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Zero Kiryu     A "NEIGHBORING EMPIRE" . . .
    MUSIC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFi1wp6bhBI

The border town of Kelna sits on the seam between the Overlord's world and the 'neighboring Empire', precisely where the two unified adjacent to one another. The town is relatively new, but probably sprung up as a trade town along the road to the towns and cities within the Overlord's world. A long, dirt path trails from Kelna into the Overlord's lands, and away from Kelna into the Empire's lands.

The Town itself is mid-sized, and walled. There is a respectable main street that stretches through the center of town, with distinct outlying districts that look split into quarters. The most prominent building resembles a small pyramid made primary of steel, with great pipes running up and down its sides. A partially-concealed smokestack belches black smoke into the sky.

Despite being walled, it doesn't look exactly like it was originally a military town. There is an atmosphere of nervousness to it, and the gates on each side are guarded by a small contingent of brown-armored soldiers in dark blue fatigues. The gates themselves are flanked by small, open-cockpit mecha, green with a muddy yellow trim, with a pair of prominent turbine-like protrusions on the back, two-clawed hands, and a 'mouth' just below the pilot's seat where a cannon can be seen.

A rarer model of Magitek Armor can be seen stationed in the interior streets -- one to every two or so of the 'grunt models' -- that are black, elaborately ornamental in a ceremonial-looking way, and have no arms. Their riders are always attached to a pair of standard armors, and their numbers total to six.

One such "Elite Armor" is stationed outside Kelna. A red-haired woman is seated in its cockpit, a crown seated on her head. She looks around, but has a glassy-eyed expression, and doesn't seem altogether 'there'.

Geoffrey sits atop the back of an elephant today, on a distant hill. His eyes gleam with a fel light-- it's not Geoffrey himself, exactly. The goblin is possessed. The Overlord's voice is ringing, powerful, pressing in on the mind more than speaking audibly.

<< The six in the ornamental armors bear the crowns. Their minds are not their own. I will send my minions to draw their attention. Isolate them. >> The Overlord rumbles. The tone is palpably less domineering than he /could/ be. It seems as if he's not capable of presenting himself as making a polite request, but he's trying at least.
Guzma Near the hill, Guzma's there, as are his trio. Guzma's got a weird Pokeball with him, white and black, as well as his standard Ultra Ball that he's juggling. As th Overlord makes his imperious rumbling. Guzma nods, and then tosses out the two Pokeballs.

"Golisopod! Count!"

The standard Pokeball releases Golisopod, who is directed towards the trio. The other one releases...a giant scorpion, scenting the air and with its stinger hovering towards the nearest fleshy object. Possibly a goblin or something. It's hungry.

"Alright, Golisopod, take Tupp, Rapp and Zipp and corner one, I'll take Count here and go for another." Everyone nods and yos, and then, the two groups move to start looking for split-up positions.

But, they don't head to split up yet. They need the Overlord's distraction. Instead, Guzma looks down on the red-haired woman, and asks the Overlord a simple question. "Do you think they consented to this?" It doesn't really matter, except for maybe how sympathetic he is towards their plight. He's gonna kick their butts either way.
Yuuki Kuran "The ornamental..." Yuuki looks away from the elephant -- she had been very impressed at the large leathery animal, exactly like a weird tourist at a zoo. It's a cool big animal!

"Well, Lord-" She says it like a name. Like 'Duke' being a large dog's name. "-didn't you say you wanted a dozen? Or did you say half-dozen? Well, if there's six, unless they wear two crowns, then there's six!"

She touches an arm to Guzma's shoulder. "They have mecha, Guzma! Do you have giant robots where you're from? I used to hang out with some people really into it. I bet they'd love this."

She laughs. "Or be from it. Still - if they're actually loyal, we'll just be making someone's strategy game a bit buggy for a bit."

Yuuki pauses, looks at the Goonzmas, and starts laughing. "I guess it would be a 'bit buggy' either way, wouldn't it?"
Mauve Gauntlet Mauve is here, armored up and ready to go as usual.

She wasn't here for the negotiation, so this is her first time seeing the Overlord and his minions. And it's kinda freaky just looking at them and seeing them mystically glowing, or like the lady on the other side, looking kinda braindead. She rubs a spot on her collarbone, where one would see her Neurolinker resting if she weren't wearing her Duel Avatar right now. The device had a direct link to her brain, would someone be able to hijack it and mind control her if they wanted? Granted, the security was supposed to be good on these things for that very reason so maybe it wasn't a problem after all.

