Smoke, though often regarded as a mere byproduct of flame and destruction, in reality it’s almost always the true killer, getting away with it behind its flashier companions. The Element is as old in folklore as human fear itself, and used to symbolize danger, mysticism and panic, but also things like communication and maturity. And today we are looking at two of the most famous users of this underappreciated element and seeing who can Smoke the other out? Smoke, the mysterious Typhokinetic Ninja from Mortal Kombat, and Sannyo Komakusa, the Smoke Controlling Yokai from Touhou Project. These two series are as different as they come, but if there's one thing they are both known for, it’s having all the characters communicate via Brawl, so it only seems fitting to settle this debate the same way!
Background:
Smoke:
Tomas Vrbada was once a perfectly ordinary Czechian boy living in the historic Earthrealm city of Prague, ordinarily this is a lovely historic city known for art and tourism.
But what isn’t so lovely is what happened next! When he was young, Tomas was unlucky enough to be kidnapped from his home by an obscure Cult who sought to perform a ritual to sacrifice him to a demon. These crazed Zealots burned poor Tomas alive on an altar, in what must have been one of the most painful experiences imaginable. But as he was Immolated, his blood, flesh and bones burning and flaking off as ash, something changed, Tomas’ need for justice seemed to overpower his own death.
Tomas’ ashes formed together and turned into a creature known as an Enenra, an elemental creature composed of Smoke and mist. In Japanese Folklore, Enenra are demonic Yokai which reside in Bonfires and have the ability to take on human form. While normally Enenra are simply born from fire, on rare occasions a Deceased human soul can transform itself into one, such is the case here. Anyway, after his transformation, Tomas attacked the cultists, laying waste to every single one of them by suffocating them all to death in retribution.
Afterwards however, Tomas retook his own human form, but was unable to remember anything about his previous life, no family, no name, leaving him to wander the Czechia streets alone. Before long, rumors of a young homeless boy with mysterious Smoke abilities reached the ears of a mysterious organization known as The Lin Kuei.
The Lin Kuei are a secret clan of Chinese Assassins for hire that operate all across the world. While most of their members are born into it, their agents always keep ears opened for those who possess superhuman abilities, in hopes of using them for their goals, and once they heard of Tomas, it was a bit of a no brainer for them.
Quickly they tracked this boy down and brought him into their temple, raising the boy in exchange for his loyalty and service as one of their assassins. Over the next two decades, he was trained every single day to be one of the Deadliest men in the world. He learned numerous martial arts, scholarly teachings, and a high end mastery of his various Enenra powers, and by the end of it, the Lin Kuei assigned him a new codename, one fitting of his unique talents and skills, the Lin Kuei assassin, Smoke.
While in the Lin Kuei, Smoke became one of their top ninja, as well as befriending a promising younger ninja with Cryomantic powers named Kuei Lang, code name: Tundra. The two of them would often train and go on missions together and when Tundra’s older brother Sub-Zero was murdered at the hands of Scorpion, Smoke stepped up and took on a guiding Mentor role to Kuei Lang, not trying to replace his brother but being there for him and supporting him taking up the Sub-Zero mantle.
So when the Lin Kuei decided to implement the Cyber-Initiative and turn all the ninja into enhanced mechanical slaves, Smoke and Sub-Zero defected together and tried to escape. Now this is where the different timelines come into play, but basically Smoke either gets captured and turned into a Cyborg-Slave, or killed and turned into a Revenant-Slave, but in both senarios he does eventually get freed by Sub-Zero and rejoins the Lin Kuei now with Sub-Zero as it’s grandmaster.
Smoke is an extremely wise and honorable warrior, who is very caring about others he is close to. When Bi Han died, Smoke was there to pick up the pieces for Sub Zero and was willing to disobey the direct orders of the Lin Kuei to go with his friend to another dimension just to help him get closure. Despite being trained as an assassin all his life, Smoke is very much a heroic character who acts justly and cares a great deal for his friends. Smoke is smart, patient and very unlikely to act brashly if a more peaceful solution is on the table, that said he does have a strong sense of right and wrong and possesses a surprisingly fiery determination to uphold this, which has led to him jumping into fights before. But overall, Smoke is a relatively pure soul in a world of insane violence and the best friend Sub Zero could ever ask for.
Sannyo:
On the Plateaus off the ominous Yokai Mountain, on certain days of the week, one can find themselves at the doorstep of a mysterious, seemingly abandoned building with a statue of a Dragon’s Head on the door. Behind this door lies a secret club, a hidden casino run by an even more mysterious woman with a checkered past. This is Sannyo Komakusa.
Centuries ago in Japan’s Edo period, Sannyo was once a high ranking Oiran. In historical japan, Oiran were extremely high end Courtesans, or prostitutes, but taken to a much broader term meaning a woman of entertainment. Oiran were like the DnD Bards of their day, having immense amounts of skill in traditional arts, including playing several instruments, singing, dance, and conversing in upper class, formalist language, in addition to um, being very skilled at intimacy.
Anyway, Oiran like Sannyo were incredibly expensive and thus only really served the elite upper class of Japan. They were given the nickname keisei, which literally translates to castle topper, in reference to their ability to steal the hearts of men and match wits with even the highly educated. The Human Sannyo was incredibly talented at all aspects of the profession and quickly became extremely wealthy and basically a local celebrity, wearing expensive clothes and smoking extremely fragrant tobacco that locals could use to recognize her anywhere.
However, Sannyo’s entire mentality of turning pleasure and fun into a profitable business had an unforeseen side effect, corruption. For the sins of greed and lust, Sannyo was transformed into something more than Human, a Yokai creature referred to as a Yamajorou. Yamajorou are a type of Yamanba, or mountain hag, these creatures are powerful witches who were once humans but were corrupted into their present state. Unlike Yamanba, who are typically oni like isolated loners, Yamajorou are much more social and attractive, although still extremely powerful.
Despite this however, Sannyo still appeared human and actually continued her life as it were until Japan actually outlawed Prostitution in the 1950s, in which case Sannyo was forgotten by the people and written off as some untrue legend about some 200 year old Courtesan. And what happens to a fantasy creature when humans stop believing in it?
Why it ends up in the world of Gensokyo of course! Gensokyo is an extradimensional world connected to our own where all the ancient mythology creatures that humans stopped believing in get pulled into. Once Sannyo found herself here, she adapted rather quickly to the more traditional and familiar world around her.
