"Look, couldn't you just put those things away, let him go, and then we could all be friends?", she attempted with a cheer quite unsuitable for the given situation. As might have been expected, her audience was less than impressed, none of the spears ceasing to point at her, and her friend's palm not budging an inch from his face.
The situation was heating up fairly quickly, even from the usual high temperatures LOHAC had.
The Chills were a small tribe of crocodiles living at the fridge of the planet's society, not having too much contact with outsiders due to high levels of monster activity. The food was scarce, the imp and ogre attacks daily, and the inhabitants, those who survived their first couple weeks of life anyway, hardy and strong. And they worshipped the Horrorterrors: millennia ago, a highly revered and esteemed prophet had visited the dark land of Derse, and returned home with information from beyond the stars, giving them hope of something grander by directing their attention to these terrifying creatures, instead of Skaia which had never done a thing for them.
They rather disliked Derse inhabitants and dreamers, and outright hated the ones from Prospit: there was a large statue in the middle of the village, displaying four dismembered human corpses around a vaguely-familiar looking tentacled creature. It was, indeed, a small miracle they had not attacked already, forcing the two heroes to murder them all.
Dave Strider did not usually care much about religion. He was on the opinion that whatever crazy moon spirit or other imaginary friend you had, it was your own business and nobody else's. Unfortunately, here he was not given that luxury, and yet out of all the crocodile tribes he absolutely had to do business with, most of them hailing him as a great hero by now, it had to be with the ones that would have rather seen him killed.
Their elite crack operational crococommandos had successfully performed an operation to capture them some dinner from the Land of Frost and Frogs, less than an hour ago. Perhaps they knew that these were essential in creating a new universe and winning the game, but being in thrall of the creatures opposing this, it was unlikely knowing this would have changed their plans too much - possibly made the recipe all the more painful for the frogs, even.
And likely the worst of all, instead of being helped out on this quest by his dark wizard ectosister, he was accompanied by a peace-loving hippie who would obviously try to negotiate with the terrorists.
"Goddammit Harley, you'd try to be tanglebuddies even with Osama, wouldn't you?", Dave inquired, exasperated. "I just want to get this over with, even if it means shish-kebabing all these dudes."
"But they're your consorts!", Jade complained. "They're just misguided. We're not supposed to be killing off our friends."
"Don't look very friendly to me."
"Well?", the village elder demanded with a harsh voice, that would certainly have been much more imposing and intimidating had it not been an impatient yap coming from a small reptilian creature. "What is your answer? We demand another meal in exchange for this frog. One of you must take his place as the dinner! Nak." The current meal was sitting in a small cage hanging from the statue, guarded by seven crocodile spears, ready to impale it as soon as the heroes tried anything at all. It seemed fairly calm within the predicament, as if nothing out of oridinary was happening and it was just squatting on its pond.
"All right, all right, just give us a bit more time," the hero of space pleaded, pulling Dave a bit away for a consultation. "We'll figure something out."
"Be quick with it, or we will eat all three! We are getting hungry!"
Immediately when they were out of earshot, Dave turned over to his friend and whispered: "Okay, when I give you the sign, you teleport the frog away with your space powers while I call up some more Daves to buy us time. Then we'll head back to your planet and..."
"Are you sure that's all we can do?", she interrupted. "I really wouldn't want to kill them, or anything. They're not the real enemy, the imps and other monsters are!"
"Well can you think of anything smarter? If you've got an idea to get us out of performing a croco-holocaust then I'm all ears."
"Okay, just..." Her eyes darted across the landscape, and the village, for ideas. There were cogs and gears, a lot of lava, crocodiles, shitty huts... and the statue of one of their deities, along with its gruesome display of thankfully not-real dead humans. "Say, Dave... remember when Tiger was thought to be a god by some american mice in American Tail 2?"
"I never saw American Tail 2."
"You didn't?" She looked genuinely shocked. "What's wrong with you, it was an awesome movie!"
"Harley, there's not a single sequel to a Don Bluth movie that's anything less than complete horseshit. Egbert's just gotten his shitty movie loveitis or whatever stuck on you somehow."
"Hmph."
"Anyway, what you explained also happened in Star Wars - and like a thousand other movies - so I guess I get where you're going with this. The plan is to reveal ourselves as horribleterrible octopus overlords and save the little frog?" Dave adjusted his shades a little in order to achieve optimum coolness. "That's great and all, but how'd you think we were able to do that?"
"Well, maybe it's just me, but don't you think the fellow in that statue looks sort of familiar?", she pointed out. Dave could not see the resemblance to anyone he knew, and told her this much.
Before he could figure out anything about her cunning plan, or before she would have told him anything, Jade Harley stepped forward and back to the crowd, addressing them all:
"Hear me, citizens of LOHAC! I am an emissary from your gods, the Noble Circle of Horrorterrors! I bring word of peace and prosperity in the very near future!"
As was perhaps to be expected, her declaration was met with a fair amount of incredulity, even mocking laughter. She did not seem deterred at all by this, simply standing in full posture and trying to look as badass as she could in a fancy Three In The Morning star-dress (which she, Dave had to admit, looked pretty gorgeous in). "And what do you, o prophet of the mighty, have to present us as the symbol of your position?", the elder inquired in a sarcastic mockery. "A gift from the Noble Circle themselves, perhaps?" Spears were brandished at her, and Dave took a step to protect her from them.
Even now Jade did not appear all that inconvenienced. She simply raised her right hand to the skies in a dramatic motion, and boomed: "You wish to see proof of the favour the Horrorterrors have put upon me? Then behold!"
And with naught but a quick green flash, the proof popped into existence between her fingers. There was a vast collective gasp from everybody present, aside from Jade herself and Dave - who instead blushed red in a very uncool way and averted his eyes to a very interesting-looking hut to his right. "He bears the Mark of the Noble Circle!", someone in the crowd uttered, upon which the entire village full of crocodiles fell prostrate in a low bow towards the Witch of Space. "The prophesies were true!"
For several minutes they stared, bowed, and chanted, until Dave, clearly embarrassed and having lost all his cool, had to physically yank Jade's hand back down.
"I can't fucking believe what you just did, Harley." Dave had been seated in the circle around the bonfire, and served, not frog, but fruit and vegetables that Jade had teleported for them to eat. "I still think we should've gone with my plan. Yours was like the worst in the history of the paradox space. If there were awards for the worst plan in the universe..."
"Hey, it worked, didn't it?", Jade interrupted cheerfully. She was sitting next to Dave, holding the quite unharmed frog on her lap. "So it can't have been that bad. Maybe just a wee bit embarrassing."
"Just a wee bit embarrassing," Dave parroted incredulously. "You're impossible, you know that. Fucking impossible and weird and embarrassing to hang out with. But hey, if you're cool with it, then whatever," he spread his hands impassively, "I'll just try my best to not care either."
In one of the chalk (imported from LOLAR) tentacles of the statue, the one pointing highest up, now hung the gift from the Horrorterrors, presented to the inhabitants of this village by the prophet Jade Harley: a pair of light green Squiddle-themed panties, proudly raised up by the natives as their new flag of honour, fluttering in an occasional wind blowing from LOWAS.
"At least you pretty much instantly got yourself a replacement, huh?", Dave remarked, trying to look anywhere else but the statue. "What with that your wardrobifier thingy."
"Weeelll... I did say, when I first came down here, that your planet's bloody hot, remember?", Jade responded innocently, and far too brightly. "So I passed on that."
If there was any cool left in Dave Strider's body, it vaporized away like an ice cube in a lava flow.