"You can be whoever you want. Just be careful," Hope said. It wasn't that she was worried about what everyone else would think of Toph. They already stared at her with her outdated style of dress and her strange eyes and refusal to wear shoes. She was worried that Toph might accidentally hurt someone in her arrogance. Hope knew what that was like from experience.
Hope had already seen the destruction that Toph could cause with earthbending. She wasn't sure that she wanted the little girl experimenting with bigger things on a crowded street.
"Let me try metalbending," Hope said. She concentrated, perhaps a bit hard and that was how she knew that it wasn't working. Hope didn't have to work that hard to borrow powers, it was something that she simply did.
"Nope. No luck. I guess you're the only one." Hope gave Toph another smile that she wouldn't be able to see.
"So there's a reason why I came down this street," Hope said. "There's a store here that my friend Mona works at. She's the most fashionable person that I know. That's why I know this is the place for us to get new clothes. I need a wardrobe upgrade too. What do you say?"
Hope probably did need new clothes and had been told as much on multiple occasions that she couldn't wear jeans and green hoodies everywhere. Hope begged to differ, she definitely could. But it wasn't helping her fit in and she couldn't exactly talk a little girl into fitting in if Hope wasn't willing to do it herself.