot itself around, and you'll have rats nests that take days to unpick, simply because they're too painful to get out any other way. Juni hasn't had time to comb her hair in months, so it's understandible that she leaves a few knots in there for later. She almost certainly hasn't got the patience to deal with them now. (They're also a nice metaphor for her state of mind.) ALC

309 The Virago is an Avenger-class freighter, the civilian version of the popular ExoSalusia C-93 Destroid dropship. The IPO (exclusive of the Space Force, which has its own table of equipment) has a small fleet of transport craft, mostly Avengers and GENOM/Cygnus Lambda-class executive shuttles. The larger ships, which are equipped with dojos and extensive medical facilities, are usually assigned to Special Assignment agents who are likely to see combat.

317 A favorite maxim of Indiana Jones, passed down to Kate and thence to her student in an unchronicled adventure.

332 DCI Bailey hails from the Crown Colony of Shoreditch in the Rigel sector.

392 The following exposition was made necessary by the fact that we've never quite got round to actually chronicling... well... anything that happened in 2407, oddly enough.

Yeah. So far as I can tell, aside from that political upset, nothing much else happened that year. I'd have to recheck my notes to make sure. PJM

426 At this point, still William Clark.

486 Katsujinkenryuu takes its name from the old samurai expression satsujinken, katsujinken - "The sword that kills, the sword that saves." Its name reflects its practitioners' dedication to preserving innocent life, a sentiment instilled into the fabric of the form by its Jedi founder, Talar Kem.

507 Juni's manners are usually better than this; most of the time she'd apologize, but she's a little off balance right now... ALC

509 "Juniper" can refer to any of a large number of plants in the genus Juniperus. It's most likely that Saionji refers to J. virginiana virginiana, commonly known as eastern juniper or eastern red cedar. In addition to deterring insects, the aromatic qualities of eastern juniper also make it highly rot-resistant.

523 Saionji refers to his battle with Kaitlyn in Wounded Rose.

535 And you can get up much, much faster. ALC

553 In all the confusion of the Lost Tournament, Saionji forgot many things, including the fact that he first met Utena Tenjou long before they crossed swords at Ohtori Academy, when she was five and he and Touga were eight. That, although he doesn't remember it, was where his unconscious search for beauty began. In a way, he has always been her disciple.

597 Room 401 appears once again! PJM

610 Her varicolored eyes indicate that this is either Neutral Lu, or all three of her in one.

626 A Carggian redpear, Lu's favorite fruit. Cargg is on the hyperspace route from Zeta Cygni to Carida.

629 Gryphon's desk is a relic of Earth's Second World War. It once belonged to General William "Wild Bill" Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services.

649 Donald Bailey first appeared in Days of Miracle and Wonder as the local officer investigating the attempted murder of Kei Morgan. Gryphon was struck by his relentless passion for solving the case and his devotion to justice. He was among the first officers the Chief recruited for the fledgling IPO.

657 Wow indeed; though non-psionics can be taught to resist telepathic attack and intrusion (and Inspector Bailey certainly has), it takes a truly iron will for a normal to stand up to a fully trained Psi Cop's assault.

680 Although what Anne would know about gardening at this point, one isn't sure.

She knows that people tend to get dirty while doing it, so they wear old clothes. That much she's found out in her clandestine reading of books of potentially-dubious usefulness. ALC

687 Yeah, so is she. ALC

714 And thus begins the one-woman crusade to make any rapist who ever messes with her very, very sorry. Touga and Akio Ohtori never had a chance, even if she hadn't been warned by a huge number of people about them. ALC

716 Sō ka: Japanese: roughly, "I get it." Gryphon doesn't often throw Japanese phrases into everyday conversation; probably his exchange of dojo honorifics with Saionji put him in this frame of mind.

723 Both sides of the Telepath Compromise recognize that the extradition arrangement is a joke.

732 Professor Xavier's school hadn't been written at the time we wrote this story, otherwise that might have been a serious option. As it is, I tend to think that the Force is nudging Saionji. If Juni had gone to Xavier's school, she wouldn't have gotten much training in the more Force-sensitive aspects of her abilities (K-Ryuu is very good at bringing those along slowly) and thus she wouldn't have had all the grounding she needed to face off against Roger later. ALC

771 Hahahahahahahah. Juni's read a bit too much of the old Jedi Knight philosophy, where the padawans were trained from the cradle up, so to speak. ALC

814 Saionji is a member of Special Assignment 7, colloquially referred to as "Experts-in-training", since most of its members eventually move on to Special Assignment 1. Other SA7 operatives we've seen include Paige Guthrie (who did become an Expert of Justice in Excessive Force) and Geoff Depew.

