When she promised that she would indeed come back, that was the truth. She planned on going back to the hideout, telling them all that she'd befriended Zyrt and that he would fix their ship, and then spend as much time with him as she could before returning to her planet. She planned to tell the Earth's media that any murders that had occurred were the humans' fault, that the aliens they met were kind beings who simply cared about their planet.
That was the plan, but that came crashing down just a day later. All that night, Charlotte hadn't felt quite right. After being embraced by her worried friends who had feared she was dead, she'd spent the night in the hideout eating a meal of nothing but the fruit Mordecai had managed to gather, simply enjoying being around her friends again-- but she wasn't well. Anyone could see that. She was sweating, was boiling hot despite the freezing temperatures around her, and she passed out at least four times before her friends demanded she go get some sleep while they all stayed up to keep watch. She obliged-- but then, all that night, she deteriorated badly. She had fits, her eyes rolled into her head as she frequently stopped breathing and then she coughed up blood-- but not just that. Parts of her inner organs were vomited up as her body literally rejected them, but miraculously, despite the breakdown of her organs, or her heart and her liver, she survived. She'd literally spewed parts of her own heart up, and she was still breathing. She had no idea why she was so sick. The other scientists around her assumed that the aliens were at fault; that they'd done something purposely to kill Charlotte off slowly, and it was hard not to believe that. Zyrt had been so kind and nice-- but he was an alien who had murdered her friends. For all she knew, he could have done something terrible to hurt her and cause her this agony.
She had no idea that all he'd done was impregnate her, and this sickness and the fact her body was rejecting itself was simply a consequence of that.
After a full week of convulsions and waking up screaming, Charlotte fell into a coma. That coma continued for a whole month, during which time her scientist friends watched on in horror as their goofy friend underwent horrific changes. Her bones cracked out of her skin and elongated to give her an extra two foot in height and horns grew out of her forehead. She resembled every alien they'd come across, albeit with human aspects like her freckles that remained with her. The one thing that perhaps took them most by surprise, though, was when her pregnancy became apparent in that short month. For all they knew, Charlotte had simply been changed by the aliens-- but they realised that sex must have occurred when her stomach began to swell. There was no forgiving that. Charlotte was still Charlotte; still their friend and colleague, but it was hard to even look at her in that month, now no longer looking like the human they once knew.
Eventually, Charlotte awoke. After a whole month unconscious, she woke, unaware that she'd gone through all of that. She remembered being in agony and pain and then a totality of blackness, nothing beyond that-- but she quickly realised something was wrong when she sat up and hit her head on the rocks above her, having to crane down to avoid them. When she woke, her friends around her looked... smaller, and they all looked at her in... what was that? Fear?
"I... god, my head hurts," she whined, rubbing the now bloody spot before moving to hitch herself off the blankets she'd nestled amongst for a month, which is when the truth hit. She was way taller than her friends, looking down at them in confusion. She saw the life stone on her chest. She reached up and felt the horns on her head. None of that freaked her out, not enough for her to scream-- until she took into account her slim figure was overtook by pregnancy. That was the catalyst for her to scream, covering her mouth in horror and blinking hard, hoping that this was some crazy dream. It was only when she pinched herself that she realised the awfulness of her reality. "W-What the fuck is g-going on? M-Mordecai? What's-- What h-happened to me?"
