Author's Notes:

This guest chapter is written by Kaidan.

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Minting Penny - Humanity last hope is to contact an alien world. But before they do, they need to turn their ambassador into a new species...

Story Themes: TFTG. Humor. Very slow, detailed TF scene.
'Dark' rating: 2 / 10
Clop?: Not particularly, though the TF is pretty sexy~

“Thank you for volunteering.” The man wore a white lab coat and stood beside a projector screen.

I sighed and leaned back in my chair. When I’d seen the flier for volunteers to be on the first expedition to a new planet, it had seemed too good to be true. The problems with overpopulation and pollution on Earth had long since passed the point of no return. WIthin a decade, all human life would be dead. If this man wanted to get me off-world, I would take it.

“As you know, we’ve been searching for a new home for humanity. What you don’t know, the reason you’ve all signed a nondisclosure agreement, is that we have found one.”

Muffled whispers sprang up around the room as students began to discuss this revelation. There were several dozen volunteers here today, and it was likely only one would get chosen.

The scientist activated the projector, revealing an ideal planet to colonize. It appeared just like Earth was a few hundred years ago: full of vibrant colors.

“Now, we’ve sent a dozen probes there through the warp network. The planet emits a radiation that had sterilized all of the microbe colonies sent there. No probe that landed to take surface samples has returned. It is my theory that if humanity is to colonize this planet, to survive as a species, we must adapt to this radiation.”

One of the students raised a hand. “What kind? Alpha, gamma? Is it lethal?”

“We don’t know yet,” the scientist admitted. “However, one of the probes was carrying a mouse and unlike the microbes it. . . survived the radiation. You’re here today to see if we can find a volunteer to undergo a radiation therapy, using the samples we’ve gathered from the planet.”

At this point over half the students got up and started to leave. None of them wanted to get irradiated for science. I started to stand to join them when the scientist spoke up again.

“Of course, there will be a generous stipend of half a million dollars paid to you, or your next of kin, for agreeing to participate. The radiation won’t kill you, but it will cause you to adapt to the alien environment, and you will go there with our next probe to make contact.”

I stopped, and sat back down. There were only four volunteers left at this point. My family had recently gotten into debt and could use that stipend. Plus, I’d be safe on this new planet, perhaps my family would get to come next. After all, Earth was doomed either way, why not take a chance?

“Thank you for staying.” The scientist went over and locked the door. “The four of you deserve to know what you’re volunteering for. This planet contains sapient life. We haven’t made contact yet, and need an ambassador. We believe our treatment will turn you into one of the aliens. We haven’t seen one yet, satellite photos have somehow been blocked. Yet we do know this: their solar system defies physics. The sun orbits their planet. The weather is perfect, no storms, no hurricanes, no droughts.”

He flips through the slides showing us as many images as he can of the planet. “Any questions?”

I raised my hand. “Yeah, if this works what about my family?”

“They can be paid the stipend and brought on one of the first evacuation shuttles. If this experiment works, it will save humanity.”

Another student stood up. “So you want to turn us into an alien life form, launch us off to an alien planet, and hope for the best? No thanks.” He headed towards the door.

“Very well, but remember you signed a nondisclosure agreement. Anyone else want to quit?”

I watched as the only other two students slowly walked out, just leaving me. I froze like a deer in the headlights.

“So, are you my lucky volunteer or are you going to leave? This is the fourth group of volunteers to walk out on me.”

“No, I mean, my family could use the money and the Earth is doomed. The Moon and Mars colonies stopped allowing immigrants when their hydroponics facility couldn’t feed any more people. If you can promise my family will get to go to this planet if I succeed. . . then I accept.”

“Really?” The scientist smiled and looked like he was going to hug me in joy. “This is wonderful! I just need to make a phone call and we’ll take care of the rest! Thank you so much!”

I smirked and chuckled nervously. What did I just get myself into?

The next few days were a blur. Having filled out some paperwork, I was whisked away to a government facility. I told my parents that I was a volunteer for a project that may save mankind. It was melodramatic, and I was fairly certain my father didn’t believe me one bit. He likely thought that I was a drug addict.

This facility was rather nice for being deep beneath Cheyenne mountain. They gave me comfortable quarters while I was briefed on my mission. I was given a list of things to say during first contact during training. I would be the first human contact with this new race, and they wanted me to be prepared for anything.

