Toph Beifong

Toph Beifong is an earthbending master, one of the most powerful of her time, and the discoverer of metalbending. Blind since birth, Toph was constantly treated condescendingly because of her visual impairment, particularly by her overprotective parents, Lao and Poppy Beifong. Upon discovering badgermoles, earthbending animals who are also blind, she learned how to use earthbending as an extension of her senses. This gave her the ability to "see" every vibration that passes through the ground.
Having developed her own unique style of earthbending, Toph acquired a toughened personality and became famous for winning underground earthbending tournaments under the alias "The Blind Bandit", doing so behind her parents' backs. Although initially uninterested in directly aiding the war effort, she eventually chose to leave behind her old life, and travel with Avatar Aang and his friends as his earthbending teacher, when her parents finally became unbearable for her. Toph's total mastery over earthbending, unique personality, and thoughtful pragmatism made her a valuable addition to the team.
After Republic City's formation, Toph became the city's first Chief of Police, forming the Metalbending Police Force to help maintain order. She had two daughters with two different men: Lin, who succeeded her as Chief of Police, and Suyin, who created the metal city of Zaofu. Toph eventually set out to roam the world in search of enlightenment before settling down in the Foggy Swamp.
Toph was born in 87 or 88 AG as the only child of the wealthy Beifong family from Gaoling. Born blind, she was sheltered by her parents, who believed her blindness made her fragile and incapable of looking after herself. They went to extreme measures to protect her, including hiding her existence from the rest of the world, which resulted in very few people knowing that the Beifong family even had a daughter. Her parents expected their daughter to be well-mannered and proper due to their noble status in Earth Kingdom society, something with which Toph secretly disagreed, causing her to resent her parents' treatment.
One day when she was around five years old, Toph ran away from home and hid in a cave inhabited by badgermoles. badgermoles were the first earthbenders and according to Toph, she felt that she and the creatures understood each other as they were both blind. She learned earthbending by imitating their movements. In this way, she learned to "see" through the use of her earthbending, detecting people and other objects through their vibrations, which she sensed through the ground via her bare feet. Her blindness and patience helped her to develop a keen sense of hearing.
Lao Beifong later hired the earthbender teacher, Master Yu, to instruct her. Acting upon the orders of Toph's father, he did not teach her anything other than beginner's moves, unaware that she had already achieved mastery in the art. She became such a formidable bender that she secretly entered underground earthbending tournaments as the Blind Bandit, and was successful to the point where she became the champion of Earth Rumble more than once. After meeting Aang when she was 12 years old, Toph soon ran away in order to teach him earthbending, but also to escape her parents, who never granted her any real freedom.
After joining Team Avatar, Toph quarreled with Katara over her participation in the team, which, along with the additional stress of being chased by Azula and her team, led to Toph leaving the group. However, after talking to Iroh, Toph changed her mind and rejoined her friends in Tu Zin. After the encounter, Toph began her earthbending lessons with Aang. Although Aang initially struggled with Toph's training methods, he learned to adopt an earthbender-like approach to battle situations and started to bend the element. Soon after, Team Avatar was split up during a Fire Nation ambush. Toph, Aang, and Sokka captured a Fire Nation soldier while searching for Katara, and were eventually reunited with her through the aid of Jiang's pirates.
As Aang continued his bending training with Toph and Katara, the group ventured into the middle of the Si Wong Desert with Professor Zei in hope of learning information to use against the Fire Nation. Although they managed to find Wan Shi Tong's library, Toph chose to stay outside, as she could not read. When the structure began to sink, Toph chose to hold up the library even as Si Wong tribesmen arrived on the scene and kidnapped Appa. After making their way out of the desert, Team Avatar's new goal was to inform the Earth King about an eclipse in the Fire Nation that Sokka had discovered in the library. The team chose to make their way to Ba Sing Se via the dangerous Serpent's Pass, which the group successfully managed to do in spite of numerous setbacks.