Sannyo her entire life had been making a killing getting people to give away their money to her for entertainment, pleasure and thrills, so she decided she’d bring the same thing to Gensokyo in an more direct sense.
Sannyo moved onto Yokai Mountain and founded the Komakusa Gambling Den, a hidden casino on the side of the mountain which is attended by Kappa, Tengu, various other yokai and even Humans. Sannyo watches over the Den as its decorated hostess, Komakusa-Dayuu, and controls the emotions of those inside with the calming effect of her mystical smoke that permeates the entire facility.
This Gambling Den is located in a secret location to most though it hasn’t stopped travels from the human village from traveling up there just to experience it, something that was concerning for Sannyo as she does not want anyone getting hurt because of this, hence she now holds separate gambling events down at the human village for them on off days.
Sannyo also works as a part time guard of the Mountain’s mystical Rainbow Dragon Cave, which contains the mine of dreams, but is dangerous to humans due to lack of oxygen so the yokai try to keep people out of there. Though she is fun and has a good head on her shoulders, she has fought against tons of foes to protect her business and the caves.
Sannyo is an extremely clever and adaptable goal focused business woman, who enjoys playing into others enjoyment. She is often flirtatious and speaks bluntly but always has a mysterious and trickster-like aura to her. Not only is she seductive in the literal sense but also in how she manages to convince others to join in on gambling and outsmarts the cheaters in her domain. She has great intuition and is known to keep her ear to the grapevine to be aware of the fellow residents of Gensokyo’s reputation and likely intentions when in her presence. That said, while Sannyo is tricky she's not malicious and actually cares a great deal for humans, going out of her way to protect them from the Rainbow Dragon Cave and set up alternate means of Gambling with her rather than making the dangerous trek up Yokai Mountain. That said she's also fairly stubborn and never really moved past her mentality that led to her becoming a yokai in the first place.
Intelligence & Skill:
Smoke:
Smoke is a very intelligent and careful tactician who is skilled in stealth and reconnaissance, able to infiltrate the hostile Outworld dimension to track down Shang Tsung or break into the Lin Kuei Temple and defeat every single ninja warrior inside Sam Fisher style before Sub Zero noticed. And of course his actual fighting skill is extremely impressive.
Smoke is a Master of Mi Tzu, an obscure Northern Chinese Martial art similar to chāquán. Literally Translating to ‘Long Fist’ this fighting style focuses on keeping people at range using long, fully extended sweeping blows that hit from multiple angles at once, similar to Smoke being able to harm someone well before they can reach its source. Those proficient in this style can confuse foes using graceful movements and perform incredibly acrobatic aerial attacks, however the style is countered if a foe manages to penetrate their defenses and get in close.
To cover this weakness, Smoke has also Mastered Judo, a Japanese fighting style that focuses on close range grapples, throws and holds. Pairing these means Smoke can not only still hold his own in Close Range, but can also Use Judo throws to regain his distance and effectively use Mi Tzu moves all over again.
Sannyo:
Sannyo is a many centuries old mountain yokai who has attained large amounts of wisdom and experience. She has shown to be quite skilled at reading people's intentions, seeing through disguises and generally being very sly and clever. She was quite handily able to trick Mamizou, immediately knowing who she is, knowing when she was cheating at gambleing, and fooled her into gambling all of her winnings away. This is no easy feat considering Mamizou is over a millenia old, the leader of Gensokyo’s Tanuki and one of the greatest tricksters in the series.
She is well known for her manipulation skills, and can generally defuse a situation really quickly by enticing her foe to something more pleasurable, which has even stopped Reimu in the past. As a guard to the Rainbow Dragon Cave for over a century, Sannyo also certainly has a fair deal of actual combat experience under her sash, albeit mostly in ranged spellcard bouts.
Powers:
Smoke:
Logia-Smoke Form:
Smoke is an Enenra, which in Mortal Kombat, are formless masses of smoke and vapor that exist from a human Soul, generally one that left a burning corpse. Enenra can reassume the corporeal form their soul had in life to physically interact with things and continue a functional human life. But in reality, his true form is a sentient cloud of gas that cannot be normally interacted with or attacked, and he can easily shift to this form at any time to allow attacks to harmlessly pass through him.
Smoke’s cloud form can be spread throughout massive area’s to vastly increase his effective range and control. In his ending in MK7, after getting a power boost from Blaze, he was even able to spread his form through the Entire Realm of Edenia, making the entire dimension an extension of his biomass. While this is not something he would normally be capable of, It does put into perspective just how terrifying this power is.
As a smoke mass, Smoke is able to float through the air to fly, shapeshift his body into different forms, allow blows to harmlessly pass through him, and also suffocate people to death via flooding the environment with noxious gas that deprives them of Oxygen.
Smoke is able to maneuver his smoke form with so much precision he can pass himself through someone's body and sever every single one of their ligaments and muscle fibers along the way causing them to literally fall into a pile of severed pieces.
Smoke Manipulation:
But of course, Enenra powers don’t simply apply to his smoke form. Even in his human state, Smoke is constantly generating smoke off of his body and can manipulate both this and surrounding smoke using Typhokinesis. This allows him to blast Powerful Smoke attacks that can equal Sub-Zero’s Ice, generate smoke screens that obscure the surroundings, and generally control, detect and manipulate smoke in any conceivable way.
Invisibility:
But Smoke learned a lot more advanced Smoke Manipulation than just that. Smoke can use his gaseous form to cloak his body to resemble his surroundings, or even turn straight up invisible to sneak around undetected.
Teleportation:
Like honestly seemingly every Mortal Kombat Character and their mom, Smoke can also Teleport. In his specific version he fittingly disappears in a puff of smoke before reappearing in another area.
Smoke Portals:
But if teleporting himself wasn’t enough, Smoke can also use smoke to create spatial portals that can warp people and objects across the area to his whim. He seems to be able to open these through smoke near what he wishes to shift, normally through a smoke projectile he tosses but more than likely he could use this anywhere in an Area of Effect attack.
Smoke Armor:
He can also surround himself in an Anti-Projectile Aura of Smoke, while this is active, Smoke’s body will automatically be teleported out of the way the moment any projectiles get close, or even snuff them out on contact entirely, however it has no effect on physical attacks.
Heat Manipulation:
Possibly the most brutal thing in his arsenal, Smoke is able to super heat his smoke to absolutely insane degrees. The sheer heat of this smoke is enough to reduce most Kombatants to a skeleton in seconds and even works on numerous MK characters that use actual Flame attacks.