Also...

"Oh, you managed to tame it?" Mauve asks Guzma about Count. Last she saw it was all caught in a net, but now it was in the capsule thingy! "That's cool I guess!"
Zero Kiryu << Not that we know. >> The Overlord answers Guzma, dispassionately. He clearly doesn't care whether or not the Magitek Elites had a choice in the matter, though. Or if he does care, he's utterly unable to articulate it, even through psychic communication. Seems unlikely that he would be so unable to convey his intent in this way, though.

Gesturing out towards the distant settlement, Geoffrey sends a good hundred goblins and imps -- half goblins, half imps -- sweeping down towards town. They don't /seem/ to present a threat of overrunning the town. Civilians bolt for the gates as the imps begin to start fires here and there, and wagons at the gates get pulled apart by goblins looking for a bit of entertainment.

"You! Go deal with that!" One of the brown-armored soldiers on the ground gestures to the red-haired woman. Still glassy-eyed, the red-haired woman strides forward and blasts apart a cluster of goblins gathered around a wagon. Coincidentally, she also blasts the wagon and its contents apart.

The pair of standard Magitek Armors stride forward, lances of light -- seemingly less powerful than those of the red-haired woman's -- in blue, red, and yellow piercing through clusters of goblins here and there.

To Yuuki's inquiry, the Overlord replies, << This is the largest concentration of them that we were able to identify. There were more, but they appear to have been distributed to other regions. The most powerful of their enslaved witches was dispatched to the northeast a small while ago. >>

The gates on the opposite side of the town are successfully closed. Those on the near side remain open, probably to allow for reinforcements to flow through.

The Overlord withdraws from Geoffrey's mind, leaving behind a single thought for Mauve Gauntlet's unspoken concern: < Yes. >

Geoffrey himself stretches a little, retrieving his cane from a sheath along the elephant's colossal saddle. He draws it out, tapping it lightly against the hard leather of his seat. He says, "I can work with six... but it would make things a lot /easier/ if you brought the ones wearing the crowns back intact."
Guzma "If we do, they certainly ain't in Alola. Probably a mainlander thing." Guzma shrugs, laughing, to Yuuki, as she indicates to him. "Well, if they're not, and the big king here wants them intact, we'll bring them intact." He has misgivings, but...he's hiding them.

The Goonzmas all laugh with Yuuki's joke immediately, just because they find it funny. Guzma takes a seocnd, and laughs too. It's not that he dislikes the joke, he's just lost in thought. "Alright. Your group charges the gate, I'll capture Red." The trio hip-hop salute, which is actually just gang signs, and then run along with Golisopod. They're too slow, though, so Golisopod ends up dragging along Tupp and Zipp by their clothes and Rapp jumps onto the bug's back.

Guzma thumbs up to Mauve as she speaks, but avoids actually touching Count. "Count, attack the one with the crown. Leave her alive." It's far more specific and direct than Guzma's ever needed with any of his Pokemon...

As he heads down with the scorpion, it rushes forward, and then leaps at the red-haired woman with a hiss and a crack of the tail. It WANTS to try and grab her and rip her out of her armor, but she's likely the Elite - so insteazd, it moves to sweep the legs of the armor with its tail and try and skewer them, hopefully crippling her mech. Guzma radios the others. <"Handle her buddies!">

The Team Skull Trio, meanwhile, are being dragged along by Golisopod straight for the town, and probably a battalion of soldiers as well. Golisopod Moves to toss the trio in his hands to the naerest cover as soon as lasers start flying at the bug, moving to slam sharp claws into grunt armor and take as much as it dishes out with a hard shell.
Yuuki Kuran A hundred goblins and imps cause... Quite the large amount of mayhem. Like the Tasmanian Tiger of gremlinry, the petty bullshit they cause creates exactly the distraction Geoffrey had offered the party.

"Guzma, I'm borrowing this." Yuuki decides, reaching into his back pocket and rifling around for his BACKUP SKULL BANDANNA, and appropriating it to drop her phone in the center and make a little bindle for her phone and just... carry her phone in what lookes like a little sachel or lunchbox.

And then Team Skull tears off for the city as well!

Well, if blue and yellow were still open, Yuuki was content to follow the road in, wandering along down towards the wagons like she was just a completely innocent, completely normal traveller.

She thinks this is very smart. She does not understand that she has an ***extremely*** PC-looking sprite. In a land of browns and greens and greys and tans, she's...

