Actually this is very very upsetting and since time is paused probably it won't hurt anything if they just do music for several hours to process things.  Would Cam like to join them; it seems unlikely that could go wrong even if he's also going to deceive them.

(Clippy politely informs Cam that he's used up half his supply of magic.)

Cam drops the simulation before saying yea or nay on the jam session. "So, uh, Ancora professes to be very surprised about the concept that people might not agree about the liking people magic use before deploying it, apparently due to everybody having the same powers and defense winning where they're from, and also some deception on the part of the first batch of vampires, some of whom were also murderers."

"O . . . kay.  What, um, brand of very surprised; scale of 'oh, that's weird' to 'what have I done sweet Jesus what have I done' to 'shocking but cool'?"

"Very much the Les Mis reference, I dropped the simulation because they wanted to do a lot of music about it to calm down."

"Gosh, okay.  Well that's . . . convenient?  That's convenient."

"It's convenient! It doesn't, uh, shed light on whether they can... fix it... but it's convenient."

"Right.  Is that something we want to know before letting them back in?"

"Not necessarily, they could still be helpful in other ways without being able to edit vampires now."

"Yeah.  Um, so, not this instant - I need like, cat supplies, and we should probably coordinate on how we want to pitch certain facts about the situation, and also it's pretty late in the day for me - but it sounds like we're mostly agreed on opening the door soonish?"

"Yeah, that's how I'm leaning. You want to write up a cat shopping list for me?"

"Can do.  - May I request something really frivolous."

"Go for it, I'm not on a budget."

"Still, don't bother if it's any inconvenience - or I guess if you can't automatically convert these to fit me - but," she shares a file with him entitled 'wow there are so many social rules that just don't apply here at all', which contains a list of outfits (mostly pretty dresses) from various stage shows and movies.

"I can do these in your size, no problem." He presents her with garment bags.

"Eee, thank you."  She gathers them up.  "Um, so what's the plan for how we break all this to Ancora?  It does seem like there should ideally, y'know, be one."

"I could try to do the exact thing I just simulated?"

"I'll take your word if it seems good to you?  But - they're going to know it's been a while; is there a way we want to angle that; do we mention the murder attempt upfront - do you want to just play it by ear; should I go take the cat to my room right away and stay out of things till you give an all-clear - "

"They didn't mention it at the time. I could try a revised sim where I bring it up to contextualize the sketchiness accusation."

"You could," she says neutrally.  "I might be overthinking this, maybe I should just go to bed."

"Sleep well."

"Thanks."

When she comes back down she's wearing the dress from 'Sixteen Going on Seventeen' and her usual sneakers, and has her leg set to steampunk.  She has a list of cat things ready.

Cam makes her cat things. "Do you want to open the door or do more sims first?"

"It - seems like a bad way to be allies, kind of, to try run things a bunch of times to find the best outcome, and if we're not already sure they're going to be an ally then - it shouldn't be 'first'; we shouldn't open the door at all."  She adjusts her grip on the cat carrier.  "But I will if you want me to, though."

"I lean toward opening the door but you're the one who can do it and originally brought Ancora-related suspicions to my attention so if you don't feel they've been assuaged I'm not going to tell you to go open the door pronto."

"We can do it now, I think.  Did you want the grace or anything or nah."