Since no one else had volunteered, I was moved to the lab alone. There were several vats of goo alongside dozens of recording devices. They didn’t know what I would become, or if I’d be capable of human speech. The fact that not even a single member of the military had volunteered should have been a hint that I was getting in over my head.

“Are you ready for this?” a researcher asked.

“Yeah, let’s do this.” I took off my robe, leaving me naked. There was a ladder up to the vat of goo and I climbed up, dipping a finger into it. It was warm and thick, a key part of the transformation. It’d provide nutrients and building blocks as my body reshaped itself.

Around the edge of the vat were radiation emitters, to drive the changes forward. I took a glance back at the lead-lined glass that the researchers would watch me from.

I wonder what I’ll look like after this. Hopefully it’ll be something awesome.

“Well, here goes nothing.” I jump into the vat of goo, and feel it slosh along my body and splash out of the container. I take a glance down, wondering if I’ll look anything like I do now after the change.

“Test subject XR-ninety-two-delta, male, twenty-one years old, excellent health.” The intercom crackled and fell silent.

I took the breathing apparatus that they had provided me with. It had a single strap and a bite guard to keep it in, and would allow me to float under the goo. It had the consistency of a thick jelly and easily supported my weight, letting me float in the vat.

Once I was in the clear goo, I noticed the walls of the glass container were reflective. I could see myself, and the substance didn’t irritate my eyes or blur my vision. It was very surreal to be floating here, staring at my naked form.

“Radiation treatment started. Lab sealed.”

I felt warmth spread through my skin and looked around. The radiation emitters still looked the same, and I knew that whatever was affecting me was something that couldn’t be seen. On the wall there was a warning symbol, lit up to the point where I could barely make it out. I knew this was the point of no return.

The skin at the end of my arms and legs started to burn painfully, as if cracked by harsh weather. I could feel it blistering and tearing and feared the radiation was killing me. Looking through the goo, I saw my flesh looked pale and seemed to drip off my hand. My fingers appeared webbed as the skin melted together.

I tried to flex my fingers, but the joints seemed to be locked in place. I bit the mouth guard of the respirator hard as the bones curled inward, forming a hard fist. I felt my fingertips punch through the skin, and the bones slowly get absorbed into my hand.

The burning intensified as the fingers, and then toes, melted into tiny slivers of bone that couldn’t move. I saw my middle finger getting thicker, absorbing the bone and flesh around it. My fingernail had turned into a large knot, a thick chunk of keratin to replace my hand.

Stay calm, the pain isn’t that bad… it’s just changing my hands into something...

Recognition began to come to me, as I felt my feet and hand snapping into a rigid position, stretched out until they were half the length of my entire arm and leg. The replacement growths on my hands and feet were hoof-shaped. I turned my arm over and saw the distinct horse-shoe shape of it.

I panicked, realizing I was becoming a horse. I tried to get out of the vat, but the goo was weighing me down and there was a safety guard over the edge, trapping me inside. The intercom buzzed, but I couldn’t hear it well enough to tell what they were saying.

Wait… Aliens aren’t horses, I just need to let the changes finish. Too late to back out now.

The burning subsided in my feet and hands, which were now rock-solid hooves. I could feel the skin and soft flesh shaping itself around them, as the change worked closer to the center of my body.

The bones in my arms and legs snapped painfully, the femur and humerus being the worse. The large bones in my upper arms had to crack and reshape themselves. Thick muscles attached to them, yanking the bone painfully into place against my shoulder. The blades of my shoulder shifted, rotating until it was most natural to stick my arms straight beneath my chest, and not out to the side.

I screamed into the rebreather as my pelvis snapped and melted, reshaping dramatically to force my legs in front of me. Now that my legs were stuck in plain view, I noticed the bulge traveling down my femur towards my knee. The muscles shifted as my tibia and fibula shrank, stretching my foot even wider as the bones snapped into place.

Two hocks formed on my legs, the sharp curve highlighting my knee and showing where my leg ended, and long foot and hoof began. I looked in disbelief at the stretched pink skin over my four legs that jut out in front of me. Aside from the hooves, they still looked human.

Stay calm. . . stay calm. . . The aliens must just walk on four legs, that’s it… No need drown yourself in the middle of the change.