Mind Control:
One of Smoke’s lesser known, but more messed up abilities is being able to flood massive amounts of his smoke directly into someone's brain through their ears and completely take over their mind, turning them into his dark soot covered puppets. While he was working for Noob Saibot, Smoke was able to nearly take over the Entire Lin Kuei temple by doing this.
Sannyo:
Yokai Biology:
Sannyo is a Yamajorou type of Yokai and thus possesses the natural traits of Yokai in Gensokyo. In Touhou Project, Yokai are spiritual mythological entities that take on a mostly human-like appearance. But despite that appearance they have completely different internal structures, and are much more powerful and mystical than any average human. Yokai live off the fear that common folk have of them, and are thus immortal beings immune to conventional aging that can produce aura’s off their body that make people feel uneasy. Yokai can do this by using a sort of ‘Yokai Energy’, although they can seemingly deactivate this at will.
Yokai energy can be used to perform numerous supernatural abilities, it allows them to levitate and fly through any environment, sense things to a superhuman degree and physically strike and interact with intangible entities like souls and ghosts.
It can also be molded and shaped into energy attacks and durable force fields that project the user from damage. And beyond physical damage reduction, Yokai also have numerous different forms of hax resistance, including Mental Hax Resistances strong enough to shrug off the effects of the True Moon.
The True Moon is capable of mentally haxing all who witness it, and if revealed directly would drive everyone on Earth totally insane, yet every single Yokai is able to resist this effect when looking at it. Similarly when Eirin created an illusionary moon in Imperishable Night, every single yokai was able to immediately see through said illusion and know something was up.
Danmaku:
Naturally, like every other Touhou character, Sannyo can use Yokai Energy to create Danmaku. Danmaku, or bullet curtain, aka Bullet Hell, is essentially a type of energy projectile attack, where one literally floods the entire area with so many projectiles all at once it becomes virtually impossible to dodge just out of sheer quantity. These bullets are colorful energy projectiles that travel faster than light and violently explode on contact with a target. Sannyo can project these in any conceivable way, but her most powerful attack are her spellcards, which create beautiful hypnotic patterns that are almost unavoidable. (and really frustrating cause they blend into the background in this stage)
Smoke Manipulation:
Sannyo’s most famous ability is her smoke manipulation. In her human life, Sannyo was a Smoker and through this somehow gained the ability to control the substance with her magic.
While she cannot generate smoke herself, she possesses The Dragon Pipe, a mystical object that can produce massive amounts of Tobacco smoke, which Sannyo can freely manipulate in any conceivable way.
Sannyo can spread her smoke to cover the entire interior of the Komakusa Gambeling Den, and can use it to generate attacks or create large smoke screens that obscure her own attacks from sight until it's far too late.
She can also do it with such precision as to control the result of dice rolling within a cup. While the Dragon Pipe is a mystical object, the smoke it produces isn’t any kind of special smoke.
In fact it's actually rather low quality tobacco smoke, meaning that Sannyo can also essentially use any smoke that she comes across to the exact same degree of effect.
Sannyo is able to regenerate massive amounts of health through her smoke inhalation. Able to heal most normal injuries completely after takinging just a few deep puffs.
However, by far the most potent ability she has with her smoke manipulation is her Smoke Mind Control! Sannyo is able to turn ordinary smoke into mental smoke by breathing it in and exhaling it. If someone inhales smoke that Sannyo exhaled, they will fall under its effects.
Sannyo’s Mind Control Smoke has consistently shown to be able to effect powerful Yokai like Kappa and Tengu, beings who are able to resist the mental manipulation of the True Moon which can drive every human on Earth insane, meaning it would need to scale significantly beyond that.
Teleportation:
Sannyo is able to disappear and reappear in puffs of smoke. This teleportation power seems to have a wide range as it took her from her gambeling den to the entrance of the Rainbow Dragon Cave in one go.
Illusions:
Sannyo also is able to create complex illusions, able to disguise her Gambling Den as a random much smaller abandoned building. Presumably she can use this to make illusions of whatever she wants.
Feats:
Smoke:
DC/Durability:
Smoke was able to physically restrain Cyber Sub-Zero, who was strong enough to beat up both Goro and Kintaro at the same time.
Smoke is a character who has fought in multiple Mortal Kombat Tournaments against numerous extremely powerful warriors. While Smoke’s direct feats of Strength and Durability aren’t that hugely impressive, It is important to establish how powerful the characters Smoke has been facing are to give us a general range to suspect.
Even as early as MK4, powerful characters in Mortal Kombat have been stated to be able to shake the foundation of the universe and were directly stated to be more powerful than even The Big Bang, and No, these characters do not “Restrict” their power to fight among mortals in the tournaments, not only has that never been established in any canon (or noncanon for that matter) source, but even if it were true, the Vast majority of fights in Mortal Kombat take place outside of tournaments, basically everything besides MK1, 2, and a bit of 9.
In Mortal Kombat 3, Shao Kahn was able to start merging All of Earthrealm into Outworld just by setting foot there. Now a common Misconception is that Earthrealm means The Earth and that this would therefore be merging an entire planet into Outworld, but as Ed Boon himself clarified Earthrealm doesn’t mean Earth, but the entire Dimension Earth Resides, specifically citing that places outside of Earth like Mars and Jupiter are also part of Earthrealm. This would signify that Shao Kahn is merging entire Universes together, and it is extremely consistent as in addition to this, he has also successfully Merged Outworld with the Realm of Edenia and numerous other unspecified realms in the past. Shao Kahn has been able to endure hits from The Elder Gods, who created the Realms in the first place, and even canonically Killed Blaze after Blaze was given enough power to literally destroy all the Realms at once. The God Argus believed Mortal Kombat characters had become so powerful that they could potentially end existence with their battles if left unchecked, and in the most recent game, Raiden and Liu Kang were even able to defeat Kornika, a being far above the Elder Gods simply by combining their power. So with all that said, it is important to determine HOW LARGE a Realm is in Mortal Kombat. One such Realm is The Netherrealm, which has been described as being Infinite in size by Sub-Zero, which is also a statement that was seemingly corroborated by Raiden when he describes The Sea of Blood in Outworld as being Bottomless, such that the Immortal being Geras will sink in it forever without ever hitting the bottom. While I don’t believe it is possible for these Realms to truly be Infinite in size, as one can’t have multiple Infinites, they would basically all be one realm, It is clear they are so large that even this worlds Deities believe it to be endless, and I believe I found a good way to estimate its size using the Sea of Blood Example. If we assume the Mortal Kombat series has Entropy, the eventual loss of all energy as heat that will result in the End of Time, we can use that to see simply how long Geras would have to sink for before that happens to get an idea of a minimum distance.