She's a lot.

If she's allowed to just walk up to the M-Tek armor, she transitions from 'ho ho ho, I am but a mere traveller' to 'palm thrusting large claw-y armor bois over like tipping a cow -- with a trebuchet'.

In the MUCH MORE LIKELY case of the glass-eyed commander firing a wagon-obliterating beam at her (or a Lesser Armor firing a Lesser Beam), she looks, aghast, down at the hole it blows in her stomach, and falls over.

THEN 'another' Yuuki appears to trebuchet-cowtip palm shove the armor in a puff of smoke.

The first Yuuki remains 'dead'.
Mauve Gauntlet Mauve lets out a loud "EEP!" when Overlord just causally decides to answer her question.  Best not to think about that too hard right now.

Mauve follows the GuzSquad into the city, since she's a bit too pink to really get in there discretely. She hookshots her way across whatever poles or buildings there might be alongside them, planning on continuing deeper whenever they stop to face off against a different clump of mechs.
Zero Kiryu The Red-Headed Witch seems dull, but is reasonably quick in defending herself. The sight of a gigantic scorpion heading her way gets her to bring her machine into a low crouch, putting most of its mass in the path of the scorpion's tail strike and very decisively preventing a decisive blow from being landed. It scoots backward from the impact, then rises again.

She flips a switch on one of her control yokes.

A dozen missiles burst out of the M-Tek Armor's back, descending on the vampiric scorpion from every direction.

Getting past her and her guard at the gate isn't really difficutl, because the Red Witch wasn't told to stop people entering. This causes some problems all-around, because goblins that have been unleashed to 'do as they will' are running around and setting random things on fire, digging through garbage, and generally being shitty gremlins.

The footsoldiers aren't getting tangled up in this-- they're falling back towards the pyramid-like building. As they go, the sound of more M-Tek Armors approaching can be heard just inside the gates.

Golispod tosses its charges to safety, and though it engages one of a pair of grunt armors in the square inside the gates, it doesn't take them apart as easily as might be expected. The one it strikes goes skidding backwards, metal gouged out, exposing a certain amount of underplate and a hint of wiring, but far from disabling the armor.

The flanking M-Tek Grunt comes in with those two-pronged claws, meeting Golisopod's charge with a slashing charge of his own.

A blue-haired, glassy-eyed man becomes visible down the street, turning a corner from the vague direction of the pyramid in one of the Elite M-Teks. It starts heading towards the fight with Golisopod.

The Red Witch doesn't seem to recognize Yuuki as a PC. It is probably because her sprite also indicates that She Is A PC, and nobody actually gave her clear orders on what the problem was. Consequently, Yuuki gets in and manages to shove the Elite M-Tek Armor, sending it staggering awkwardly to the opposite side, and offering Count a /much/ cleaner shot to do whatever it needs to do. That armor sure can't turtle up again like this.

Mauve takes to the city wall tops. The layout of the town is fairly simple -- there is a straight road through the middle of town, with a gate on each end. The gate the group entered through is opened, the opposite gate is closed and has a bunch of soldiers guarding it.

Just down the road, on the left, the road splits towards the interior of town. There is a blue-haired man in an Elite M-Tek armor emerging onto the main road, on a course to make contact with Guzma's people. Beyond that, Mauve can see several more layers of checkpoints leading up to the pyramidal structure. The foremost checkpoint is missing its Elite M-Tek Soldier, but there's one at each of them, totalling three. The sixth must be the one at the gate on the opposite side of town.
Mauve Gauntlet Mauve leaps to the ground, anchoring herself into the dirt. She then fires one gauntlet across the road to hook onto something on the other side, and create a tripwire of sorts for the oncoming M-tech armor to, well, trip on.
Guzma Guzma turns right as Yuuki grabs his bandana, sighs, and replies "Just bring it back, aight?"

As the fights begin, the scorpion pulls back at the barrage of missiles, but not quick enough. Several mar the ground, explosions buffering, with one having to be painfully whacked out of the air. Despite the injuries he takes to his shell...

They start sealing themselves. Battered, but he's tough, as he suddenly leaps up in the confusion, moving to try and smash into the pilot directly with enough force to batter but not kill her.

Golisopod's claws go up to form arm guards as the enemy soldier comes back to counter. The charge sends it flying backwards, and the vibrations of the charge have injured it, but the shell is fine.

