That's my secret, Captain.
Peter felt bad, but Shuri informed him that he had to get back at every avenger that embarrassed him. And Bruce was the first one.
It was Saturday, and Shuri was sporting a cropped white and orange baseball tee with matching orange shorts. Saturday also meant Banner’s weekly intern class. They were going to have some fun with this one.
Shuri and Peter stepped into the elevator. “Are you sure it’s not too mean?” Peter asked for the fifth time that hour.
“If you’re going to be a chicken, just back out now.” Shuri teased. Peter huffed as they reached the 34th floor. They walked over to the lab where Banner was set to teach in an hour.
While Peter hacked into the display board, Shuri switched out Banner’s prepped bag.
When they were finished rigging the whole room, Shuri suggested they eat before the prank. Peter, without a doubt, was always ready to eat. He sometimes forgot how fast his metabolism worked and was thankful for more food.
An Hour Later
“Welcome everyone,” Banner spoke to the crowd, and they reciprocated his greeting with their own. “Today we will be continuing last week's class on Kinesiology. Now, I know not all of you were present, so we’ll start by reviewing quickly.” As Banner went into a drone of kinesiology, gentle muscle testing, and neurological and biochemical realms, Peter noticed some interns dozing off, while others intensely took notes. “Any questions before we continue?” he asked.
One girl raised her hand. “When testing foot sensation with monofilaments: How do you handle a 'value' of >6.65, when the patient did not feel the strongest filament, that is?”
“Ah! Great question. I have some props that may be able to help explain this.” Banner walked over to his bag as Shuri and Peter shivered with anticipation. “Because testing monofilament and its resulting ‘score’-” he put his fingers in quotation marks- “have not a continuous nature, the descriptive and inferential statistics have to be done considering a categorical classification - variable with ordinal nature. Say the patient feels or does not feel A or B or C or D,” Banner took out four objects to represent this, but then stops as he realized it’s not what he meant to take out. A few chuckles are scattered and he stares blankly at the dildos. His face turns an odd shade of red. “Oh, ahem. This was, uh, this wasn’t what I meant…” he trails off. He quickly stuffs them back into his bag and finishes the explanation.
Among the wave of faces, Shuri shielded hers and called out in an unrecognizable voice, “are those yours?” A few chuckles were stifled before the room went silent. Peter looked at her with a stern face, but he was trying not to laugh along with everyone else.
“What? Um, no, those, uh, I don’t know how, I-” Banner flustered on. “It must have, uh, been for a different class, or something. Yeah, yeah.” He ran his fingers through his disheveled hair and walked around to the other side of the desk. “Anyway, we, uh, have a special guest who’s agreed to help demonstrate today.”
Again, Shuri called out. “Demonstrate with the things in your bag??”
“What? No, no. Demonstrate with the kine- Kinesiology.” Instead of red, Banners face was now gaunt.
At his cue, Colonel Rhodey entered the room. Awes of admiration went around for him. Rhodey and Bruce man-hugged.
“Did you know Rhodey was coming?” Shuri asked Peter, half frantically, half mischievously.
“No, but I think I have an idea.” Peter opened his laptop that was connected to the presentation screen. He quickly connected to the speakers, opened up YouTube, and played the American National Anthem. Then, as fast as his fingers would allow, he blew up a picture of Rhodey and displayed his face on the board.
Rhodey looked around. “Oh, this really isn’t necessary.” He gave a stern look towards Bruce, who held his hands up as if to say, ‘it wasn’t me.’
“Ahem,” Bruce spoke over the anthem. “Colonial Rhodey will be helping us demonstrate the impact that high intensity exercise has on cerebral blood flow. So first, we’re going to take a look at his blood flow before he exercises. We will start by using this vector arterial spin labeling MRI.” Rhodey sat down in front of the class and allowed Bruce to hook him up to the machine.
As Bruce began explaining what he was doing and numbers and charts starting appearing on the screen, Bruce had to take a step back. “These numbers are a little low,” Bruce said, as they continued to drop. “Oh my, this is interesting. Your numbers are fluctuating.” Bruce poked Rhodey with something sharp.
“Woah, man!”
“Yeah, yeah.” Bruce was studying the numbers and displayed them on the board for everyone to see. But before everyone could see what Bruce was so interested in, Peter changed the screen to display normal numbers. The interns looked around, wondering if Dr. Banner had lost it.
“Dr. Banner?” the girl from before called. “I don’t see what’s wrong with those numbers.”
“You don’t?!” Bruce exclaimed without looking at the board. “It’s incredible! It’s fascinating!” Murmurs flew around the room. “I’ve never seen anything like it before!”
The girl called out again. “Why are they so weird? They seem normal to me.”
“Yeah,” echoed a few voices of agreement around the room.
Bruce scrunched up his face in confusion; this was a top-intern class. Shouldn’t they know the basics of cerebral blood flow in respect to the vector arterial spin labeling MRI?
Rhodey stepped up from the desk. “I thought I was going to run on that?” He pointed to a treadmill in the corner.
“Yeah,” Bruce said, still a little perplexed- though, more so disappointed. “Okay everyone,” he turned to the interns, “let’s see how the Colonel reacts on the treadmill.”
Rhodey got up on the treadmill. Bruce pressed the start button and began to explain what should happen.
Shuri and Peter shared a devilish smile as Peter pressed a button, causing the treadmill to speed up. When Rhodey was able to endure the levels without sweat, Peter turned the dial to the highest.
Rhodey, going from leveled to extreme, fell off the treadmill. The room sucked in a collective gasp. “I’m alright,” Rhodey informed them, dusting off his shirt. “Must’ve just lost my-” Rhodey stopped after seeing two teens in the crowd of interns giggling their shits out. “Why you little-”
Peter and Shuri hopped up as fast as they could and ran through the crowd of people, Peter apologizing the whole way down through his uncontained giggles.
Banner stood dumbfounded before the mess with the rest of the room.