On average an Anchor built for a ship like this weighs approximately 15 tons, or 149,460 Newtons. Assuming Outworld has the same gravity of Earth, which it seems to as they never address it and it doesn’t seem to hinder anyone’s fighting ability, that would give it a mass of 15,251 Kg. The anchor would accelerate downward at a rate of 9.81 m/s, with the subtraction of a buoyancy force of 1,934 Kg. This calculation was done assuming the Anchor was sinking in water, for those of you who like me, believe the “sea of blood” actually is composed entirely of blood, well I looked into it and found that blood actually has virtually the same density of water, so that wouldn’t affect the calculation anyway. Given this would have a drag coefficient of about 1.2, The anchor would reach terminal velocity and sink at a rate of approximately 80 mph. Scientists estimate that for the heat death of the universe to fully happen it would take somewhere between 10^50-10^106th power years, or the number 10 followed by at least 50 zeros. So at 80mph, Geras would sink obviously 80 miles in one hour. In one day, he’d sink 1,920 miles, and in one year he'd sink 700,800 miles. For him to sink the distance of a single Lightyear, it would take approximately 8.4 Million years. So how many lightyears would he sink before the Heat Death of the Universe? Well using the low end estimate of how long Heat Death will Take, Geras would sink approximately 12 Tredecillion Lightyears, meaning that a Mortal Kombat Realm, has at least that much of a Diameter.
Now an important factor, how does Smoke scale here? Well Smoke in MK9 defeated Kitana in a head to head fight.
This same Kitana would much later go on to flat out defeat and cripple Shao Kahn in MK 11. Similarly Smoke also won a fight against Reptile and Shang Tsung at the same time.
When Shang Tsung teamed up with Quan Chi, he was able to kill characters like Liu Kang and a clone of Shao Kahn, as well as Defeat Raiden in MK Deadly Alliance. Both of these examples would suggest that Smoke, while not as powerful as the MK Gods, HAS to be some relatively significant fraction of their power.
When Smoke was a Revenant, he along with 4 others were able to battle Raiden and Raiden only Barely managed to defeat them, which would suggest Smoke is roughly 1/5th the power of Raiden.
Speed:
So another important thing to talk about is the recent revelations to the continuity of Mortal Kombat. In Mortal Kombat 11, numerous lines of dialogue make direct reference to Scorpion, Sub-Zero and Raiden appearing in Injustice games, directly meaning that those character's appearances in those games are canon. (1) (2) (3) Similarly if one looks at the lines of dialogue in Injustice 2, Sub-Zero and Raiden also both make specific references to the game Mortal Kombat VS DC Universe. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) What this basically means is that A). The DC Characters from MK VS DC, are the same ones from the Good universe in Injustice 1, and more importantly, B). The MK Characters from Both MK VS DC and the Injustice Games, are the same ones from the main universe, and thus scaling applies here.
In Mortal Kombat VS DC Universe, Green Lantern was able to casually fly from Oa to Earth while carrying both Lex Luther and Catwoman in a bubble. Oa in the stage description of this game is stated to be at the Center of the Universe, and 600 Lightyears away from the Andromeda Galaxy, giving it a minimum distance of 2.536 Million lightyears away. Assuming that it took Hal 5 minutes to fly this distance (he wasn’t gone too long, and Lex and Selena never bothered to sit down and weren't annoyed by how long it took), this would mean he was flying at nearly 267 Billion times the speed of light.
Green Lantern, despite this speed, was defeated multiple times by Mortal Kombat characters like Sonya and Shang Tsung throughout the game. Now yes, there was the vague ‘Kombat Rage’ which would boost characters stats to be able to fight,
but Shang Tsung was able to beat Hal while Hal was fueled by Kombat Rage, significantly more so than Shang was so you can’t use that to explain this scaling away.
As I have already mentioned, Smoke was fast enough to defeat Shang Tsung and Reptile at the same time in a 2 on 1 fight, so naturally he scales past this.
Sannyo:
DC/Durability:
Sannyo is a character who has existed in Gensokyo for centuries and has fought numerous powerful Yokai. While her direct feats of Strength and Durability aren’t that hugely impressive, It is important to establish how powerful the characters Sannyo has been facing are to give us a general range to suspect. As good a place as any to start is Oni, Oni are the physically strongest beings in the series and thus are a good metric to establish. The powerful Oni, Suika Ibuki was once able to casually Tear the Heavens apart, and was theorized that she or any Oni for that matter could accomplish the same thing with one arm restrained and their eyes closed. So an important thing would be to establish how large ARE the Heavens in Gensokyo? Well the Heavens are supposed to be a mirror to Hell.
Hell has been established to be infinitely sized both in the Manga, and also by multiple statements by ZUN himself, the creator of the franchise. That said, obviously It cannot BE truly Infinite, as it doesn’t encompass everything in Gensokyo and areas like The Netherworld are established to be larger. However it is clear that these afterlifes are far larger than our own universe. One Denizen of The Heavens in Touhou is Amitabha, a Buddist Deity who was calculated by Maribel Hearn of the Secret Sealing Club to be more than 100 Sextrigintillion lightyears across, yet still somehow fits in Heaven, so that's Quite large.
Despite their immense strength, Oni have successfully been defeated by Main Characters numerous times throughout the franchise. Sannyo was able to fight the Player character in Unconnected Marketeers, which would be either Reimu, Marisa, Sakuya or Sanae. All four of these characters are incredibly powerful and have won fights with Oni in the past, having at least the destructive potential to harm them. That being said Sannyo does lose to them no matter which one she is fighting, noting that they are ‘Too Strong’. However, despite not being quite on Reimu and co’s level there is still plenty of evidence to suggest she is in their relative tier.
The Yokai of Yokai Mountain are specifically noted for being incredibly strong. It is populated entirely by Kappa, Tengu, Gods and beings of her same species. And despite that, Sannyo is a guard of the Rainbow Dragon Cave against intruders. Basically, for her to have any success at doing this whatsoever she must be able to compete with these beings in combat.