As rivals come in towards its charges, Golisopod does the bug equivalent of tsking, and forms a blade out of water along an arm shell, trying to use it to cut further into exposed wiring, before turning and dashing to protect the grunts - back exposed for a counter shot.
Yuuki Kuran Guzma will handle his foes, and Mauve is good for at least one crown, which leaves...

Yuuki, shoving over large M-Tek armor like a bully. On some level, she feels sorry for these people. They don't seem *bad*, they just--

Pausing in her mental narration, Yuuki idly undoes her bindle. "Wait. No. They are bad."

Like a uniform marching dystopian drudgery, the very air here had the smog of 'accepted less'. The crowns, stained with the taste of unnecessary but efficient coercion.

Well, in the elites, perhaps south of 'unnecessary'. It was distasteful.

Crouching on the fallen M-Tek, Yuuki checks her phone, knees wide as she balances in a deep knee bend on the armored warrior. "I think I've figured it out."

A goblin lights a fire as a bonus action. Yuuki laughs, despite herself. "Having the power to do more means it's distasteful if you do less."

While all that's going on, a second Yuuki pops out of Guzma's blind spot, tapping him on the shoulder again. "I'm going to get the farthest one. Make sure Mauve doesn't get into any trouble too, okay? Thanks!"

She jogs off in the direction of the Farthest, Most Worst Gate to interact with.
Zero Kiryu The Blue-Haired Witch's Elite M-Tek Armor isn't prepped to deal with an attack on its legs, and its pilot isn't sharp enough to compensate-on-the-fly without actually noticing it. This doesn't /defeat/ the man himself, who jumps out of the armor as it topples across the corner and looks around. A moment later he begins whispering into the air, and then a ring of light surrounds him and expands into the surroundings.

Time begins to slow in his immediate vicinity. A goblin comes in and punches him successfully in slow-motion, but three more are suddenly engulfed in globes of darkness that must be some form of gravitational attack.

<< Do you suppose those crowns would work to pacify a Level E? >> Zero's voice projects into Yuuki's mind.

The Red-Haired Witch is battered in her cockpit and sent tumbling out, not dis-similar to the Blue-Haired Witch. She rolls to a crouch, rubbing the primary point of impact from the scorpion along her chest.

Oddly, she seems unable to connect Guzma with his creatures. The Red Witch whispers into the air, and calls down a tri-elemental beam that glitters with a core of molten heat, a surrounding crackle of electricity, and an aura of subzero blue light crashing towards Count.

The Grunt M-Teks that Golisopod is fighting with is struck again in the same exposed spot, and backs off as his cannon begins to spark and belch random spouts of fire. His buddy puts his machine directly in the cannon's line-of-fire to stop it from reaching the surroundings easily, unbuckling and scrambling acoss to help evacuate the guy from his cockpit.

Yuuki heads towards the gate at the opposite end of the main road. Here there is a White-Haired Witch, who receives a sudden order from one of the soldiers near him. He nods, adjusts the aim of his Elite M-Tek Armor's bearing, and then-- and then gasses the entire crowd of soldiers around him along with the 'general vicinity' of where Yuuki is.

Those crowns are not good at allowing dynamic interpretation.
Guzma The Red Witch tumbles out, and fires a tri-elemental blast at Count. He takes it full-body, sending him careening backwards. While his body still patches itself up, it's not fast enough for the damage, and it's too far away for a quick counter-attack. The Red Witch can probably get another shot out...

If Guzma wasn't coming behind her to punch her hard back in the head and try and knock her unconscious. As soon as his fist hits bones, he pulls his hand back in pain, shaking it, but hopefully, she doesn't withstand it and then immediately turn around and kill him. "Man, that crown makes you a /moron/, doesn't it?"

Golisopod, meanwhile, considers the two grunts. It could easily take them out. But, it has no reason to do so. They're just soldiers, and besides, the trio are yelling at it. Do they want a rescue?

No, they're running up to Golisopod, as Tupp shouts at the guys evacuating. "Remember the name Team Skull, for we kicked your butts, yo!" "Yo! "Yo!"

Golisopod faceclaws.

And then, repicking up the Goonzmas, Golisopod goes hunting for more crowns. If there's even enough time to get the rest before reinforcements, hopefully.
Yuuki Kuran It's so outside the pale for Yuuki to consider the conundrum of 'what do I do if they gas their own soldiers?'. It doesn't even begin to enter her comprehensive horizon. When it does happen, she's blindsided, as she stops up to cough violently. Physically revulsed, if not outright caustically attacked, she waves her hand to clear the air to little avail.

