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."

"Biometrics aren't entirely immune to faking, unfortunately, but they're a bit better for high security."

"True. Am I going to need to have fingerprints, or can they use my iris or something?"

"Iris should work."

"Oh good, that's more convenient photographing my fingerprints so I could make them the same every time I needed them."

"Yeah. I imagine that'd be a really big pain."

"Yeah. Not to mention making a bit of a farce out of the whole thing." How much farther before they reach the ground?

Not far at all.

It's been a long trip, though.

It has been! Margaret gets her IDs set up, makes sure she knows where she needs to be the next morning, makes a beeline for her hotel, and collapses into bed, space-jetlagged.

Getting her trained and caught up takes a short while, during which Captain X's organization continues to cover for her costs. She's moved into some operative's spare bedroom pretty quickly, and provided with a wealth of information on the modern age.

Margaret soaks up the education like a sponge. It's not long before she's caught up on the things that everybody knows, and getting a solid foundation in the specialist stuff.

Good!

Captain X would like to meet with her at her next convenience, and make introductions, since she's in the system anyways.

There are kind of a lot of people in this organization who go by Something X and it kind of complicates the introduction situation, but hey, it's kind of cool that old Earth spy movies got that much right. She shows up at the meeting.

Seems to be the Captain X she originally met! No one else has arrived yet. She smiles when she sees Margaret. "How've you been settling in?"