Let Us Help You

Part 2

"Rankings are out. There will be only one more re-ranking after this before your final exam," Sharon said as she posted the sheet up.

The team watched from the one-way mirror. Even Tony and Bruce were there instead of with the IT and Science Departments despite the fact that their rankings were also coming out today. Everyone agreed that the field agent ranking was much more entertaining. As soon as Sharon closed the door behind her, everyone ran up to the sheet doing everything but throwing elbows to get to the front. Minnie bounced on the yoga ball off to the side. It's not like the sheet was going to magically change so she would just wait till everyone else finished checking and complaining.

"What the fuck?" She heard Lisa exclaim since she reached the sheet first. Everyone was waiting for her to say something.

"How the hell is Minnie number one?!"

That made Minnie look up from watching the undone laces on her sneakers jump up and down as she bounced on the ball. Everyone's eyes were on her but only Clark, Courtney, and Morgan were happy for Minnie. The others were seething.

"Your lazy ass doesn't even push as hard as us."

That caused tears to pinprick at the corner of Minnie's eyes. Sam had to be grabbed by Tony to sit down and not enter the room— technically none of the recruits but Minnie knew that there even was a two-way mirror in the training room. The whirring of Bucky's metal plates sounded loudly in the room the Avengers were in as he clenched it into a fist as hard as possible.

Being called lazy was one of Minnie's triggers and he knew it. She heard that and in her mind turned it into 'you're a cow and everyone can see it because you can't do anything'. And that tended to spiral into something worse that was harder to get Minnie out of because there was no real way to win.

They couldn't distract her with other attributes about herself because she was confident in those. Not once did Minnie ever associate her other values like intelligence with her physical body so they couldn't even draw her focus elsewhere. They would try but it ended in Minnie responding with she knew how smart she was because why wouldn't she be and then return to poking at parts of her body. Bucky was on edge and was debating whether to burst into the training room anyway, regardless of the fact that they weren't supposed to.

"Hey, she literally masters moves in seconds!" Clark said as Courtney aggressively nodded her head in agreement.

"What did you do?" one of them asked. Minnie shrugged because she really didn't know.

"I knew it was special treatment!" Lisa said. "Misses weeks of class and passes out on a mission but still at the top."

There were murmurs of agreement. On the other side of the mirror, the team was watching with rage in their eyes. Nat told Fury they should've kept Minnie's ranking number five despite the fact that she qualified for one. Fury wasn't having it, he said that Minnie was the top so they were putting her there especially since they wanted her on the team. He was over the nonsense but the rest of the team said he hadn't seen it. So he compromised that this week they would put Minnie's true ranking and he would join them to watch Ranking Day and see the drama for himself.

"What did you do?" Ryan asked.

"Hmm?"

"It can't just be because you live with them. So what is it? You their little maid? Clean the whole place for them, do their laundry, wash their dishes."

"I just live here, I'm not—"

"She's probably sleeping with someone," one of the others suggested.