Monster Mansion

IRO

Iro shuffled nervously as Cerys walked around him slowly, his maid’s dress finally fitted and snugged around him.

He had to admit he felt pretty cute in it, all things considered, but that didn’t change the overall embarrassment of being in an undeniably woman’s outfit. It even had a keyhole boob window for his flat chest!

The uniform also lacked shoes, instead exposing his paws with a pair of socks that had a single band running under the arch of the digitigrade paw.

Cerys nodded affirmatively when she seemed satisfied with her inspection. “Acceptable. I believe the master will find you quite appealing. The fit is perhaps not as snug as the master prefers, but we cannot fix that today.

“When the master returns, our seamstress will return along with them. You can get fitted more correctly then. Mika?”

The half-inebriated cat girl sat up on her bench, smirking at Iro as he struggled to keep his tail from wagging at Cerys’s praise. “Yes, Cerys?”

Cerys squinted at Mika and jerked her head toward the exit. “Go sober up a little, then help Iro set the table. I expect Zel to return in time for the meal, and Holly and Aranya are with them. So seven places, please.”

Mika counted out on her fingers then ruffled her ears. “What about Skalla? Isn’t she around tonight?”

Cerys shook her head, her blonde ponytail swaying behind her. “Skalla is on leave. She returns at the beginning of next week. If you had the sense to retain your sobriety, you would remember that.”

Mika stuck her tongue out but hopped off the bench, stretching languidly and smoothing out her uniform. Iro was caught admiring her for a moment. They had very similar builds, but he was a little taller.

He imagined he looked fairly similar to her once they were in their respective uniforms, aside from his white-and-gray fur, dog ears, and bushy tail compared to her tan-and-white fur, cat ears, and slender tail.

“C’mon, puppy, I need some water. I’ll show you where the place settings are.” Mika strutted past Iro and Cerys, beckoning the canine after her.

Iro looked up to Cerys, who gestured to Mika. “She’s capable enough, though I suspect the master keeps her around for her looks and drinking prowess. They get on quite well after a few rounds.

“She’ll show you what you need to know. I’ll see you again at meal time. I must ensure Airy did her task correctly now.” Cerys ended with a glower and left the room, leaving Iro alone.

“Well,not what you expected, Iro, but you’ve been in plenty of sticky situations before, and they don’t seem ~too ~bad.”

He caught his reflection in a mirror as he moved to exit the dressing room. “And you look pretty damn cute, anyway…I might get used to this…”

He pushed his way back into the kitchen to find Mika lapping directly from a running tap, her body halfway bent over the wide countertop and her tail hiking her skirt up enough to show off her underwear.

Iro felt a smirk grow on his face, but decided against shoving her all the way into the sink or otherwise interfering with Mika. It was his first day after all.

He just waited for her to finish and made sure his own tail was through the tail hole in his dress, something Mika seemed to have forgotten about.

Mika pulled back from the sink and wiped her lips and started walking toward another door, pausing beside a cabinet adjacent to the door and pulling it open.

“Here’s the dishware and stuff. Very important. Cerys said seven sets, so why don’t you grab a stack of those big plates and small ones? I’ll grab the silvers.”

Mika reached in and grabbed a tray of cutlery and pushed through the swinging doors beside the cabinet, leaving Iro to complete his given task.

He pulled seven large plates near the edge of the shelf, stacked seven small ones on top of those, and carried the stack with some difficulty through the door.

He found Mika standing beside a large dining table with a dozen chairs around it.

Mika gestured to the far end of the table and vaguely waved her hand to the nearest seven seats. “Zel sits at the head of the table. The rest of us pick seats as we arrive. Go ahead and get started. I’ll follow with the rest.”

Iro nodded and carried the stack to the far end of the table and began setting out a large and small plate at each of the indicated seats.

“So, doggy, what’s your deal? What brings you around here?” