Fire and Aether

Chapter 46: The Beifong Metalbending Academy

    Meanwhile, over the course of the last year, Toph had decided to share her wisdom with the world. That in mind, she created a metalbending school and opened it to the public. Only three students had joined, none of them seeming to be particularly excited about it.
    When the rest of Team Avatar had headed out to stop Zuko from making a big mistake, she had joined them. Now, she was headed back to check on her students. "Well it's been fun, guys, but I gotta get back to my students. Someone's gotta keep those lily livers in line."
    "Wait, you can't leave me alone with them!" Sokka complained. "The oogie-osity's only gonna get worse after you're gone!"
    "Well, you could come with me." Toph proposed.
    She pushed Sokka off of Appa and the pair hit the ground, sliding down a slope of earth that Toph had earthbended. 
    "Toldya we'd make it."
    Sokka groaned. "I tasted my stomach halfway down there but...not a bad way to travel."
    They arrived at the Beifong Metalbending Academy just in time to see Toph's students in the process of leaving, dragging their luggage behind them. "And just where do you lily livers think you're going?" Toph called. "Don't tell me you were trying to escape--I mean, give up on your training."
    Her students immediately began apologizing. The youngest member asked about Sokka and Toph sighed.
    "Sokka, these are my students: Ho Tun," she gestured towards the largest one in the group who began screaming about doom, "Penga," she gestured towards the smallest one who attempted to flirt with Sokka, "and Moo--" She was interrupted by the goth looking teenager who answered, "The dark one."
    After the introductions, wherein Penga continued to hit on Sokka despite admitting being only nine years old, Toph cracked her knuckles. "So what were we talking about before all this "nice to meet ya" garbage? Oh, right!! We were talking about hurt!"    
    Ho Tun answered, "Please, Sifu Toph, we weren't trying to run away! We were kicked out!"
    "Kicked out?" Toph asked. "Kicked out by who?"
    Moments later, Toph burst through the doors with a vengeance, screaming for everyone to leave at that moment.
    "Who dares disturb Master Kunyo's Firebending Dojo?" 
    "This is the Beifong Metalbending Academy!"
    A fight broke out as Toph attacked and Kunyo counterattacked with a fire blast. "My students and I left this building in deference to the Harmony Restoration Movement. But now that the Fire Lord has recovered his senses and withdrawn his support for this movement, we've come back to reclaim what is rightfully ours!"
    "Fire Lord Zuko's off his gourd! You people don't belong here! This is the Earth Kingdom's--and the world's--first school of metalbending!"
   "Metalbending doesn't exist!" His children laughed with him.
   As Toph prepared to fight Kunyo again, Sokka piped up, explaining fighting would do no good. It was more important to teach the students.
   "Good point. Rather than a match between the teachers, we'll make this a match between the students!"
   They agreed to wait three days before moving forward with the match. As they left, Kunyo's students proved they were more than a match for Toph's students. Sokka facepalmed, Ho Tun cried out doomed once more, and Toph just shook her head, saying, "Pretty much."
                             * * * * *
   During their training, as Toph and Sokka watched, Sokka remarked, "These were the most qualified students you could find, huh?"
   "It wasn't me." Toph explained, showing Sokka a bracelet on her arm. "It was this."
   "Ooh, space bracelet! Oh, how I miss you space sword!"
   Toph explained how her bracelet would tingle when someone got "super emotional" as she put it. Eventually, the idea came to her that anyone who could move it had the potential to become a metalbender like her so she began recruiting students. Sokka nodded, remembering how Katara had learned about her waterbending because the ice around their village would crack whenever he made her mad.
    That gave Sokka an idea to teach the students himself. Toph looked at him in confusion. "Am I doing this right? I'm trying to roll my eyes at you."
    "Just trust me."
    Toph sighed in defeat and rolled her eyes again.
                           * * * * *
   Every idea Sokka had ended up in defeat. Teaching the students did not work nor did his plan to make the students metalbend by feeling strong emotions like they did when Toph chose them.
   The night before the match with the firebenders, Toph sat outside her metalbending school. When Sokka sat next to her and they had a heart-to-heart. "Do you ever think about metal?"
    "Not really." Sokka said. "When I have extra time, I usually think about food, mainly meat."
    "Metal is just a part of earth that's been refined and purified." Toph explained while she contemplated. "But how does it become like that? By getting heated, melted, and pounded. By going through pressure and pain. 
     "I discovered metalbending in a tiny metal cell, when Master Yu and Xin Fu were taking me back to my parents. That whole trip, all I could think about was how my parents expected me to be something I'm not. Sure, they wanted me to be helpless, but they also wanted me to be a cultured, well-mannered, soft-spoken little lady. All I felt was pressure and pain.
     "When I brought Ho Tun, Penga, and the Dark One to this school, I expected them to become metalbenders. I was gonna make them tough enough to move the most stubborn part of the most stubborn element. I expected them to be something they're not." Toph stood, anger rising. "How is what I'm doing to them different from what my parents did to me? Maybe the Beifong Metalbending Academy is just a way for me to pass all that pressure and pain to someone else."
     "No, Toph," Sokka said, "that's not what this place is at all..."
     Toph walked away. "When Kunyo comes tomorrow, I'm gonna go up to him and sit down. He can have his school back."
                          * * * * *
    The next morning, Kunyo showed up and Toph simply said that he won the match but, before she could sit, her students, who had heard everything she'd said the night before, came bursting through the door. "Sifu Toph, don't sit down!"
     A piece of metal flew out of nowhere and hit Toph over the head. She turned in surprise. "Ho Tun, did you just metalbend?"
    "I guess I did."
    As they began to explain what they'd heard last night, Kunyo lost his patience and rallied his students to attack. They were no match for the trio's metalbending, however, and, when Kunyo advanced, he was knocked in the head with the same coins they used against his students. This caused him to sit down. Toph and her students had won the fight.
     "We heard what you said last night."
     "But I don't get it. I didn't say a single nice thing about any of you."
    "You believed in us. You were the only one who believed we could be more than what we are."
    Toph wiped away a tear. "What are you lily livers waiting for, then?! You think getting some coins to fly through the air makes you metalbending masters?! Get back to practice!"
    With that, they bowed and did as she asked.