Powerful Tengu and Kappa like Aya and Nitori have been able to fight on par with and occasionally Win against Main Characters like Reimu and Marisa many times before, So Sannyo would scale to this at least somewhat.
Speed:
Sannyo was fast enough to intercept the player character in Touhou 18 as well as engage them in a prolonged battle of Bullets.
In Touhou 15, Reimu and Marisa were able to physically enter into Doremy Sweet’s dream reality at its edge and fly all the way to the center in only 5 minutes of gameplay. Since Doremy made an exact copy of our universe as per the Lunarians’ request, and they end up at the Moon before Doremy stops them, that means they flew the equivalent of the Radius of the Observable Universe in this timeframe.
While Sannyo likely isn’t as fast as them, being able to keep up at all would suggest she is well into the Trillions of times the Speed of Light range.
Weaknesses:
Smoke:
Smoke may be an Enenra but his physical form is still that of a human, and as such it is susceptible to mortality and can simply be injured of killed with normal attacks while he is in this state, such as when Sindel snapped his neck, which ironically is the only time Smoke died in the entire series outside of Armageddon. Smoke is susceptible to Exhaustion if pushed too far, and tends to be much more merciful than the average MK character due to being very honorable and almost gentlemanly in many circumstances. But by far the biggest weakness Smoke has is how many times he ends up being some badguys mind controlled slave. Between being turned into an obedient cyborg by the Lin Kuei and later reprogrammed to serve Noob Saibot in the old timeline, to being resurrected as a Revenant puppet of Quan Chi in the new one, Smoke legitimately has spent more of his time on screen as a slave than free.
Sannyo:
Sannyo may have the ability to control smoke but she does not have the ability to naturally produce it, and as such relies on her dragon pipe to use many of her best powers as a result. Even while her mind control is very potent, its method is not nearly as efficient as most mind control abilities in fiction which can be done with a thought or even eye contact or a voice, she actually needs to get someone to breathe her smoke. Sannyo, while having a lot of combat experience, lacks any formal combat training due to it not being one of her natural professions and is particularly not used to fighting in close quarters combat. She also has a general tendency to be overconfident and judge her foes as not being powerful based on presumptions about their species, which has caused her to be defeated by humans multiple times.
Summary:
Smoke:
Advantages:
Much more Skilled Fighter.
Can Counter or Avoid All of her normal Attacks.
Wider Variety of Smoke Powers.
Less Reliant on Tools.
Greater Array of Movement Options.
Disadvantages:
Will have trouble dealing lasting Damage.
Will Struggle in Raw Speed.
Much Less Experience.
Sannyo:
Advantages:
Faster.
More Experienced.
Can Absorb and Heal Herself with Smoke.
Has Resistance towards many of his Powers.
More Effective at long distances.
Disadvantages:
Will have trouble affecting him.
Less Skilled.
Can’t generate smoke of her own power.
Battle:
The sounds of nature echoed through the mountain side on the misty early morning in Gensokyo. The freshly risen sun’s light reflecting brightly off the pastel colors of nature as the calm tranquil sound of running water and birds filled the scene. Suddenly a large hand extended above the cliff face as a man wearing sleek gray armor and a dark cowl pulled himself onto the plateau.
Smoke cautiously glanced around, taking in his surroundings so as not to be taken by surprise by any traps or creatures, but was soon set at ease and relaxed. “This new Realm is strange to be sure, but it's far from the most threatening I’ve seen.” Smoke said in observation as he looked up towards the rest of the mountain which seemed to have no end in sight.
An Alluring Giggle was heard to his left and he quickly turned to see a short purple haired woman, wearing sandals, a fancy red robe and an expensive pipe in the shape of a Dragon. “Not from around here are you? We don’t get too many visitors here, especially ones as…” She quickly evaluated Smoke with her gaze, “Handsome as you are.” She said in a flirty way as she took a deep puff from her pipe, and walked closer to him.
Smoke raised an eyebrow at her advance, she certainly didn’t bother him with her comment but he had been given an important mission from Grandmaster Sub-Zero. “I beg your pardon Madame, but the task I have been assigned to is of great importance and I cannot be distracted.” Sannyo took another puff from her pipe and waved her hand dismissively.
“Oh come now, that's no fun. Why not come with me to the Gambling Den down the plateau?” she said as she gently stroked her hand against his bicep “I’ll even deal you in myself.”
She Winked as Smoke glanced back at her, he lightly tugged his arm away. “I’m afraid I’m not interested, but perhaps you can still Help Me, I’m looking for a structure called the Rainbow Dragon Cave to investigate if it has Dragons.”
Upon hearing this, Sannyo actually started laughing quite hard, before turning her attention back to the ninja. “Haha, oh my, It seems your interest lies less in gambling for money and more with gambling with Your Life. The Rainbow Dragon Cave is dangerous to humans.” She explained.
“Not for me, now where is it?” Smoke continued without being phased.
Sannyo immediately stopped laughing and narrowed her eyes. “I’m afraid I must insist you stay away” she said, taking another big puff from her pipe. “Come on with me, we can have some fun together.” Sannyo reached out her hand as a trail of smoke flowed out from her mouth. Smoke watched as the tobacco smoke from her mouth abruptly changed course, flowing towards him unnaturally. Thinking quickly, Smoke raised his arm and suddenly all the thick gray gas she expelled collected into a ball in his hand, much to Sannyo’s surprise.
Smoke Glared at her, “Care to explain yourself” He said in a witty but stern tone.
In Response, Sannyo grinned and then closed her eyes in a sigh. “I suppose you couldn't make this easy could you.”
Before Smoke’s eyes, this short female temptress suddenly floated off the ground and continued raising up to dozens of meters into the sky. “What The..” he started in confusion before suddenly dozens of large red energy orbs formed around her and began barreling towards Smoke at high speed.
FIGHT!
Smoke’s eyes widened as the Blasts collided with his position at light speed and exploded with enough force to shake the side of the mountain. Sannyo watched on as debris flew across the area, but strangely noticed a large cloud of smoke emerged from the blast zone. Suddenly the smoke all darted towards her at high speed. “What The?!” she started as Smoke retook his corporeal form and threw a mighty punch. With a quick Reaction, Sannyo conjured a force field around herself and the blow collided with the barrier in a thunderous shockwave. Sannyo breathed a sigh of relief looking at the fist stopped in place before her, when suddenly a large crack spread from where the fist impacted.
