In the past week, everything about Billy Batson's life had changed. Well, perhaps not everything. He was still twelve years old, still an orphan, and still liked chocolate chip cookies, but those were all things outside of his control, or even realm of understanding that could ever change - aside from progressing through age at a standard rate, of course. What had changed was the environment he found himself in, and the new expectations he felt weighing upon his shoulders, like the tugging straps of his heavy backpack laden with schoolbooks - not that schoolbooks were a new thing to Billy, either.

The thing that was new was his school, Brentwood Academy. He'd never heard of it, growing up in the orphanage at Fawcett City, and it had become something of a myth after he was transferred to a Gotham orphanage when he turned ten. Brentwood Academy, this supposedly magical place where all the super-rich sent their kids to live in luxury while receiving the best education money could buy. Their kids, Billy had always thought to himself. Their kids, never orphans like himself. Brentwood might as well have been the Land of Oz, for as much as he ever thought he could reach it, to the point that he accepted it as just some fantasy land and went on about his own life. And yet here he was, in its halls with their carved mahogany doorways, marble tiled floors, leaded glass windows, and everything he ever imagined would be in some palatial castle. No one ever believed how he actually came to be at Brentwood - Billy scarcely believed it himself - so he simply stopped telling the story. Still, there was no escaping that he was the new Wayne sponsored kid, apparently the latest in a line of others he'd never met, who mostly seemed to be orphans themselves. Bruce Wayne was an orphan, too, so it made sense that he'd sponsor others, right? Yeah, that was all there was to it.

Except there was so much more to it. It was one thing to give an orphan kid a chance at a better life, but it was something else entirely to take them from a state-run orphanage and drop them square into rich kid central. The culture shock felt like whiplash, and the first few days still felt like a blur as Billy adjusted to it. Some things held a familiar structure to him: a lack of parents around, scheduled school periods, scheduled meal times in a cafeteria, and living under the same roof as most everyone you know. Orphanage life had prepared him well for the typical things boys often find difficult to adjust to at a boarding school. To Billy Batson, Brentwood was already feeling like the best orphanage in the world.

But be it an orphanage or boarding school, there was another constant which Billy could have lived without.

Bullies.

Bullies come in all shapes and sizes. Some don't even realize they're doing it. Billy was already used to being looked down on by family kids, but it didn't bother him. He believed in himself, and had gotten himself through life so far, so why be upset? His family would come along someday, so he had a sunny horizon to look to. It wasn't much of an adjustment to figuring out that even though some of his new fellow students believed they were better than him due to wealth, all that money wasn't making them happy. Billy had learned to be happy with no money at all, so inside he pitied them, while continuing to smile on the outside.

Then there was another kind of bully, the kind who go out of their way to be one, and it was a group of such bullies that Billy found himself in the midst of on his first Friday afternoon in the dormitory wing. Somehow, one of them had gotten into his room, and taken his most prized possession: Mr. Tawky Tawny. To anyone other than Billy, Mr. Tawky Tawny was just some old, cheesy-looking, stuffed tiger doll in a tacky green-checked suit coat, polka dot tie, and black pants. Likely the product of the early 1940s, it was far older than Billy himself, and showed signs of decades of love and wear. It was the only thing Billy had that he'd been told was with him when he was found, and the only tie to his past, so to him it was priceless, and his best friend. And at the moment, Mr. Tawky Tawny was being tossed about, over Billy's head, from schoolboy to schoolboy in the ring of older students which surrounded him.

"Looks like Wayne cheaped out on this one!" One boy, probably around fifteen, laughed as he tossed the tiger just before Billy could jump up and snag it. "Sends this runt here with this thing instead of a LexPad."

"What kind of baby still plays with dolls?" snickered another, as he maintained the game of keep-away.

Billy grunted as he made another leap, his new shoes squeaking on the oak plank floors of the second story dormitories, yet still his fingers grasped nothing but air. "C'mon, kid, jump for it! Jump for your dolly!" Laughed a third, and the group of six boys broke into their own laughter as Billy nearly slipped and fell.

"C'mon, guys, give it back! That's mine!" Billy pleaded.

The tallest of the lot, some arrogant piss of a freckle-faced ginger lout - Yansley Fogarty - sneered, his Irish buck teeth on full display as he held Mr. Tawky Tawny just out of reach, then nodded. "He's right, guys," he said. "This is his, and we should give it back..." His second hand grasped one of Mr. Tawky Tawny's arms, preparing to tear it off. "In pieces!"

A tidal wave of horror flooded over Billy Batson's face as he stared, wide-eyed at his beloved plaything. "No!" he shouted. "No no no, don't hurt him!" he begged. To everyone else, it was the cry of a boy trying to save his favorite toy, but to Billy, it was a plea to save Yansley from the beast he knew lived within Mr. Tawky Tawny.