"I want back in."
"You may have some memories of who you were before you chose to live as an animatronic, but those aren't enough to inform who you are as an individual. It will take a bit of time for you to figure out who Billy is, what kind of person you want to be."
Twenty-one-year-old Billy wakes up in a hospital, groggy and confused. The last thing he remembers is crawling into a car in the junkyard, and the car going into a trash compactor. He should be dead, but he's not. The nurses quickly explain to him that after investigating his injuries, they managed to save some of his limbs, and they're working to getting him back into society. Taking the second chance, Billy tries to forget his animatronic self and do the most living he can. His animatronic self, however, is in parts in the basement. And it's not too happy to be separated.
The twenty-second Tales from the Pizzaplex story, and the first of the eighth book. It is a direct sequel to HAPPS' "B-7."
Tropes related to “B7-2”:
- Afraid of Doctors: Billy is at first afraid of the doctors who come see him, his mind immediately associating them with Doc and what had been done to him. The doctors are all very nice and patient, though, and he grows to like them.
- Alas, Poor Villain: Now attached to a terminally-ill woman and slowly dying, B-7 begins thrashing and screaming, begging for Billy to help him. Its cries revolt Billy.
- An Arm and a Leg: While Billy thought that he'd replaced all of his limbs, Dr. Herrera tells him that Doc had failed to remove the left leg, instead surgically altering it to trick Billy. They were also able to find and re-attach Billy's arm from Doc's freezer. He is still missing his right leg and left arm.
- Artificial Limbs: After his horrifying realization in the last short, Billy refuses to get prosthetics. After B-7 dies, Billy finally accepts the prosthetics.
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Author's Saving Throw: It's quite likely the entire story was written to address the accusations of transphobia the original story received, mainly by giving Billy a happy ending and putting a more supernatural threat into the narrative. - Be Yourself: Billy's grandmother's last words: "Don’t grieve for me. It’s time for you to live. Have a good life. Be true to yourself and be kind to other people. And go to Sunday school."
- Body Horror: Billy's recovered a little from his animatronic transformation, but the animatronic parts still try to take a humanoid form and force-fuse with him again. Eventually they fuse with his Grandmother, forcibly removing her limbs and replacing them while slicing up and burrowing into her skin. Even without the fusion, Billy describes that his blood and tissue are still encrusted against the metal.
- Church Lady: Of the kind but strict variety, Billy's Grandmother insists that her family attends Sunday services and refuses to let them stay home. This persists one Billy moves in with her.
- Clothing-Concealed Injury: Billy can tell that the psychiatrist is disgusted by his lack of ears, and becomes self-conscious about it. Nurse Gloria brings him a rasta beanie hat, which he starts wearing to cover the removal.
- Color Motifs: Going from his white-and-gray animatronic isolation, Billy's life is slowly infused with more and more color as he becomes more "human" and his colorful, floral grandmother brings him back into himself.
- Contrived Coincidence: Billy was saved from the trash compactor at the last minute because a bird landed on the station wagon, and the junkyard owner bird-watcher saw blood coming out of the wagon's back door.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Upping the ante on the previous story, the cybernetic parts that Billy attached to himself actually formed a consciousness of its own, that being the now-split personality of B-7, and it desperately tries to fuse again with Billy.
- The Dutiful Son: In hopes of staying away from the hospital, where B-7 is, Billy decides to play the role of "dutiful grandson", and gets himself into a routine at his grandmother's house.
- Evil Phone: Every night at the same time, B-7 calls Billy's grandmother's house in attempt to contact him. When she realizes what's going on, she starts talking to him instead.
- Flower Motifs: Billy at first doesn't like the flowery garden and interior design of his Grandmother's house, but soon becomes incredibly comforted by them. After Grandma dies, he starts wearing a carnation in his beanie.
