"I can do it myself next time you want a snack, no? Is it more efficient for you or something?"

"Well, they asked about it specifically when I ran opening the door.  Plus like, your pool of magic should grow somewhat over subsequent times but I get better at specific skills I use, so it's more scalable in the long run that way.  But mostly I meant the first one."

"I'll do it myself if I'll be able to do it more that way." Hey Clippy hit him with some ability to balance.

No problem!

Clippy had cut back on the 'Haydn's Symphony No. 94'-ing after Cam ran the sim, but now he is once again entirely alone in his head.

"No, that's independent of what you use it for - never mind."  She takes a deep breath and opens the door a sliver.

There's a pause of about a second, then Ancora teleports to the middle of the bar, a solid-grey cat who abruptly tenses up in fear and disorientation on the floor beside them.  Judy slams the door shut and scoops up said cat and starts quietly baby-talking at her - "Hey, Smokes B'dokes, hey kittycat, you're alright; that's a good lady - " complete with pets and a number of kisses on her little kitty forehead.  This is at the very least tolerated by its recipient.

Ancora spends a moment looking around the room and observing things before addressing Cam.

'I have been absent for longer than I was led to believe I would.'

"Yeah, uh, Judy wanted some time to evaluate whether you were - culpably responsible for the unethical applications of vampire powers, specifically the one where you can make other people like you without their consent."

"In simulation you wanted to do a lot of music to process your reaction to this?" Cam picks up his violin.

'What would you like to play.'

Cam pulls up sheet music for the overture to a movie he saw once forty years ago.

They determine an appropriate instrument for the other half of the duet and play their part with lots of improvised flourishes.  Judy slips upstairs at some point.

When the two of them are done with that piece, Ancora states, 'I am not well-oriented to the current situation and would appreciate additional context.'

"When you had gone to fetch the cat Judy closed the door and tried to murder me because she thought I might be in league with you and thought you had done sketchy vampire-related things on purpose. She couldn't kill me so we basically reconciled and made use of the available evidence to try to figure out if that was actually something you had endorsed or not, and concluded it was not, and she let you back in."

'I see.'

They disappear.

"...An...cora?"

Judy ports in, cat in arms and visibly shaken.

"- hey, uh, do you know where Ancora went?"

" - my room - "

"Are they okay?"

"They were - doing some scary magical tornado thing - maybe started to say something but I came down to where - Security - "  Her teeth are audibly chattering.

"...yeah makes sense. We can wait it out here, I guess."

"'Yeah makes sense'?"

"...that you came down to where Security covers, not what Ancora's doing, I don't know what Ancora's doing."

"Oh."  Her cat breaks free of her hold and hides under a booth.

- all the decisions she makes are horrible including the one to abdicate decision-making to someone who seemed like he'd be better at it and she misjudged the situation terribly and now Ancora is going to wreak havoc throughout the multiverse and she burned her one chance at preventing this because she was too impatient and she's an idiot but no one anywhere can do better and things are just going to get worse forever and there's nothing she can do but she's not allowed to stop trying either and she wants to go home even though that would help literally less than nothing -

Chatter chatter hyperventilate.