Yeah, this ship probably isn't built to be able to land. With shuttles so available, it makes a lot of sense to build your big ships in orbit and not worry about designing them for aerodynamics.

Captain X comes to sit by her on the ride down. "How's your journey been?"

"Pretty good! I'm finally starting to feel like I know how this world works and less like a lost tourist."

"That's a good first step. We might want to see if we can't get your education caught up, too - I bet our grade schools teach different things. At least get you grounded in history some..."

"History and also science, my knowledge of physics comes from when they thought FTL was impossible. Are there online classes I should be taking?" She's done this world's equivalent of wiki-walking on a number of topics, but nothing really systematic; it's been too long since she was in school.

"I should be able to find ones for you, yeah, and it'd be helpful for analyzing dangers and such to know more about our world."

Nod. "And presumably I'll need to learn a bunch of specialist stuff too."

"Generally, yes, though there's different levels you'd be able to help at, pretty much? I'd expect us to find a use for you pretty early in the educational modules."

"I definitely want to start being useful as soon as possible."

"Fortunately, we can accommodate that."

Margaret smiles and peers out the window, watching the planet approach and wondering how much longer it will take them to get down.

The descent is slow and controlled enough it might take them another half an hour at least.

She can watch the planet get bigger out her window, then. How densely populated does it look to be? She knows that with the profusion of earthlike planets out there, people haven't felt the need to crowd everywhere to the standards of her former home before spreading farther.

It isn't entirely uninterrupted mountains and plains, but it's not the tight network of lights Earth is from space or a plane. There's a few cities, connected to each other by corridors, with some sprawl out from the planetary surface and more than a few freight elevators going into space - which seem a better indication of population than lights. Either they don't like lighting their cities up at night or have figured out ways to avoid light pollution from doing that.

That's pretty cool! She has really good night vision with her shiny slit-pupilled eyes, so even if they've decided a clear view of the stars is more important than having streetlights she shouldn't be especially inconvenienced. And she can see where they'd conclude that; the stars as seen from a spaceship are really something.

They apparently rate priority consideration for landing; their shuttle docks in a more private bay than the main spaceport looks to be.

Nifty! Does she have an appointment somewhere immediately, or should she be figuring out where she's going to sleep tonight?

"No appointments, but I should be able to get you accommodations, at a hotel even if nothing else."

"What is the whole getting-paid and paying-for-hotel-room situation going to be like?" She never actually got formal offer or onboarding paperwork and isn't sure if either of "being in an alternate future" or "being a spy" means she isn't going to get any; either way it's a far cry from her old job.

"We'll need to set you up with an identity here and then a credit account - unfortunately I couldn't do those from the ship. After we get you your identifications, we'll sign you up officially. We'll cover the hotel room until we get you a forward on your salary."

"That makes sense. Is the shapeshifting going to complicate that? I basically always look like this, but back home there was extra paperwork about it."

"Shapeshifting's not really known here. If you want to have separate faces, I can get you separate identities for them?"

"No, I only want the one face and the one identity, I meant I'm worried the government won't want to give a shapeshifter a photo ID at all."

"There's not actually a policy on it - oh, and we also don't use photo IDs. They're not all that secure."

"That makes sense. Even without magical girls, image-editing software was already pretty good at my world's tech level."