An auburn color crept up my legs, itching profusely. Small hairs were sprouting up in patches of hundreds, climbing up my legs until that coppery-red color covered them completely. My legs were shaped like an animal, and now completely covered in fur. I wondered how the scientists could possibly have wanted this to happen.

A sharp pain in my ass brought me back to reality. Something was sending a searing pain up my spine as it was tugged downward, separating the vertebrae. A bulge in my ass tore through the skin as my tailbone shot outwards, growing into a moveable tail. Thick hair of a darker brown grew rapidly from it.

My tail began to wiggle as the nerves formed and attached the muscles to my spine. I realized how rapid my breathing was as I bit hard into the breathing mask. This whole process was too much, and it wasn’t over yet.

Tingling spread through my groin, as if my foot was asleep. The pins and needles were very annoying, then I felt the skin of my scrotum pulled tight. The skin constricted more and more against my balls, squeezing them painfully, until forcing them up into my abdomen.

Oh man, is my dick going to change next? Wait. . . it already feels smaller. Oh god. What the fuck is this?! No!

I looked down in horror, crying, as my dick shrunk. The skin was pulled so tight that it had nowhere to go but inside my stomach. As it was sucked in, my skin tore and spread open beaneath it. Two leathery pink flaps formed on the sides of the gash, covering the thin slit from the outside world.

No, I’m already some nasty alien freak, don’t take my manhood too!

The reddish hair grew right up to the edge of the forming pussy. A pleasurable tingle rocked my body as my clitoris formed where my dick had once been.

My new muscles contracted, testing themselves out, and causing my pussy to wink. The folded labia were pushed outward as my inner walls and clitoris popped out. As the muscles relaxed, a large glob of the goo was sucked inside my virgin pussy.

The radiation or goo was burning, stoking some fire inside my pussy. I didn’t understand what it was until the pleasure started to spread throughout my entire body.

Is this what females feel before having an. . . orgasm? Ew! No, I don’t want to know!

I focused on the pleasure to ignore the pain of my nipples migrating across my chest to by belly. Large wads of fat and mammary glands formed beneath the nipples, and they became so sensitive that the new feelings pushed me over the edge.

Oh no. . . oh it feels. . . it feels. . .

As I came my vision blacked out, my entire body spasming in ecstasy. Newly formed nerves were overloaded by the sensations in my throbbing slit. My swollen clit drove me to buck so hard that I felt my hooves contact the side of the vat, and a dull thud resonate through the liquid.

By the time the orgasm began to fade, I noticed my entire chest and back itching, likely covered completely in fur. My eyes were also burning, it felt like someone was trying to poke them out. They were being pressed into my skull and flattened, slowly expanding. I couldn’t see anything through the pain.

Finally the pressure relented, and my vision returned. The room seemed a bit more colorful, and my sight clearer. In the reflection of the vat I saw a small horse looking back at me, with cute features, like that of a pony. My head was still human, save for the eyes.

My ears rang as I felt them dragged across my scalp, the bone beneath them being re-shaped like putty. They attached themselves on top of my head, and I felt my hair being tugged. It grew rapidly, filling out to several feet long in seconds.

Inside my chest I felt my heart start to beat more strongly. Ribs detached and repositioned themselves, making my chest more barrel-shaped. I could hardly breathe as my lungs adapted, and my internal organs changed to that of an equine.

Last to change was my mouth and nose. The painful process began as my jaw started to crack, stretch, and adjust. It forced itself forward until I could see my nose a good four inches in front of my eyes. A muzzle had formed, and my jaws had moved to fit the new shape.

I tried to scream, swallowing some goo. I felt my jaw start to reform, and my teeth were stretched painfully before shattering, sending pain throughout my head. Moments later, new teeth began to grow. Large, flat molars fit for chewing grass

The change seemed to be mostly over at that point. I heard the door to the lab open, and the warning lights that had been flashing while the radiation was going had turned off.

Long metal arms came in and scooped me up, and the scientists had them place me down on the floor. I was still slick with goo, my long hair wet and matted to my sides. I coughed out a bit of the goo and heard the scientists chatting and taking notes. They sounded somewhat panicked.

I scraped most of the goo off my face with a hoof and was finally able to hear them. “Guys, what’d you turn me into?” I asked. Immediately I flinched at the sound of my voice, now overly-feminine.