Okay, he’s definitely no human. Sannyo thought as smoke flooded out from her attacker's arm and into the dome through the crack, pushing against the sides and causing the damage to spread. Smoke raised his other arm and threw another fully extended punch and shattered his way through the force field, reaching for Sannyo’s neck. With surprising reaction speed, Sannyo deflected Smoke’s arm away with her fan and countered with a powerful kick to the back of the Ninja’s head. Smoke plummeted down to the ground and crashed into the side of the mountain like a meteorite. Slightly dazed from the blow, Smoke rose to his knees. “She is much stronger than she appears, I cannot underestimate her”
Mountain Sign "Usuyukisou Shining with Bewitching Light"
In Confusion, Smoke quickly glanced back up, “...Oh Elder Gods” The entire Sky was flooded with hundreds, no Thousands of Blue Energy blasts moving in every direction and were only meters from his position. In an instant, Smoke took off running full speed across the valley as if trying to dodge through rain. Smoke barely had time to think as he moved in a full sprint across the terrain, ducking, weaving, and sliding to avoid random projectiles as everything around him was exploding. Sannyo watched from the air and started chuckling at this stranger’s frantic display. It was as if this was his first spell card battle. As she did so Smoke became cornered against the mountainside as numerous projectiles closed in on him. In a puff of smoke he disappeared and teleported higher up the mountain near Sannyo’s position and fired a volley of smoke blasts towards her.
Surprised, but without missing a beat, Sannyo put her Dragon Pipe to her lips and sucked in. Smoke watched as all of his projectiles were nullified and quickly sucked into the end of the pipe to Sannyo’s satisfaction. Sannyo converted this Smoke to its normal mind altering state within her and expelled out a massive smokescreen that covered their battlefield, surrounding them. ‘Two can play at that game’ Smoke thought as he used his own Smoke manipulation to create a pocket of space where her smoke attack couldn’t reach him. “Come Here, Coward!” He proclaimed as he reached his arm and touched the Smoke cloud, a beam of strange white energy quickly traveled from his hand through the smoke to Sannyo’s position and before she could react she suddenly disappeared.
Instantly Sannyo was warped onto the mountain next to Smoke, “Huh-” BAM, Smoke immediately suckerpunched the yokai in the side of the face with enough force to spin around. Moving quickly, Smoke wrapped his arms around her waist, lifted her off the ground and body slammed her headfirst into the rocks with enough force to fracture her neck. As Sannyo raised her head he teleported in front of her and Drop-Kicked her directly in the face, breaking her nose in 3 places as she was launched backwards, and laid motionless on the ground, bleeding.
“Stay Down.” Smoke said as a warning, not wanting to kill her if he didn’t have to. Confident she wouldn’t be coming to for a while, Smoke turned around and started back up the mountain, when suddenly the smoke that emanated from his body started being drawn away from him. Smoke turned around, following their path to see Sannyo back on her feet, the surrounding smoke traveling into her pipe as she deeply inhaled it in, her injuries seeming to slowly dissipate from her form.
“Mmm, that was simply divine” she said, licking her lips, “I’ve never tasted Enenra smoke before…” In response, Smoke retook his fighting stance, “How unfortunate then, you are Not the first Witch I’ve faced.” Sannyo took another puff from her pipe confidently as Smoke flipped up into the air and delivered a kick to her head, before it could reach her though Sannyo suddenly disappeared in a black cloud as she teleported into the sky.
Mountain Sign "Heaven-Shaking Kumomagusa"
Hundreds more energy projectiles spawned from the mountain witch, this time they moved in a pattern similar to a smoke trail from burning tobacco, it flew towards the mountain side in a hypnotic motion that was impossible to anticipate. Thinking quickly, Smoke turned his body into smoke and flew towards Sannyo, the projectiles seeming to pass directly through his body without causing any harm. Sannyo looked on at the encroaching smoke cloud as it suddenly took shape, appearing as a monstrous creature with long misshapen arms, no eyes and a giant maw, her adversaries true form no doubt.
The Beast lunged at her, with Sannyo just barely managing to dodge to the side. She took off flying around the mountain side as the creature gave pursuit, Sannyo fired a seemingly endless amount of Danmaku at the monster but none of it actually was able to hit the thing. As it swung for her again Sannyo waved her fan and a cloud of smoke cast around the area, displaying an illusion of many Sannyo’s all coming towards it in different directions. The Enenra split into multiple copies of itself and lunged at Each of the illusionary Sannyos. They wildly swund at each copy which simply disappeared on impact, whittling down their numbers until there was only one left, hiding near the mountain face. Sensing the presence of Smoke, the beasts collected and reformed into its human state as Smoke, dropping onto Sannyo in a powerful kick. But that too was an illusion, as it disappeared into smoke the true Sannyo charged at Smoke from behind and thrust her fan into his back. With barely time to react, Smoke converted his torso into vapor and let her fan pass through him harmlessly. In one fluid motion he turned around, grabbed Sannyo’s arm and slammed her into the mountain face, pinning her there with one arm before rearing back and throwing a mighty punch. Sannyo just barely managed to teleport away before Smoke’s fist smashed apart the rocks where her head once rested. Smoke grunted in frustration, as he turned around to find her again in the air above him.
Mountain Flower "Komakusa of Massacre"
Sannyo let out another barrage of projectiles, this time in a much larger quantity than she had previously as thousands of tiny purple bullet shaped projectiles flooded everywhere the eye could see. “Again? I’m afraid playtime is over now” Smoke proclaimed in the face of the bullet hell as his body shook and started generating a thick Smoke aura around his form.
Within a second the projectiles collided with Smoke, but rapidly dissolved and dissipated in the smoke before reaching his body. To Sannyo’s utter bafflement, Smoke walked forward against the blasts, each one that hit him having no effect. Angered by this display, Sannyo fired a large energy blast directly at Smoke, who did not try to dodge.
As soon as the blast touched the smoke aura, Smoke disappeared in a teleportation, and reappeared above Sannyo, where he slammed both down onto her head with a powerful two-leg kick. Smoke pressed his advantage in close range, following that attack up with an uppercut, knocking her into the air, before grabbing her ankle, and slamming her back and forth into the ground in a whipping motion. Then violently brought her head down and met it with a hard knee to the face, and she was sent flying backwards in pain.