Although they arrived at the walls of the capital, Toph and the team first helped to thwart an invasion plan by destroying the Fire Nation drill. The group found it difficult to meet with King Kuei once settling in the city, but Toph helped the rest of the team sneak into a party at the palace, where they were discovered and dismissed by Long Feng. As the team continued their search for Appa and waited to meet with the government, they managed to rest for a while, though eventually found that Appa was in the clutches of the Dai Li. Team Avatar managed to subdue the Dai Li and convinced the Earth King to regain power and imprison Long Feng, beginning their plans to invade the Fire Nation with the help of the Council of Five. With things looking better for the team, Toph received a letter claiming that her mother was in the city and that she finally understood her daughter, but when going to meet her, Toph was kidnapped by Xin Fu and Master Yu, who began to take her back to Gaoling in a metal cage pulled by an ostrich horse-drawn cart.
After some time in her cage, Toph began to bash her hands against the metal walls using seismic sense. The vibrations allowed her to see the fragments of earth within metal. Reaching out for the fragments and widening her stance, Toph bent metal for the first time in the history of earthbending. After freeing herself from the cage, she trapped Xin Fu and Yu inside and hurried back to Ba Sing Se on a wave of earth, until she was picked up by Aang and Sokka on Appa. Returning to the palace, Toph and the group were caught off-guard by Azula and her team, who had masqueraded as Kyoshi Warriors and begun to orchestrate a palace coup with the aid of the Dai Li. Toph easily broke herself, Sokka and King Kuei free from imprisonment with metalbending, but escaped Ba Sing Se with a grievously wounded Aang on Appa after the city fell to the Fire Nation.
After fleeing Ba Sing Se, Team Avatar commandeered a Fire Nation ship, sailing toward the Fire Nation as Aang slumbered. Shortly after he awoke, they met another Fire Nation ship, and Toph aided in the ensuing battle with her metalbending. Team Avatar split from their allies and went undercover as Fire Nation citizens in order to prepare for the invasion. Eventually, the team began to be pursued by a mysterious assassin with the ability to combustionbend.
As the team's resources began to run low, Toph decided to earn money for the group by cheating at carnival games in Fire Fountain City using earthbending and metalbending. Toph began to earn a reputation as a scam artist called "The Runaway." This caused a rift to grow between Toph and Katara again, but the two soon made up, with Katara proposing that they run an even bigger scam by turning in Toph, collecting the bounty, and her metalbending herself out of jail. However, this was a trap set by Combustion Man and both of them were imprisoned. Katara freed the pair from the prison by bending her own sweat to cut the wooden cell, and the group fled the city after stunning Combustion Man. Toph also admitted her guilt about her parents and sent a message to them using Hawky.
When the Day of Black Sun arrived, Toph served as an earthbending soldier during the invasion. Toph battled against Fire Nation soldiers in the harbor until Aang told them that Caldera City was abandoned. Toph sensed an underground bunker beneath the capital and searched for the Fire Lord with Aang and Sokka, but the group only found Azula, who taunted Sokka. With the eclipse having passed, the invasion force retreated, with Team Avatar and their younger allies heading to the Western Air Temple.
Soon after settling at the temple, Toph sensed that Zuko had arrived. The prince told them that he had changed and now wished to teach Aang firebending. All but Toph rejected him, as she could sense his sincerity with her truth-seeing. When Toph approached Zuko at his camp alone, he accidentally burned her feet, and she spent the rest of the night traveling back to the temple. Though the group seemed to be further turned against Zuko, they welcomed him to the team after he proved himself by helping to kill Combustion Man. Toph provided useful advice to Aang and Zuko in trying to find the dragons to learn firebending, though she along with the rest of the group fled the temple after it was attacked by Azula following Hakoda and Suki's rescue from the Boiling Rock.
