"I'm grounded?!"

"Until we can establish the level of risk to you from this mystery bidder of Ed's." Dark summoned Bing for this one-to-one and it's going about as successful as can be expected. Dark's the one who brought Bing into the building so of course he knows about the boy being a cyborg and it hasn't escaped him what an offer for Bing of 20 million means. Even so, the grey man is stood behind his desk, a picture of composure as he looks at the younger ego.

"Well it's obviously a prank."

"Bing."

"Or Ed's lying because he's sick of nobody buying his kids."

"Bing!"

"You can't punish me for this! You're just annoyed because-."

"ASHLEY!" The room shakes with Dark's fury and Bing sits back in his chair looking sheepish, his mouth instantly shutting. "Until I tell you otherwise, you are not to leave this building. If I find out that you've disobeyed this order, I will use force. Do you understand me?"

"….yes, Dark."

When Dark dismisses him, Bing just heads for his room kind of not up for being around anybody else right now. He spends the next hour or so just throwing his baseball (because of course Bing has a baseball for hand-eye co-ordination) at the wall and catching it as it bounces back. Keeps him doing something at least.

Eventually there's a knock at the door and Silver pokes his head around the door.

"Bing? You ready?" Right. Thursday. He and Silver go and do dramatic hero-type poses on the roofs of abandoned warehouses every Thursday. They call it hero-training. Originally it was going to be parkour but when Bing fell off the first rooftop, they agreed that maybe dramatic posing would be a bit safer. Dorky but it's become their thing and is actually really fun.

Except now he can't leave the building. Bing gives a sad smile as he throws the baseball again. "I don't think I'm feeling it tonight."

"Really?" The hero seems disappointed, rubbing awkwardly at the back of his neck. "It'll be weird without you."

Bing shrugs. Of course he wants to do it. He loves their dorky poses and stuff but he also loves not pissing Dark off. "Sorry, bro. Maybe another time."

When Silver's gone, Bing throws the ball again. He's going to have to make a lot of excuses and is probably going to piss off a lot of people. Being one of the lesser egos without a major input to…well anything, he does a lot of random stuff with the others.

He won't be able to check on the neighborhood squirrels with King on Saturday. Yeah he won't have a good excuse for that. And since he can't run errands for Google any more, he'll reinstate the ban on Bing's presence in the computer lab while they're working. He's thinking of all the things he won't be able to do any more when the door opens again.

Silver stands in the doorway, a kind of smirk on his face. "You want to race wheely office chairs up on the third floor instead?"

Bing grins, almost leaping to his feet as he yells, "Hell yeah!"

Maybe being 'grounded' just means he'll have to be a bit more creative in what he does with his friends.