821 Unlike SA1 agents, SA7 agents are not authorized to kill in the line of duty without express permission from the Chief. If they do, they face a review board to determine whether the use of deadly force was justified (like regular police officers), and possible prosecution if the board determines it was not.

831 The Blink Dog is named after the eponymous teleporting beast from Dungeons & Dragons, which exists in nature on several worlds in the UF universe.

845 The Onegai system, as its name implies, was settled by Japanese colonists during Earth's second wave of colonial expansion. Legend has it that the system gets its name from the fact that the colonists couldn't stand the thought of staying aboard ship any longer after the long haul to the Rim and begged the captain of their colony ship to put them down on the next unclaimed habitable world, please.

857 I don't know precisely why, but I've always been tickled by the mental image of Saionji sporting the World War I Flying Ace look here.

Yeah, yeah, toss one -more- onto the image heap, whydontcha'... :) PJM

865 NaCon Corporation traces its ancestry to a 20th-century Earth organization, originally founded as a non-profit environmental activism agency, known as the Nature Conservancy. In the 25th century it provides biodiversity services for terraforming operations and preserves interesting species of flora and fauna that would otherwise have been rendered extinct.

931 And you know the octopus is only still there because of Anthy. They never stay in aquariums otherwise. Master escape artists, octopi are. ALC

933 Which, of course, has a rose motif. PJM

962 I thought the Vandyke gave Miki a certain swashbuckling distinction, but not many readers liked it.

Eh, some like it, some don't. I can handle it, and I can tell you for certain facial hair does add age to a man. Miki probably did it partly on a whim, and partly so as to keep people from constantly thinking he's too young for college. (At this point, he's 18!) PJM

998 Serge's collar tag says, "IF FOUND, DROP IN ANY MAILBOX. RETURN POSTAGE GUARANTEED." Saionji put it on there as a joke; it's actually a keychain that came in the mail as part of some promotion.

1074 It's possible that what Juni is really picking up on here is the arrival on Tomodachi of the arrest squad we'll see in a bit; or it might just be a post-traumatic nightmare.

1131 Thus is Kaitlyn dismissed as "harmless" mentally for a little while. It is somewhat forgivable for Juni to make this sort of mistake - the only people on Orron IV who stutter are the poor feebs who don't get proper medical attention, and they really are harmless. However... ALC

1163 Utena's standard mode of dress as a young adult was inspired in part by a piece of promotional artwork for Giant Robo: The Night the Earth Stood Still that features femme fatale Ginrei dressed as series protagonist Daisaku Kusama, and in part just because I have an odd fondness for dress shirts and neckties on women.

"Make Note : Draw 2410/2412 renditions of the Symphony cast". Which I'll probably get around to sometime the next decade at this rate... -.-; PJM

1208 The beef dish, which is simmered in a sauce made from broth and beer, comes from a recipe Anne provided, and which used to get made for Sunday dinner at Shamrock House from time to time.

Gryph makes it better than I do, though. ALC

1210 Juniper is a nice little heathen, which is yet another thing that would have gotten her in trouble at home with her father, had he known about it, as "nice" people on Orron IV don't bother with trivialities like superstitious god-worshiping. She's never had any confirmation of a deity, but she believes anyway. She will, eventually, have her faith rewarded. ALC

1241 "The Federation lives forever." ALC

1280 The TDF is an informal branch of the Interscholastic Duelists' Federation, the sanctioning body for the DSM Duelists' Society and similar clubs that have sprung up at a few other schools in Midgard. I always intended to do more with the expanding popularity of student dueling in Midgard than I could find convenient space to deal with. In any event, the Tomodachi branch is informal because it has the backing of no actual school; NIT's administration wasn't interested, having enough trouble just keeping the Motor Club under control.

1326 Not to mention not eating it at the breakfast table. ALC

1345 "JuniperOS: Page Fault. Restart (y/n)?" PJM

1365 Hachi is Japanese for "eight" - not the most original name for an octopus, true, but at least Anthy no longer names all of her pets "Nanami". (No, really; in the original TV series she did, for no apparent reason other than to make Nanami Kiryuu uneasy.)