Smoke could feel the Smoke from his body again being pulled away as Sannyo sucked it through her pipe and healed herself yet again, but Smoke was not about to let that happen. “Let’s see you heal from THIS!” He yelled as he turned into a cloud of Smoke and rapidly flew into her body, disappearing inside of her. Sannyo’s body shook and convulsed as Thick gray vapor erupted from every pore as Smoke’s gas form traveled through her body and began slicing tendons, fibers, nerves and cartilage, dealing massive internal damage via death by 1000 cuts. But every time something was sliced, a large portion of the smoke that cut it was siphoned off and used to repair the damage it caused.
Smoke exited her body and retook his corporeal form, collapsing on to his knees in physical fatigue catching his breath, thrown off by losing large portions of his mass in there. Sannyo threw her head back in a sigh of relief, her body not only still intact but feeling extremely refreshed. She turned to the weakened Smoke, “Why is it the cute ones never have any brains?” she joked in fained pity. Still catching his breath Smoke looked up, “You’re starting to sound like Mileena” He managed to say before Sannyo delivered a wooden sandal clad Kick to the face that knocked him to the floor. “Oh I assure you, there’s no other woman like me” She said, grabbing the weakened Ninja by his collar and slapping him to the ground, she kicked him again in the stomach and he flew into the side of the mountain and smashed into it before landing and the warm dirt below.
“Are you ready to give up yet?” Sannyo teased. Smoke definitely looked back at her meeting her gaze with newfound determination, “I’ve still got some tricks up my sleeve.” Just then Smoke vibrated again and all the smoke, color, pigment and light seemed to fade off his form as he turned completely invisible. Sannyo’s eyes widened at the disappearing act and instinctively she fired a spread of blasts right where he once laid, the cliff face broke away as rocks piled onto the area, but it was clear Sannyo's attack didn’t find its mark. She flew back to the middle of the clearing, on the lookout for any disturbances, but Smoke had trained for years to achieve a mastery of stealth.
Sannyo scanned the smoke covered area for any sign of her hidden foe, tapping into her yokai energy, she expanded her senses in hopes to pick him out. “There!” she said as she blasted towards her right, blowing the cliffside away, but to her surprise, her enemy was nowhere in sight. “URgh!” She yelped as suddenly Smoke sprang up from behind her and jumped onto her back, locking his legs above her waist and wrapping his right arm around her neck in a chokehold as she struggled in his grip.
“I’m afraid you forced my hand” Smoke said begrudgingly as he used his freehand to grab the side of her head and began flooding his smoke into her ear, trying to take over her mind. Sannyo flew wildly trying to shake him as the disorienting sensation gave her a massive headache, but as the smoke poured in, Sannyo quickly narrowed her eyes in an enraged glare.
Suddenly two energy blasts spawned behind them and blasted Smoke in the back, scoring a direct hit. “Aaargh'' Smoke called as he shot off Sannyo’s back and crashed into the ground, flipping from the momentum, before landing in a heap. Smoke laid there, his outfit in tatters from where he got shot, exposing his flowing silver hair to the wind as Sannyo floated over him. “Honestly, I can’t believe you even tried that, quite a desperate last act” Sannyo said with an exasperated chuckle.
Smoke raised his head and surprisingly, joined in on the laughter, “Haha, you should know well girl, that All Warfare, is based on Deception” Smoke then raised his arm and pulled out something that made Sannyo’s eyes grow wide, between his fingers was a long and quite familiar looking Dragon Pipe.
Sannyo immediately searched around her person for it in a panic, but quickly found it indeed was gone.
“You fought well, truly a worthy opponent” Smoke stated as he closed his hand into a fist, casually shattering the Dragon Pipe into tiny pieces, “But now I’m going to end this.” Smoke stood triumphantly to his feet and retook his stance, "Where there is Smoke, there is Fire". The Panicked Sannyo flew at top speed and threw a punch at Smoke, but Smoke calmly deflected the blow away and delivered a kick directly to her chest. Smoke delivered a flurry of blows to Sannyo, some of which she managed to block but many more broke through due to her opponents superior fighting skill.
Smoke grabbed her and pinned her onto the ground, he slammed her head into the stone terrain and released Smoke that was so hot it began singeing her hair off. Sannyo teleported out of his grip, and immediately took to the sky, fleeing the area at top speed. Smoke watched her from the ground, fearing her bringing reinforcements he decided to pursue her, “You’re Not Getting Away!” Smoke yelled as he turned into Smoke and expanded to cover the entire area of the horizon in his cloud form.
The Smoke encapsulated Sannyo mid-flight and as it overtook her, the Smoke’s temperature increased to an extreme burning heat. The plantlife and insects that filled the valley were all quickly incinerated as everything was turned a barren bleached white. Sannyo’s sandals evaporated and fell off, her clothes began catching fire and her skin was turning red as she was being rapidly cooked alive. In a desperate act to heal herself, to SAVE herself, Sannyo breathed in a huge amount of the smoke, only to find it was burning her very lungs and coughed it back out.
But as the smoke left her body something strange happened, the burning…it stopped, as if her foe was stunned, confused on what to do. “Wh-what….is. this?” Sannyo heard faintly from her surroundings, and then it hit her. Sannyo breathed in again, and again, and again and so on, each time expelling out more Smoke changing more of the cloud into her very mind altering gas.
Sannyo floated back down onto the mountain as the giant smoke cloud receded down with her. As her scuffed bare feet touched the ground her skin burned and bruised, clothes and hair a wreck, and a black eye, feeling nearly on the verge of collapse, she looked over to her now reformed foe, standing motionless in a mind controlled state and scowled.
“You know on second thought, I don’t think you’re my type” she said with a snap of her fingers as she then forced Smoke to reach his hands to his head and in one fluid motion he broke his own neck and fell backwards off the side of the mountain.
KO!