"It's not even..." She spits on the ground, trying to clear the taste off her tongue to little success.

"... not even the most efficient or best way. Sloppy."

Her expression curls down. "Disgusting."

Lunging the M-Tek to get clear of the chemical smoke, Yuuki doesn't go for any special or respectful gambit - she just jump-kicks the M-Tek armor in the side of its stupid legs.
Mauve Gauntlet Mauve does a little fist pump when the mech topples over. So far so good! ...Until the pilot slows down time. Like, actually slows down time, not messes with her perception of it (probably).

Mauve looks around. Maybe if she added to the chaos, she could grab him while his gurads down? There's a bench next to her, so she hoists it off the ground, and launches it at the guy with one hand and shoots out her other hand to grab him.
Zero Kiryu The Red-Haired Witch seems to consider Count a functionally-handled problem. Or maybe it just passed outside of her awareness. It's hard to tell. She turns around, apparently sensing that /some/thing is about to happen, but despite being fully aware of something approaching it's not a defensive maneuver. Guzma strikes Red's crown, not her head-- the impact resounds with a ringing metallic noise, but it doesn't knock her out. She staggers backwards, blood drawn out from where the crown dug into her head.

But she's acting... odd. Like she's watching the world through a staticky tv screen. Bolts of tri-elemental force descend again and again, but they relate to where things were around 5 seconds ago instead of 'now'. You could probably just subdue her and take the crown off to functionally incapacitate her. Her 'lag' is too extended to land a hit.

AT THE OTHER GATE...

Another Elite M-Tek Armor begins to topple from the sheer force of an unexpected blow to its legs. Unlike the last one that toppled, the White Witch seems prepared for a 'surprise' and warms up his cannon enough to snap off a blast of flames, which may not actually be angled properly to hit /Yuuki/ but lance across the town indiscriminately and threaten Golisopod as it seeks new prey.

The mental voice of the Overlord surges back into being as one of the regular Goblins stops ransacking a cart full of cabbages, striding towards Guzma and the Red-Haired Witch with undue confidence.

<< The ones you have subdued may be enough to complete the rest of the task. >> The Overlord rumbles.

Regardless of whether he's struck in the blast from the White Witch, Golisopod will come across Mauve and the Goblins trying to deal with the Blue Witch. Passing that by would take him down the street, where he would encounter-- a pink-haired woman, standing watch near a more distinctly military-style checkpoint. She blinks lazily into the surroundings, and does nothing by-default. The crown glitters on her head, so she's clearly one of them, but...

Maybe her orders weren't useful.

The Overlord-possessed Goblin shoves the Red Witch over when she begins to cast a spell where he used to be, takes a few steps around her, and then yanks the crown off of her head. With his free hand he directions a stream of energy into her-- and though the crown's removal briefly seemed to cause her to fall incapacitated like a puppet with its strings cut, the energy re-awakens her horribly.

For a few seconds it resembles torture-- as if her body is simply being torn apart in some unseen way. After a moment though the light reaches her eyes, and she stops screaming.

The Red Witch rubs her head, the glassiness leaving her expression. She looks around, confused but aware in a way that she hadn't been a moment ago.

<< Go and claim your comrades, Silva. >> The Overlord rumbles. She vocalizes an affirmative, and unsteadily starts to walk away. Through the eyes of the goblin, the Overlord looks towards Guzma, << They are still 'themselves' when it is /my/ control. They are simply mine. >>

The possessed goblin gives Guzma the crown for safekeeping, and then the possession ends.

Meanwhile, the Blue Witch is butchering goblins-- until a bench hits him in the back. He turns in surprise, not expecting an enemy that is operating at full pace. Mauve's hand locks on his bicep, and despite magical prowess it doesn't seem as if physique is his forte. He struggles with the extended appendage-- and worse, when the goblins begin to pile on, slow though they are.