The group settled on Ember Island following the attack, where Toph expressed admiration of a bizarre portrayal of herself in a play retelling their adventures. However, the group's anticipated chance to recuperate was interrupted when Zuko informed them of the necessity to attack the Fire Nation before it had a chance to burn the Earth Kingdom to ash during Sozin's Comet. Toph helped the team prepare for the assault on Ozai in a mock battle where she played the Fire Lord, but the preparations were halted when Aang mysteriously disappeared the following night. Unable to find Aang, the group traveled to the Earth Kingdom so June could locate the Avatar, but to no avail. Instead, June brought the group to Iroh and the rest of the Order of the White Lotus. As part of the battle plans, Toph, Sokka, and Suki went to intercept the Fire Nation fleet of airships. Toph propelled them all aboard the ships with earthbending just as they took off, and promptly used metalbending to incapacitate the soldiers and captain. Sokka steered their ship into the others, but their own ship began to break apart and they were separated from Suki. Just as Toph and Sokka were about to fall from the ship, they were saved by Suki who was piloting another. As the comet departed, the group met up with Aang, who had stripped Ozai of his bending powers, congratulating him and taunting the former Fire Lord. After Zuko's coronation, Toph joined the rest of their team and their allies at the Jasmine Dragon in Ba Sing Se, where they celebrated their hard-won victory.
Following the war's conclusion, Toph began to notice that her bracelet would shiver slightly when others around her got emotional. Toph speculated that these people were potential metalbenders, and founded a metalbending academy in Yu Dao, with her first three students being Penga, The Dark One, and Ho Tun. Toph welcomed the other members of Team Avatar to the city while its political status was disputed during the Harmony Restoration Movement. As a teacher, Toph felt the effects of the conflict when Master Kunyo claimed ownership of the academy, as it had once been his firebending dojo. On the day of the battle for Yu Dao, Toph intended to surrender, but changed her mind when her students finally displayed tenacity, and began to metalbend for the first time. Toph participated in the battle by bending underground slides beneath tanks and disabled the vehicles. After peace was made in Yu Dao, many more students enroled at the academy, and she declined an invitation to come to the Fire Naiton with the rest of Team Avatar due to her workload.
Toph attended a banquet in celebration of Yu Dao's new coalition government roughly one year later. She unenthusiastically joined Aang on a trip to the Yue Bay area, where Team Avatar and the Air Acolytes recreating Yangchen's Festival. Toph spurned many of the traditions, as they reminded her of her strict upbringing. When the group reached an industrial town, Toph quickly befriended a young industrialist, Satoru. Though Aang was disheartened to see the polluted environment, Toph opined that the Earthen Fire Refinery was a symbol of international cooperation, similar to Yu Dao. However, Toph was shocked to find that her father was one of the refinery's co-owners. Lao did not admit that Toph was his daughter, and ordered the Rough Rhinos to escort her off the premises, angering Toph, who wished to speak with her father. Toph managed to gain access to the factory grounds, where Lao disavowed with kinship with Toph, and did not react to any of her accomplishments. When Sokka alerted them of the unstable iron mine, Toph stopped the surroundings from crushing her, Katara, and her father and his co-workers. Toph strained herself by keeping up the debris for an unbearably long amount of time, until her students and Aang arrived to help. After being freed from the mine, Toph collapsed in her father's arms. After she learned that Aang intended on destroying the factory, Toph tried to dissuade him, telling him that he was doing so for no reason, but her efforts were cut short by the appearance of General Old Iron. After Aang battled the spirit, Toph thanked him for saving her students and choosing not to destroy the refinery. Her relationship with her father was slowly being mended, and three months later, she helped oversee Satoru's work in the refinery.
