#i can't even...

Rosalind Shand, Queen Camilla's late mother, with her eldest grandchild Tom Parker Bowles

Or... there’s no such thing as catching a break

That ONE likes to give Genos endless hardship is a thing we can’t help but note.  No sooner does Genos learn to deal with one problem than ‘BAM!’ he’s hit with a bigger one.  Quite literally at times.  Add that to the webcomic’s frenetic pace and you have a real ‘let’s toss him off a cliff and see if he figures out how to fly before he hits the rocks’ moment here.

So, as soon as dealing with dragon-level monsters by himself was no longer a huge deal, what happens but Genos has a conversation with Drive Knight.  Drive Knight happens to know the magic words for getting Genos’s undivided attention -- ‘mad cyborg’.  He’s blamed it all on Bofoi and we were getting quite worried about what Genos was going to do.

What he did was not fly off the handle and instead think of Saitama’s derpy face and get a hold of himself.  Good lad!

He firmly tells Drive Knight that he doesn’t trust him and won’t work with him but instead is going to consult the people he does trust to decide what to do.  That statement might have been a critical error, but they part ways peaceably enough.

He meets up with Saitama and they go to Dr Kuseno’s place for the long-anticipated meeting.  As to Saitama, he decided he liked the doctor once the latter fixed his Gameboy (I bet it’s King’s...).  He made himself right at home, lounging on a futon while they talked and set to roasting Genos, pointing out that he didn’t really have a chance of taking on Metal Knight.   So harsh...

Nevertheless it turns out to be quite a pleasant visit.   The doctor has laid in some super high quality meat which gets barbequed at table, it’s all very congenial... and saitama falls asleep right away in the body scanner.  So much for having trouble sitting still!

And then.  Oh my god.  And then.  Outside in the forest a group of cyborgs gather.  One takes aim at the house...

...and Saitama is woken to the sound of an alarm.   As he calls out to Genos and Kuseno to find out what’s wrong, we cut to Genos crading Dr Kuseno.  He’s been shot in the chest and it’s not looking good at all.

Meta: Peace was never an option:(

ONE, this is just too cruel.   I’m actually out of words.

Edit: I found my words.

I don’t mind reading or watching stories in which major characters die. I just adjust my level of investment in any character appropriately.   So Dr Kuseno’s apparent demise blindsided me.  So much so I got up and called it an early night... then had a terrible night’s sleep.

Even if he’s not dead, I barely feel better.  ONE is nothing if not punctilious about money, time, energy and opportunity cost.   The doctor has money, but how much of it is available to Genos?  On what timescale?  How much time and energy is it going to eat up for Genos trying to care for the doctor?  How many problems has he got if they need to relocate from their no-longer secret base?  What can he safeguard? Does he even know what needs taking?  And opportunity cost -- minimally, there’s a group of cyborgs up to evil.  There may be more bad actors in the mix.  What opportunities to stop injustices is Genos missing out on?  

And that’s all before we consider the drastic changes Genos will have to make to how he approaches fights now that there’s no longer anyone to pick up the pieces.  

If you’re into ‘found family’ tropes, then Genos and Kuseno being each other’s second family was so touching.  We’d known for a long time that they were really close.  The manga in particular had been really good at showing this to us.  Just as it started getting that bit better, it’s been torn asunder.

But most of all, peace was never an option. The cyborgs who came and attacked the very evening that Genos turned down Drive Knight... that’s an outfit that was always going to hunt them down.  Their secrecy, their drive to find justice, all of that are no longer the actions of strangely obsessed people; they’re the actions of people who really are facing a relentless and determined enemy who really, really doesn’t want to be stopped.