Work Text:
Katie hadn't quite yet figured out being in space, which honestly should have been expected. She'd been abducted, kept in captivity for two months, and then rescued and promptly introduced to far too many things far too fast. Anyone would be disoriented.
Unfortunately for the crew, being new didn't stop her from being mischievous.
They hadn't gotten translators yet, which was honestly fine by Katie for now. They understood their needs well enough without them and seemed to at least register that Nom and Katie were sentient.
Fortunately for Nom and Katie themselves, and unfortunately for the aliens, they seemed prone to underestimating the two of them regarding intelligence, though apparently weren't too unaware of their physical capabilities. This meant that no one except perhaps for 4C was truly aware of just how much of a little shit Katie could be.
Hence the sneaking around after lights out on the ship.
Katie had been feeling angry lately, which she thought was totally understandable. As stated before, being taken from your home and forced to watch your brother be experimented on might traumatize someone a little bit.
The crew they'd joined had raided some supplies from the criminal ship, and Katie was planning to treat it like a rage room.
Nom was behind her, less quiet but still not obvious. She kind of doubted they'd be found, anyway—praise be, the ship had relatively similar day patterns to the sixteen hour-eight hour spread that Katie was used to.
He was also carrying their weapons of choice—a makeshift baseball bat, what looked like a golf club, and various other blunt force weapons they'd thought would do well enough.
The large, blankly tiled room with all of the raided ship's belongings was depressingly easy to get through with some impressive creativity on Nom's part and wild agility on Katie's. They were in in fifteen minutes, which was longer than she would've liked but shorter than she had expected, so she took the win.
Most of it was already beaten up to high hell, which meant it probably wouldn't be missed. She doubted this crew needed the supply, really. They seemed perfectly fine. And they probably should have known that humans liked having things to beat up from the first time Nom nearly knocked a punching bag off of the chain.
She'd been to a rage room once before in her life, a thirteenth birthday gift from Nom. he came too, of course, and they'd demolished anything in their path. Glass, plates, a fifty inch Tv that was flattened to a pulp… nothing was safe from a burnt out high schooler and his angry little sister.
She set to work on some of the plates they had been using to serve Nom and Katie. She had absolutely no idea why the crew hadn't just kept them in the kitchen with the rest, but that was their loss, not hers.
She got half of the stack while handing Nom the other. Something small to start with, of course. They immediately set about throwing the plates to the ground, cheering as they shattered and gleefully breaking them apart even further.
Next was the lab equipment. Honestly, Katie was glad to tear it apart, knowing how it had been used against her brother. Nom tore through it with a viciousness she hadn't seen in him since the tree freaks.
Glassware came after that—thrown at walls, on the floor, screaming their hearts out to nobody in the world. The walls probably weren't soundproof.
"That's for experimenting on me, you fucking bastard!" Nom screeched as he swung the golf club looking thing into a bottle. Katie whooped in agreement and promptly chucked it at the wall.
They stomped on everything. Nom started throwing anything that was already broken at the wall to see how bad he could get it. Then, he handed Katie the bat and let her go wild on the rest.
They should have known they were going to garner attention, really. 4C popped through the door first, Graecie, Cherri, and Mae on his heels.
4C had no idea what he was even looking at.
When they had heard the screaming coming from the spare storage that was currently holding only raided items from the rescue mission, they'd panicked. Were Nom and Katie hurt? Trying to leave? Had someone gotten into the ship?
None of those things were happening.
Katie and Nom stood among shards of glass, plastic, and everything in between, gleefully manic expressions on their faces, though 4C could tell it wasn't directed at any of them. Katie was armed with a bat and Nom with a club. What in the name of the stars were they doing here? And why was there so much wreckage?
4C tried to think on what he knew about humans and behaviors in general. Rage was difficult to control, he knew, and this was probably the result of such an outburst. But they would have had to seek out the room and go through the trouble of breaking in, and the choice of items didn't feel coincidental…
"Oh!" He realized out loud, prompting Cherri, Mae, and Graecie to swivel their heads (and pseudo-heads) toward him in sync. "It's a rage room! They're taking out their frustrations on the Arborum's things since they can't get to the Arborum themselves."
"Ohhhh," Chorused all the non-human voices in the room.
Katie gave a wave and, when it didn't seem like any of them were going to yell at her, promptly resumed. Nom made a gesture that 4C could only take as inviting, and immediately joined the two of them.
…Okay, destroying his captors' belongings was really, really fun.