1393 Much like Kaitlyn did (or tried to do), back in The Rose That Blooms in the City of Light. PJM

1415 Juri did some modeling on the side back in her Ohtori Academy days, so she certainly knows what she's talking about with regards to clothing choices. (Again, a skill first demonstrated in the Symphony back in The Rose That Blooms in the City of Light). PJM

1417 Juni, in fact, will not dress up until she gets her Journeyrank status, but then she'll clean up well enough that Juri would (I think) be pleased at the results. ALC

No argument here. PJM

1421 A flippant answer, but true. In addition, Utena's certainly seen (and helped) Saionji chop enough firewood.

1435 Shielding is tricky to learn, and when the mind underneath the shields is poorly focused and upset, it's even harder to keep shields up around it. Juni's shields are therefore just about nonexistent, and empaths sometimes have an even rougher time than telepaths because emotions are often, by nature, stronger than thoughts. Strong thoughts are usually accompanied by emotions, and so Juni's getting all of that emotional projection overlaid on top of everything else in her head. She is, understandably, somewhat off balance. ALC

1450 This is, in fact, telekinesis. She's doing it unconsciously. At this point, Juni doesn't know she's telekinetic; she found out she was a PK when she was younger and inadvertantly surged, but the TK remained hidden until an incident sometime between The Kindness of Strangers and On the Road Again that Gryph rather carelessly forgot to show. ALC

Well, that's what flashbacks are for. PJM

1458 The Psi Cops in charge of this arrest team are deliberately trying to provoke the IPO with their blatant obviousness here, in hopes of drawing a response and learning something about the AEGIS capabilities in place on Tomodachi. They are presumably not aware of precisely who Juni has been sent to Nekomikoka to meet, although they will shortly learn.

1527 She totally does not want to do what she's about to do... (Among other things, as an unshielded empath, she feels a lot of what he's feeling in the process.) ALC

1531 How about a little fire, Scarecrow? ... Yeah, that was a cheap shot, sorry. MFR

"Dude, I'm totally going to Burning Man this year, dude!" --G.

"Why yes, it is a smoking jacket." RRS

"Build a man a fire and he's warm for a night. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life!" ALC

1546 I love this graf. It says everything you need to know about how much Juri cares about being ambushed by the Psi Corps.

1563 Chaotic Good. (The Chaotic part of the alignment will shift toward Neutral as she gets older, but she's never going to be Lawful Good, not after her childhood.) ALC

1599 Yeah, but he shot first, figuratively speaking. ALC

1621 It's a favorite saying of Rex Stout's iconic detective, Nero Wolfe.

1636 Anla'shok Na, aka Ranger One, is the leader of the Rangers - at this point in history, Delenn, Minbari ambassador to the Babylon Foundation.

1697 As I recall, I didn't exactly write this rant, I spoke it at Gryph during one of the late-night bull sessions over stew. He promptly wrote it down and into the story. ALC

1735 And you can bet that the operation took on a whole new tone when they realized who they had just crossed. Baiting their opposite numbers in AEGIS is one thing...

Not that most Psi Cops would admit it, but I get a feeling a few of the more clueful ones were going "Ohhhh, fsck us" right about now. PJM

1783 That's the problem with a wild talent - until you get it under control, it's just as deadly to friends as it is to foes. ALC

1787 Azalynn, it seems, never changes... and thank God for that.

1802 And Juni, for all she's a psionic and not a sorceress, is a bit of a mystic. ALC

1815 Oniichan: "Little Brother".

1875 The spirits worshipped by Dantrovians are very strong in the trees and rocks and moonlight of Tomodachi; those few who have been there believe that the planet is touched by fate to play some special purpose in the destiny of the universe. On Tomodachi, as in a few other places around the known galaxy, Dantrovian rituals have an uncommon potency, and their most talented spirit cantors can actually work magic - as we are seeing here.

There is more, much more, to Azalynn than even most of her closest friends suspect.

1888 The moment with the bonfire is a favorite of mine. I was trying for a sense of heady, fey transcendence with the whole sequence, and I think I pulled it off - and that the lighting of the bonfire caps it off nicely.