Results:
Wow, never thought I’d see a Touhou Character do a fatality like that, hehe, I love this job! This fight was incredibly complex, these two were dead even in a surprising number of ways, and would be unable to gain a leg up with most of their abilities, fighting skills and even basic stats. Now Comparing Strength is quite difficult, If you use the High end of the size of Realms in Mortal Kombat and compare it to the size of Heaven in Touhou Project they actually end up being somewhat in the same ballpark. Meanwhile both Smoke and Sannyo scaled to these levels of feats more in a ballpark sense, each being an unknown amount weaker than the characters who actually did said feats so locking down which one is actually superior in power was basically impossible, but they WOULD be comparable to say the least, so it ended up being a nonfactor, as both were capable of harming and potentially killing the other with enough physical blows. Speed on the other hand is more interesting to discuss, Sannyo ended up being about 100 times faster than Smoke is, but it barely mattered due to Smoke’s own mobility increasing powers such as Invisibility, Spatial Manipulation and being able to flood the entire area with his form, making it so Sannyo could not reliably avoid his attacks or score hits on him nearly as well as she should. So Really this fight depended largely on their powers and how they interact. Smoke and Sannyo are obviously both Typhokinetics who have numerous Smoke manipulation powers, although there surprisingly isn’t much bleedover with what powers they have. Smoke is able to turn his entire body into a logia intangible Enenra form made of smoke, which makes attacks harmlessly pass through him without doing any damage just like with actual Smoke. Now Sannyo, like most Touhou Characters, is able to hit intangible characters, but that is not the same with Logia beings at all.
Enenra, like Smoke, actually exist in the Touhou Project world, and share this same smoke Logia trait, yet neither the physical or energy based attacks of even the likes of Reimu and Marisa are able to hit them.
The two of them had to seal it away on Kosuzu’s book in order to defeat it. This means that Sannyo had no way to physically HIT Smoke’s enenra form. But, Sannyo is a typhokinetic, so the question arises, could she simply take Control of Smoke when he’s in this state? In Lotus Eaters we saw that Sannyo is capable of flooding her entire Gambeling Den with smoke and controlling it to her whim.
This Den seems to be a large home sized building with a casino in its basement, her illusionary smoke was also able to cover the entire surrounding area however, in an illusion. That being said, it’s extremely unlikely this could overpower Smoke’s own control.
In Smoke’s ending in Armageddon, he was able to extend his own smoke to coat the entirety of Edenia, an entire Realm. Now yes he was boosted with the power of Argus at the time, but given the Sheer insane size that Realms in Mortal Kombat are, Smoke’s own typhokinetic range is essentially guaranteed to be INSANELY larger than Sannyo’s no matter how small a fraction of this power smoke has normally, which given Shao Kahn was able to beat Blaze when he had Argus’ power, probably wasn’t that massive. With this in mind, Smoke’s greater control of smoke could let him easily shrug off any attempt Sannyo makes at bodily control, as well as deflect or rebound any of her general smoke based attacks and powers that she tries, while Sannyo really couldn’t do the same. Additionally Smoke could also use his Smoke Armor or Logia form to simply power through her Danmaku attacks or also destroy her Dragon Pipe to cut off her smoke generation entirely, so what gives?
Well the interesting thing about this fight is that Even though Smoke is the better smoke manipulator, that didn’t mean his smoke attacks would be any better at taking Sannyo down. Since Sannyo is actually NOT made of smoke, Smoke using Typhokinesis to control her was never really on the table to begin with. But even more damning is Sannyo’s ability to Regenerate from Smoke means Smoke’s smoke based attacks were almost literally useless at harming her. Smoke’s projectiles, smoke enhanced strikes and even sending smoke into her body to do internal damage were all completely off that table since she can just absorb the invading substance and use it to repair things. Similarly Smoke would also struggle to deal any lasting damage with his physical strikes, since his body is Constantly Producing Smoke, Sannyo can’t exactly run out of it even with her pipe destroyed. Also, as a Yokai, Sannyo’s mind control resistance is So High that any attempt Smoke made to take over her brain was doomed from the start anyway, even if he wasn’t using smoke to do it. Most of the rest of these two’s powers basically canceled each other out, both of them can teleport, create smoke screens, fly at least to a degree, and mask themselves to score hits on the opponent, Sannyo by using Illusions, and Smoke through Invisibility. So these all yielded very little net advantage. So with that in mind, How COULD these two kill each other?
Smoke’s by far best bet to kill Sannyo was using his Heat Manipulation. Standard yokai heat resistance isn’t really all that impressive, and Sannyo doesn’t have any personal feats of that to suggest hers is any higher, meanwhile Smoke is capable of steaming off all the soft tissue from a person's body in seconds, even from characters like Scorpion who have the flames of hell inside of their body. In Touhou terms this would suggest he could generate heat levels similar to Mokou, and given how fast it can massively damage and kill an opponent this would likely harm Sannyo at a faster rate than she could heal, despite being made of smoke.
That said this plan was not foolproof. Smoke has only shown to use this move as a fatality, or execution method on someone already down. I believe wholeheartedly he can use this move in actual combat, but against someone 100x faster than him it would be very difficult to pull off. When you consider that Sannyo can fly much more reliably than Smoke to stay out of his range, or teleport out of holds, Smoke’s only really solid method for trapping her with this would be to make a massive area of effect attack of superheated smoke, covering the whole battlefield. But the thing about spreading heat across a wide area like that, is it causes the heat to seriously diminish in potency, much like how it doesn’t hurt to be near a fireplace despite the fact fire would burn you, so it wouldn’t do nearly as much damage if he did this.
On the other side, Sannyo had a very clear method for victory in the form of her mind control, but with one major problem, this mind control relied on her victim inhaling her smoke to take effect, with Smoke’s smoke detecting and greater manipulation of the element, there was basically no way, any smoke Sannyo produced was going to get to him to take effect, that is, if not for a loophole.
The Smoke that is produced by Sannyo’s pipe is ordinary, even Low Quality tobacco smoke, there is nothing supernatural about the pipe or the smoke that it produces that adherently allows it to control people. Sannyo inhales it, converts it into Mind Altering Smoke within her body, then expels it as such to attain this effect. This would work with any smoke….including that which composes his logia smoke form, meaning with Sannyo’s breath, she could actually turn part of Smoke’s own body INTO her mind control smoke and Force him to be exposed.
Smoke is famously terrible at fending off Mind Control, being mentally enslaved by someone at least for a time in literally every game he's featured in to do things that he never would do in his right mind. Meanwhile Sannyo’s smoke has more potent mind control than the True Moon, which could mindf*ck the entire planet, a feat ludicrously above any mind control in MK. Smoke had NO Chance of coming back from that once she got him with it. While this wouldn’t be something that would be thought of immediately, Sannyo is rather clever and it would take Smoke a long time to successfully kill her, which would give her more than enough time to try something like this. Sannyo really smoked his ass.
The Winner is Sannyo Komakusa.
