Toph wasn't a fan of school if only because she didn't really need it. Back home, she was an earthbender and a friend of the avatar so she figured that she'd be there to help Aang when he needed it and the rest of the time, she'd be focused on herself and her bending. Good benders were always needed for something or other and Toph was one of the best benders around. Salem changed those plans, though, and Toph frowned as Hope made a point. Ugh. She didn't know how long she would be in Salem and that meant she needed to know how the town worked.
"I guess," she reluctantly admitted and took another lick of her ice cream. Maybe she'd go the first day and see if it held any appeal for her. That wouldn't kill her. "I'll go the first day at least," she agreed.
She snorted but her lips quirked up at Hope's cheerful tone about making friends. "Depends if they're buttheads or not. I've run into a lot of those." Though Toph supposed she had found Hope on her first day so maybe there were more people like her in school.
She followed Hope's lead and finished her ice cream and tossed the wrapper in the trash. As they walked by a street lamp, Toph sneakily ran her hand over it and snatched herself a piece of it. "Hey, I haven't shown you I can do this." She held out her hands and the chunk of metal floated above her palms. She cupped her hands around it and the metal shifted shape into a star as if it was made of liquid rather than something solid.
"I call it metalbending. I invented it." No one else in their world could do it but Toph had figured out to manipulate metal when she'd been locked in a metal box by two men her parents had paid to take her back home to them. She held up the metal star and then it moved down and slithered around her wrist like a bracelet. She used to have a bracelet made of metal from a comet but that hadn't come with her to Salem.