You Can't Have the Light Without the Dark

Chapter 2: Normal People Things

A/N

Kaminari tried his best to catch up with all the shows, movies, games, etc. he could find during his months in hiding, but he accidentally missed one of the biggest franchises in Japan, scratch that, the world.

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Kaminari's months hiding from the organization were honestly quite boring. Sure, he had to keep his guard up at all times in case they ever found him, but besides that there was not much else to do. He'd train and study for the most part, however he only kept up his education because he was aiming for UA. If it were up to him, he'd primarily divulge in English literature.

During those months he came to a realization, he'd actually have to enter normal people society. Of course he knew that, it was the whole damn point of leaving the organization. But it dawned on him that he'd genuinely have to partake in normal people activities and talk about normal people things. This would be no problem, the blonde loves to converse, except for the fact that he knew nothing to converse about. His normal people knowledge spanned from basic pop culture to current events, that was pretty much it, and he only used that information to partake in small talk with his targets, before he, y'know, took care of business.

The blonde figured that since he had nothing better to do with his time in isolation, he'd take a deep dive into anything and everything he could get his hands on. He proceeded to binge watch a plethora of movies/TV shows and play any and all video games, letting himself feel like an actual teenager for the first time in his life. It was supposed to be educational, but in reality he just ended up having a blast. Though, even with months of "research", Kaminari happened to completely gloss over a piece of pop culture knowledge that everyone else seemed to know.

Which led him to his current predicament. He was having a nice lunch break with his friends until they claimed his brand literally embodies Pikachu.

"Who's Pikachu?" The blonde furrowed his eyebrows, a little curious to who this person is and why he's being compared to them. "Are they like a celebrity of something?"

His whole friend group appeared as if they just froze in time and stared at him in disbelief.

"What? Is there something on my face..?" He warily grabbed a napkin and slowly wiped his mouth, but his friends remained silent. He genuinely didn't understand why they were all staring at him as if he'd just grown another head.

"No, your face is fine." Sero answered, but his expression was still perplexed. "And we're talking about Pikachu.. the pokémon..?"

"The poké.. what?" The blonde asked, even more confused now, but his response elicited incredulous reactions from his friends.

"Oh my gawd, you don't know what pokémon are?!"

"Huhh? You've got to be joking, right?"

"Bro, how do you not know who Pikachu is?"

"Dunce-face there's no fucking way you've never watched Pokémon."

"Pokémon?" Kaminari questioned again, but this time he recited the full word. "I'm assuming this isn't about the poke bowl I'm eating right now?" He attempted to crack a joke, it didn't have the desired effect.

"It's a cartoon dipshit." Bakugou remarked as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, which it was by the way. But Kaminari only had mere months to catch up on all the books, TV shows, movies, videos games, magazines (porn), and all other forms of media, while his classmates had their whole lives, so cut a guy some slack.

"Mhmm!" Mina hummed in agreement, quickly typing away on her phone, seemingly searching something up. "They have these creatures, called Pokémon, that have different abilities. Some people catch them in these balls called Pokéballs and have them fight each other in Pokébattles!"