“Oh my god, it can talk!” one of the scientists shouted.

“Yeah, of course I can talk.”

Another scientist approached and knelt down, bringing home the fact I was now only about four feet tall. “Stay calm, there may have been some mistake with the transformation.”

That was likely the worst thing he could have said, as I instantly panicked. Was I deformed? Or worse, just an ordinary horse?! “Give me a mirror!”

One of the scientists grabbed a towel and started roughly drying me off. I tried to get up to my feet, but these four legs were unfamiliar and my feet were gone. I found myself trying to balance on the four rough hooves, with joints in all the wrong places.

An improvised mirror was brought over in the form of a metal pan, shiny enough to see my reflection. My fur was a brownish-red like autumn leaves, and my hair was a darker brown. My eyes were too large, perhaps some trick of the reflection, as they each looked as big as a human hand. I had a muzzle, horse ears, a mane, and definitely every other feature of a horse. The one difference was the height, and the coloration. I must have become some kind of pony.

“I need you to stay calm,” a scientist instructed.

“Hah! Calm?! You want me to be calm? You turned me into a freaking pony for Christ’s sake! A talking pony!”

“I’m sorry for what we’re about to do.”

“Do what—” I felt something sharp jab my neck, eliciting a brief scream.

I woke up a short time later inside a metal cage. It looked like I was still in the same room where I had gotten the radiation treatment, only now there were two dozen scientists researching and running samples. Looking down at my sore foreleg I saw several small scabs where they had drawn blood.

My balance seemed a little better and I was able to stand up in the cage. I wanted to try walking but didn’t have enough room. Something cold touched my ass and I kicked backwards, banging loudly against the cage.

“Whoa, easy girl, we just need to do a female wellness exam,” someone stated.

“A female what?” I tried to turn around but the cage was only as wide as I was. I felt the cold gloved hand poking at my femininity again. “Gah! Like hell you are!” I kicked backwards again, banging the cage bar.

“I can do this just as easily while you’re sedated. Do I need to sedate you?”

I gulped, and felt my ears flatten against my head. I hadn’t been expecting my ears to be so easily moved, and began to flick one of them around a little to ease my stress. “N-no… go ahead.”

Oh God, what have I gotten into? This can’t be happening. . . Maybe it’s a bad dream—Holy Christ on a popsicle stick!

The scientist’s cold gloved fingers had slid between the lips of my marehood, and I felt the labia pop open as my muscles tightened up. He took the invitation, sliding the rest of his fingers in and feeling along the sides of my marehood.

I couldn’t help it, and stomped my hooves backwards, locking my legs against the bar and gritting my teeth. “Gah! That feels so wrong. You call yourself a scientist?”

“No, I’m a horse veterinarian. I was uh. . . expecting something entirely different that a talking horse when I got the call at two in the morning.”

“Well, doc, in case they didn’t tell you, I was a human male an hour ago, so take it easy!”

“Hey!” a soldier near the door shouted, quickly walking over. “He isn’t cleared to know that!”

“Shove it up your ass!” I shouted at the soldier. “I’m the only man on Earth with the balls to go through with the change and now I’ve got a fucking horse pussy!”

The soldier glared at me, before grabbing something off the shelf. My eyes went wide in shock as he reached through the bars of the cage and grabbed my mane, then jammed a bit in my mouth. I thrashed around while he began strapping it into place, but he was far stronger than me.

A minute later and I was stuck in the cage glaring back at him, a thick rubber bit in my mouth.

How in the hell did they even have a bit and bridle ‘laying around’ in a military lab?! Augh, fuck.

The vet tried his best to ignore the proceedings, and my angry stomping, as he pushed his hand further in. It wasn’t until I felt his wrist watch that I realized how far in he had gone.

“Mmph!”

“Sorry girl. . . I mean guy. . . crap, never did ask your name. Please don’t tell the other horses about my poor bedside manner. I’m John.”

Cracking jokes? I’m gonna crack some skulls if they don’t just send me on the freaking mission already! A few months in cryo-sleep far away from fat fingers is what I really want right now.

The vet pushed in a little further after loosening his watch, and in what can only be described as the most invasive, wrong feeling I’ve ever felt, he examined my cervix. As a guy I’d never had anything put inside me, not even a pinkie finger in the ass. Now, I’m pretty sure his elbow was rubbing against my clit, because I felt waves of heat building up in my stomach, and my entire ass was tingling in excitement.