1935 Remember that spark of destiny Wakaba longed for all her life, until it was finally kindled within her by her experiences in Ohtori Academy Spring Semester Blues?

1959 Noted and added to the list of huge numbers of things Juni would like to learn in her life... ALC

1961 Perhaps unsurprisingly, Azalynn is a student of comparative religion at Hotohori University, the sector's finest liberal-arts school. Theodynamics is the study of theology and how different schools of theology interact to shape history.

2017 There seems to be at least a small consensus on this point.

2037 And here's Utena in her classic costume again. Presumably she's had the jacket she's wearing now made recently; her old ones would never fit her now.

2087 She could easily use the Thorn for this, of course, but Utena is showing off.

2139 Please teach me to be crazy like you! ALC

2187 Utena was, as you might imagine, rather surprised when Touga, an opponent with a greater understanding of the way the Tournament worked, went and pulled this stunt in their second duel.

2279 Lacking a formally chartered duelists' club, the Tomodachi Duelists occasionally get too busy with their schoolwork and whatnot to keep their edges as sharp as they ought - in Utena's case, a lapse that would certainly draw the ire of the Master Mage, if he knew that the prince of the realm was letting her training slide.

2290 In addition to being a useful descriptive shorthand, "Tenjou the Darker" is a nod to Eric Reuss - who, as a member of a conspiracy of Erics that once loomed, Illuminati-like, over Tufts University, was named Eric the Darker to distinguish him from, well, Eric the Lighter, of course.

2305 Not that they'd ever go through with it (after all, it is a rather personal story for those involved), but at this point they could probably get some good mileage out of commissioning Derek Bacon to write a So You've Just Encountered the Trinity of Cephiro manual. PJM

2329 That's a gracious way for Anthy to put it; what Utena actually witnessed was, not to put too fine a point on it, Saionji beating her up.

2335 The sharp eyes of somebody who hasn't grown up in the madhouse and therefore notices something... ALC

2405 She'd see just that color in her the irises of her eyes if she ever looked in the mirror during a practice session in the dojo... But usually, Juni's too busy. ALC

2416 Each of the different roses in Anthy's greenhouse represents someone close to her, but now even I can't remember who each one of these signifies. Yellow (the traditional rose color for friendship) is Kaitlyn, white is Utena, orange is Juri, green is Saionji, the very pale blue ones are for Amanda Dessler, and the black-barred grey ones are Azalynn's (they echo the stripes she had in her hair as a child). I think the fuchsia ones are for T'skaia (it's one of the colors in his crest), the sky-blue ones stand for the Kaoru twins (if Anne had looked more closely she'd have noticed that they're two subtly different shades), and the cream-colored ones are for Nall. Phil opines that the pink ones are also Utena's and the dark red ones are for Dorothy, which I believe is correct.

2430 She's also right.

2434 The two-colored roses represent relationships, obviously. The peace roses are for Kaitlyn and Utena's friendship; yellow and orange-gold for Kate and Juri; purple and white for Anthy and Utena; purple and silver for Anthy and Corwin. There are also very-subtly-two-tone blue ones for the Kaoru twins in there, and other combinations Juni didn't take notice of. PJM

2445 Foreshadowing is your friend... PJM

2450 Anne also failed to notice the silver-and-white ones, which are hard to spot at a distance in anything other than very bright light.

2496 Thunderbolt is no mortal horse, but a creature of magic - a paladin's warhorse.

2576 This is a litany written in the style of my rant about the first morning after I went back to dance practice after nine months of no practice at all. It is, as far as I know, perfectly accurate. ALC

2675 Two years in the slums of the Rim give a girl a healthy vocabulary. Or at least a widely varied one. ALC

2787 AEGIS codenames deliberately hearken to the naming conventions of Asgard, Vanaheim, and Alfheim. In Devlin's case, his codename also evokes his association with the Duelists. This kind of thing is not uncommon; for similar reasons, Titanese Imra Ardeen is codenamed Ringwalker. Also note that Devlin's shield number is one off from Joe Friday's badge number on Dragnet.

2849 Nothing getting plastered a couple of times with Garon couldn't fix.

2945 "The boys" - i.e. the crew of the Lorica.

2978 Than(i/ai) is the Dantrovese root for words describing sibling relationships. Elo'thanai roughly means "adopted sister".