- Heroic Sacrifice: It turns out that the entire time, Billy's Grandmother has been playing B-7, convincing it that she's sympathetic to it, they've been bonding, and she wants to become one with it. As soon as it's too late, she triumphantly tells Billy that she's been dying for "some time now," and fused with B-7 in order to finally kill it and allow Billy to live his own life.
- Humanoid Abomination: B-7, and its fusion with Billy's Grandmother. Mixed with a Mechanical Abomination, of course.
- Humans Are Good: As Billy is in the hospital, he is visited by his old psychologist, his childhood friends, and his delivery people, all of whom bring well-wishes and acceptance. When he moves in with his grandmother, he is also fully accepted by her church friends.
- Killer Robot: The remains of B-7 become horrifyingly threatening as they try to get Billy to merge with them once again.
- Literal Split Personality: Billy and B-7 end up split into separate entities.
- Monster of the Week: B-7 itself. It forms itself a consciousness once separated from Billy, possibly made of Agony, and is determined to merge again with him.
- Most Writers Are Writers: After starting to get used to human life, Billy begins hanging out with Frank from church, who's a mystery author. Billy realizes that he really likes writing, and might want to become an author, too."Go forth and have adventures, young man," Frank said. "You have to experience life to write something interesting."
- Mr. Fixit: Having learned to do household repairs as an "animatronic," Billy becomes his grandma's "fix-it man."
- New Technology Is Evil: Grandma doesn't like computers or TV, thinking that "all that digital stuff" is brain-rotting.
- No Full Name Given: In neither the first nor second story does Billy get a surname.
- Not Quite Dead: The last short ended with Billy killing himself in a trash compactor. We find out in this short that he managed to be saved.
- Parental Abandonment: Dan's abandonment of his mentally ill son is re-focused on in this short, and the story ends with Billy determined to find him.
- Pungeon Master: Billy finds out, a week after moving in with his seemingly-strict Grandma, that she has a very punny sense of humor.
- Raised by Grandparents: While Billy is an adult, his lack of development in his childhood years leads him to be basically starting fresh as soon as he gets out of the hospital. His grandmother takes him in and helps him figure himself out.
- Saintly Church: While at first nervous about what others will think of him, Billy soon finds that the hundred-year-old church his grandmother drags him to has very little people in it (only 37, according to Billy), all of whom are incredibly accepting and kind. Billy says the pastor looks kind, and Frank, another attendee, offers to take him fishing.
- Secretly Dying: Grandma apparently had "been terminal" for a while now (likely with cancer). She intends to fuse with B-7 to kill it with her.
- The Shrink: Dr. Alice Lingstrom visits Billy for the first time in years, and leaves her contact information in case he still wants to talk.
- Signature Headgear: Billy's new Rasta beanie hat, used to hide his lack of ears.
- Taking You with Me: Knowing she's going to die soon anyway, Billy's grandmother fuses with B-7 so that it will leave Billy alone and he will be able to live as a normal human.
- Tragic Villain: All B-7 asks is to be made whole with Billy again, having been a part of him for almost twenty years. It tells Billy that it chose to fuse with his grandmother as a way to remain close to him.
- Truth in Television: Dr. Lingstrom seemed to have diagnosed Billy with lycanthropy in the last short, as she referenced it by name on his 13th (18th) "creation day" party, and Billy was said to leave and look up what it meant. In real life, clinical lycanthropy
is a psychiatric syndrome in which a person believes they are or have transformed into a non-human animal. This short focuses on Billy's recovery. - Unnamed Parent: While Billy's parents have names, his Grandmother doesn't get one, despite her major presence in this story.
- We Used to Be Friends: B-7 tries appealing to Billy with this, saying that it and Billy were "buddies."
- What Happened to the Mouse?: While several major characters from "B-7" are either brought back or explained away, we never find out how Billy's pseudo-girlfriend Maliah is doing, nor does Billy attempt to contact her. Doc and Norma also vanish without a trace, though their presence in Billy's life was not so good, so it's probably for the best on that front.