After the growth of Earthen Fire Industries, the academy had enough funding to build new facilities, and Toph's first three students were skilled enough to teach beginner's classes. In spite of her success, Toph began to grow bored of the monotony of daily life. After Sokka and Suki arrived to take her to see Chong and Trustfully in Love, Toph sought out an underground bending battle in an abandoned warehouse in Yu Dao. She discovered a lavabender named Sun, and helped support the warehouse after it was damaged by his lava. Toph invited Sun to join the academy and teach him how to master his element, and found her passion for teaching once again.
Toph was later sent to the Southern Water Tribe as a representative of Earthen Fire Industries to aid in the Southern Reconstruction Project, though soon found herself in the midst of conflict once more when Gilak and his soldiers attacked a festival, with Toph and Sokka battling the Southern nationalists. The next morning, Toph and her initial three students began work on Maliq and Malina's factory. During an international conference at Hakoda's office, Earth King Kuei was kidnapped by the Southern nationalists. Toph participated in the skirmish at the Bridge of No Return, wearing heavy armor to counter Thod's chi blocking. After the fight, Toph and the rest of Team Avatar enjoyed a meal at Kanna and Pakku's house.
Later, Team Avatar made their way to Yu Dao, but Toph convinced Aang to stop by Earthen Fire Industries, so that she could meet with her father. To their surprise, the small town around the refinery had grown into a small city called Cranefish Town. They soon found that the fast-growing city was suffering from bending gangs, and an increasing social divide between benders and nonbenders. The same problem had occurred at the factory, as several bender workers were let go to keep costs down. After an explosion at the factory, Toph began to suspect Councilwoman Liling, having heard the footsteps of her daughters, Ru and Yaling. Toph offered to teach Yaling metalbending, but her true goal was to coax her into revealing more information. Through Yaling, Toph gained the password to a bender supremacist rally, where she confronted and attempted to arrest Liling. Liling was captured after a skirmish with Team Avatar, and Toph proposed that Aang take her bending away, to the shock of the others. After Liling managed to escape, Toph battled her bender supremacist forces. Though Yaling managed to knock Toph to the ground, Sokka managed to defeat her. Three days later, Toph walked through the city, and along with the rest of Team Avatar, resolved to stay in Cranefish Town and help it prosper into a city later known as Republic City.
After the formation of Republic City, Toph was placed at the head of its law enforcement and became the city's first Chief of Police. Her metalbending knowledge allowed her to found an elite team, the Metalbending Police Force, to aid her in her duties.
Sometime before 120 AG, Toph met Kanto, with whom she had a daughter, Lin. The relationship did not work out, however, and six years later, she had another daughter, Suyin, with another man, though she ended up raising them as a single parent. Both daughters inherited her earthbending abilities and became masters in their own right. Seeking to give them a different childhood than the one she had, Toph gave her daughters the freedom to find their own path. Lin would later follow in her footsteps as the Chief of Police, while Suyin became a rebel, much like her mother when she was young. Toph told her daughters she considered them a blessing; though Lin thought she was lying. In 124 AG, Toph commissioned a friend to illustrate her first encounter with Aang during Earth Rumble VI to include in a book the latter was assembling for his son, Tenzin.
In 128 AG, at age forty, Toph was on her way to arrest a man named Yakone for being a practitioner of the illegal art of bloodbending and using it to terrorize Republic City. Although mildly annoyed that Avatar Aang asked to accompany her, she let him join her, although she could not resist calling him by her childhood nickname for him, "Twinkle Toes", much to his annoyance.
Having apprehended Yakone at Kwong's Cuisine, she brought him to be tried before the United Republic Council. However, right after he was found guilty of his crimes, Yakone used his bloodbending abilities to incapacitate Sokka. Coming to the aid of her friend, Toph was immobilized by the illegal bending art as well and was forced to use her keys to free Yakone of his handcuffs before being harshly tossed aside and incapacitated.
Toph was hailed as a hero in Republic City following her retirement and a metal statue of her in her police uniform was placed in a niche above the main entrance of the police headquarters. Several statues of Toph were also built in Zaofu in honor of her discovery of metalbending