As it seems he's going to drown beneath the tide of foes, the Blue Witch begins to chant and glow. Probably best to take the opportunity and incapacitate him!
Mauve Gauntlet Oh, hey the goblins are helping now! But she's seen enough mages in games to know where this is going with that chanting...plus the fact that he did this already, but yeah. "Nope!" Mauve shouts, firing her other hand at Blue Witch, aiming to punch him in the face and interrupt that chanting.
Zero Kiryu The Blue Witch is clocked right across the jaw with a rather nasty-sounding crack, and stops talking. In time with this, he begins to struggle -- credibly -- towards something else. A thin-bladed sword, almost ornamental, hangs at his waist. His free hand twitches towards it, gaining inches and then slow, torturous centimeters as the goblins fight to stop him from reaching the blade. But he doesn't seem /quite/ weak enough to be stopped outright by the goblins alone.
Mauve Gauntlet Mauve moves her punching hand down to try and grab hold of and pin to his side Blue witch's free arm....And then retract her chains, pulling her entire body and weight of an armored teenage girl twards him to try and pin him to the ground.
Guzma Guzma and Count move as the further attacks come after the strike - and then Guzma realizes the lag. He squints, grins, and then runs up to her, "You're done!"

But then, the Overlord's goblin does the job. The Overlord's information causes Guzma to nod, even as he's still clearly uneasy. "Alright. That's better than nothing." Guzma takes the crown, holds it under an arm, and then takes his scorpion back towards the hill, since he can't risk it getting stolen back.

Meanwhile, Golisopod isn't prepared for the White Witch's blast, so he's skidding backwards, but the Goonzmas are mostly fine. He pushes forward, passes by them because Mauve has it in head, and down teh street towards - the pink haired woman. She's wearing a crown and not doing anything, so...

Zipp reaches out from Golisopod's hand to just kinda yoink her crown, and then Golisopod just moves to snatch her, kind of trying to juggle three people and one on his back. It's lucky he's insanely strong, and also that he actually just pushes Tupp out of his arms and makes him walk.

Poor Tupp.
Yuuki Kuran Golisopod is quick and maneuverable, but Yuuki doesn't give the large bug any warning -- because she has to deal with the blast herself. The blast of magic shoots through her body on its way to explode, her centre misted and wavering with the energy blast. The brown haired girl seems more shocked and bemused than actually harmed, 'standing' still mid-blow.

The Overlord's comment, even all the way across the square at the other gate, causes her to smile. "Well, at least we answered the question I had."

Sending her metal-crumpling kinetic grip into the claw firing those magic blasts, Yuuki #2 appears clambering up the back of the M-Tek's hull.

Cresting the top, her hands reach over the seat to grabbyhands at the crown. Unlike Yuuki #1, who wears a grim and unimpressed expression, Yuuki #2 has a lip-biting goofy expression of extreme intent on her sneak-thief fingers.
Zero Kiryu The Pink Witch doesn't stop Zipp from removing the crown. It might slowly dawn on somebody that, in fact, she was ordered to stop people from going through the gate, and these orders don't actually include anything that is useful outside of that context.

The Blue Witch probably wouldn't be daunted by the weight of a teenaged girl, armored or no-- but Mauve has enough strength in her to keep his hand away from that sword and pin him to the ground. Shortly after she finishes, one of the goblins climbinb up the Blue Witch's head becomes Overlord-possessed, hopping down and assuming a posture that is simply unnatural to these little shits.

It seizes Blue's crown, and repeats the same painful-looking process that it did on Red-- and much like Red, Blue immediately seems to regain awareness despite obviously being subjected to another form of control.

The Overlord says, << This is what I am going to do. As for your machinery... it is an interface point. Having such a thing opens you up. That is the purpose of it. A tool to interface with it would naturally be able to seize control of your mind. >>

The White Witch... /clearly/ is not prepared for somebody to just lose their entire chest cavity and not seem to be bothered by it. It stares at Yuuki #1 from its toppled machine, trying to ascertain a spell that would actually do the trick.

This is enough time and attention-grabbing for Yuuki #2 to slip the crown from his head. At that exact moment, the White Witch simply stops responding. If she should peer into his mind, it's gone blank. It's not 'totally gone', but it seems that the crowns, barring deliberate psychic intervention, have a fairly tangible recovery period.

    4/6 COLORED WEIRDOS CAPTURED.
    2/6 COLORED WEIRDOS missing.

The Overlord's ephemeral presence withdraws from the goblin near Blue and Mauve, declaring, << This will be sufficient to overwhelm this region and claim what remains. We may withdraw. >>

By withdraw, the Overlord apparently just means 'let his idiots rampage until they get bored', because the goblins simply resume being aggressive, only-vaguely-violent nuisances. Except the imps, which are just setting fires for the fun of the arson.

Only about a quarter of them remain. This doesn't seem to bother any of them, though.