He must not have caught on, as I felt my muscles tense and fluid squirt out onto his labcoat as he inadvertently brought me to orgasm.

I chuckled at his misfortune, and turned to see the soldier standing there with an angry expression on his face. “You fucking pervert! You just got off like a filthy animal. I’m not paid enough for this. Hey, scientist! The subject needs to be sedated.”

A scientist hurried over and took one look at me. “Sedated, why?”

“Did I stutter? This eagle on my collar doesn’t mean pretty please, it means your ass will be unemployed and homeless if I have to repeat myself!”

There was another sharp prick in my neck, and I passed out once again.

I woke up and looked around. To my sides were cheap plywood walls. There was a plywood roof above me, and below me was a thick layer of hay and dirt. My jaw ached so I tried to flex it, only to feel the bit and bridle still on me.

Looking around, I realized I was in a stable. The small room must have been repurposed to keep me ‘comfortable’ during my stay.

I can’t believe this! I’m a human being! I have rights! And here they are treating my like a common animal?

The door opened and I was chomping at the bit. I got up and stumbled forward towards it, only to feel my head yanked backwards. I found a rope connecting my bridle to the wall.

Oh man, they better triple that paycheck after all this shit. And what will my family think? Fuck, is it even worth it? If I convince these alien ponies to let Earth migrate to their planet, we’d all be ponies! Would people even want to do that? Mom and Dad will think I’m a freak. . .

“Hello there, how are you doing? I’m Thomas, lead scientist.” The balding man looked sixty or seventy, and to his side was the soldier from earlier. “You’ve meet Captain O’Neill, two l’s, and this is the vet who examined you earlier.”

John reached down, undoing the bit from my mouth but leaving the bridle on. “Any side effects? Are you dizzy? Hungry? Have you had any bowel movements?”

“Cut the crap and play with your girlfriend later, doc.” O’Neill stepped out from behind the wall of the stable. “We need to brief him on the mission.”

“What the fuck! You treat me like shit and expect me to fly across the galaxy and let bygones be bygones?”

The captain laughed and leaned forward, tugging my bridle so I could look him in the face. “That’s exactly what I expect you to do. Twenty-Eight trillion people on Earth expect you to do that. You’re lucky we’re allowing you to continue the mission. We had to rebuild the entire deep space probe for a fucking horse! I still don’t know if you can even press the control panel buttons with those things.”

“Uh, they’re called hooves. Wow, that’s the kind of stuff you learn in kindergarten. Did you parents drop you on your head?” I asked.

“How dare you! I—”

“That’s enough, sir,” the scientist spat. “Pen, if you still want to go on the mission we’d still like you to be Earth’s ambassador. You’re the only test subject to come out of the transformation actually looking like an alien. None of the other test subjects were successful, we think it was just luck that your genome took to the transformation.”

“Wait, there have been others? You said I was the first! What happened to them? Are they all dead?”

“Well, actually. . . and you’ll get a kick out of this,” he chuckled. “We think we the other test subjects overshot the target when their DNA mutated. Their transformations were prolonged, sending them past your current state and making them more equine than intended. The fact is, they all came out of the transformation looking like common, everyday horses. We think they might have still had their intelligence, but since their new bodies didn’t allow them to speak like a human, they were utter failures for the sake of this mission. They were in good health though, so we just gave them to a third party and then tried the experiment again on new test subjects. This cycle continued quite a few times until we struck luck with you!”

“Wait, you did what with the other subjects?!” I gulped, backing up into the stall.

“Oh, don’t worry, we found them all useful roles in the rural community. You know, living arrangements and lives that suited their new bodies. Anyway, none of that really matters, you turned out all right so none of that is important!”

Panic flooded my veins and my pony heart beat faster. Shit, they’re just selling people off as livestock and they don’t care? What kind of monsters am I working with here?

“Look, we’re all in a little over our heads here, and we all did things we aren't proud of. But hey, what's important is that you’re perfect for the job! We’ll get you to the ship and send you to the planet we’ve dubbed Equestria.” He smiles at me, clearly proud of the name.

I shook my head and looked at the ground. “You’re got to be kidding me, a fucking horse pun?”

“Finally something me and the little pervert agree on,” the captain laughed.

