"Hey, Garnet, it's me! Anybody home?"
The hallways down at Garnet's level in the Aether Suites was one of the very few that felt the closest to the comfort level of a human's, a section where all the rooms stood along the outside rim of a circular corridor, the center wall occupied by wide, collisseum-esque archways of glass overlooking a pool in the center. Against the red walls and burgundy carpeting at their feet, all of the doors were carved by hand from a rich black ebony that was matted by an exotic varnish, but were chiseled into a flawless likeliness of one another.
Given enough time, however, it'd get pretty easy to tell the doors of the short-time guests' rooms from those of the money-crazy demigods who treated the hotel like their own personal condos, and Garnet's was no exception. Even from a distance, it was pretty easy to weed her room from a distance, mainly due to a red welcome mat sitting out in front of her room.
What didn't seem natural this time around was how long it was taking for me to get a response. Usually, Garnet was eager to hitch our arms together whenever I had some free time to goof off, but now it was taking a while to even hear her footsteps leave the bed. I could tell she was inside, too, going off of something playing on her tv's speakers.
"Garnet?" I said again, knocking for what I thought would be my last try, but I finally got a response. The bedspring of her mattress groaned, but whoever sat on top took a pause, almost hesitating and pondering whether or not to answer before she stood up and came to the door. The knob turned, but the door was only pulled open a tad, held partially shut by the security chain.
You probably wouldn't've guessed Garnet was the heiress to a billionaire family just from looking at her. I'd never seen her wear anything that'd cost up to a hundred dollars, or really styled her hair beyond tinges of red dye at the tips of her black split ends, but today, she didn't look like she'd woken up till 10:30 in the morning, dressed in a white bathrobe while still ridden with bed hair.
Garnet actually gave a tiny gasp when she looked down to see me waiting for her, then tried to give half of a smile. "Hello, Gregory. How are you today?"
"Hey...Garnet." I answered, tilting my head to the side. "I just got the week off, so I thought I'd drop by! Wanna do something for a while?"
Garnet finally looked pleasantly surprised, but not as much as any other time we'd hung out. "Sure, come right in!"
She shut the door, unhitched the lock, and opened it all the way, inviting me in. Like with the doormat, the interior made it pretty clear that she'd spent a while making the space her own, as the walls were covered by posters of famous heavy metal bands, and hastily folded clothes sat around in the dresser's drawers. The bed was horribly made, and a projector sitting between the pillows shone a movie onto the ceiling, clearly some kind of campy slasher flick.
"So, uh..." I began, stepping around a few socks sitting around on the floor. "Anything you'd had in mind to do?"
"I'd wanted to see the end of this movie, if that's alright." She said, plopping back onto the bulky layers of blanket on her bed. "If you wanted to do something else, though, I'm open!"
I shrugged. "Nah, I can watch for a while."
She patted the other half of the bed, and I sat down myself. It wasn't made up as pretty as all the other room's bed, but any part of my body that touched the mattress felt as though it were released from the aches and pains of reality, letting in a soothing bliss that eased all of my muscles as I laid back, sighing contently as I watched the scene above. It was of some cartoonishly big-breasted cheetah screaming her head off as she ran straight through the bushel of a forest, her chest weighing her down as she was chased by some witch-masked guy slicing his way through the branches with a sickle.
When I turned my head along the pillow to look at Garnet, I could tell from her eyes that she just wasn't getting into it.
"Everything alright, Garnet?"
"Hm?" She asked, tilting her head my way.
"You seem kind of...I dunno, off today. Something happen?"
"Oh, no...no. Nothing happened." She answered with a tone that definitely sounded like something'd happened.
I rolled over onto my side, holding my head up with a fist. "Garnet, C'mon. What's going on?"
She was about to spill it out, but whatever it was, she was taking her sweet time to get to the moment of truth. She took in a slow, steady breath, covering her eyes with her wings as she fearfully let it all back out in a shaky sigh.
"Garnet?" I asked, now filled with worry.
"...mother's coming."
What.
She gulped, practically forcing the rest of the words out. "She called this morning to tell me that she'd decided to check up on me early, and she'll be Sapphire me to find out how Rhodes I'd been doing. She'll also be Sapphire Rhodes my sister to Sapphire Rhodes Sapphire Rhodes the hotel, and Sapphire Rhodes Sapphire Rhodes my Sapphire Rhodes Sapphire Rhodes Sapphire Rhodes and Sapphire Rhodes Sapphire Rhodes Sapphire Rhodes Greg? Sapphire Rhodes Sapphire Rhodes Sapphire Rhodes Sapphire Rhodes Sapphire Rhodes Sapphire Rhodes Greg?"
"Huuuuurh...?" I slurred, my jaw hanging agape until I snapped it shut. "I-I-I-I...I-I-I'm sorry...what?"
She sat back up, resting her bill upon her wings as she folded them along her knees. "She and my sister'll be here in a week, and they'll be checking up on my progress. You know," she stroked her feathered hands along her meager potbelly "whether I'd made all the thousands of dollars a night worth it."
And like that, my expectations of a carefree week of fun were all dunked headfirst into a whirlpool of terror and existential agony. Sapphire Rhodes. The Sapphire Rhodes, a name that I was terrified to admit I shared a sliver of the multiverse with was going to be in my country. In the same structure as I was, turning around all the same corners and trekking along the same paths I might've walked on the floors long ago, probably drinking the same water or breathing the same air molecules I once had.
Sapphire Rhodes, the mastermind for a business that probably took in more corporates than employees, its arms reaching to grab buildings right out of the ground from across the world. Sapphire Rhodes, a woman with more power to do as she pleased than the queen of England herself. Sapphire Rhodes, one of the most outspoken (and successful) advocates against the fair treatment of humans under facilities owned by anthros, even if a quarter of her arguments were just venting on what piles of filth she saw them as.
Sapphire Rhodes.
"Oh...my...god..." I mouthed out, eyes staring into oblivion.
"Gregory?"
I looked back at Garnet, snapping back out of my daze, but was hit with a double of worry when I looked back at her. Right then, I realized how close I was getting to finally seeing gone of my favorite guests in all the resort see herself out.
We looked into one another's eyes again, showing each other a look of fear that helped us read one another's minds.
"How long, again?"
She looked away. "...three days."
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