“What’s your answer, Pen?”

I really didn't want to help these monsters, but if I stayed behind I'd spend the rest of my life treated like a animal, or worse. I took a deep breath. “Well, sure. I guess I’m not gonna stay here as a circus freak, so I accept. I’ll go to Equestria as your ambassador."

The captain grunts. “It took us years to get to here. If you screw up, we may not have another shot.”

The scientist nodded. “Yes, I agree with the captain. We think your genome responding well to the radiation was a one in a million shot. You may be our only chance.”

Before I can nod, the captain grabs my bridle and yanks it painfully, forcing me to look at it. “You got that? Don't fuck up, Pen.”

I smiled at him, knowing how much they need me. “Sure thing. But I think we should change my name to something more fitting for my new gender, like Penny.”

The captain grit his teeth, but let go of my bridle. “Fine, Penny, now get ready for you little trip.”

There was a loud hiss as I woke up, the cryo-sleep chamber was decompressing. My body felt cold and numb, but quickly warmed up as the probe’s main computer monitored my vital signs and restored my body to peak health.

My joints were sore as I stepped out of the chamber into the cockpit. All around me were large pony-friendly controls. The first one I hit was to open the blast shields on the small probe so I could get a good look outside.

The sunlight was blinding, filling the room instantly and causing me to squint. I hadn’t used my eyes in months, so I should have seen that coming. Once things equalized a little I opened the escape hatch and stepped outside.

Unfortunately, the hatch was several feet off the ground and I tumbled out into the small crater. It took a minute for the world to stop spinning, and I climbed out of the crater and into the grass.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Everything was too. . . perfect. The green grass spread across the land as far as the eye could see. There was a small town with neatly painted roofs alongside a small stream. A thick forest, full of dark shades of green and blue bordered the town.

Clouds floated above the village, with rainbows pouring forth from them. Small animals seemed to be flying around the city, and I noticed a few of them heading my way. I gulped, realizing this was the moment of truth, first contact.

As the ponies approached they gave me rather odd looks, likely due to the Mark-VII deep space probe behind me, with steam rising from the still-hot metal. They each gave me a different look: The orange pony and a cyan one looked ready to pounce me. A yellow and pink one was cowering between a white and purple one. A pink one bounced across the grass towards me, tackling me and hugging me. She was blabbing on and on about cakes and parties.

I tried to push her off and saw a purple one with wings and a horn grab the pink pony, and levitate her off me.

“Hi, I’m Princess Twilight Sparkle. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

I looked up at her, and my brain threw in the towel. The world spun and faded to black as I passed out in shock.

I looked out the window of the library towards the impact crater where the probe carrying me had landed. “And next thing I knew, I woke up inside that probe, in a crater outside your town, Twilight.”

She looked me over again in disbelief. Her friends and I were the same in many ways: manes, tails, hooves, ears, eyes. The only difference was she had a horn and wings, and some of her friends had wings or a horn. Since I had neither, and they had identified me as an Earth pony. If only they knew how creepy, and accurate, that name was.

“That’s an incredible story, but why do you keep looking outside?” Twilight asked.

“I knew it, she’s a spy sent to spearhead an invasion!” Dash shouted.

“Darn it, Rainbow, ya think everypony is a spy,” Applejack chided.

“Yeah? Well one of these days I’ll be right!”

Twilight chuckled. “Don’t mind her, I was just curious.”

“Oh, well. . .” I looked out the window yet again. There were little fillies running around playing. I had learned from Twilight that they hadn’t had a war in one thousand years. They were ruled by two benevolent Princesses. There was no poverty or hunger. It was all too good to be true.

“Your planet is incredible. It reminds me of the holo-videos of Earth before the last of the forests went extinct, and humanity switched to manufactured oxygen. I just can’t believe how perfect it is.”

“We’re very lucky.” Twilight chuckled, and looked around. “Sometimes I can take for granted things like that because I’m so used to them.”

“The humans are waiting for me to transmit back their findings. They want to know if this amazing, peaceful planet, is fit to colonize. Trillions of humans, with machines and thousands of colony ships. . .”

Twilight walked over and put a hoof on my shoulder. “It must be a lot of pressure, trying to save your species. What are you thinking?”

“Oh, nothing really. Just trying to figure out how to word a letter back that explains how terrible and scary this place is.”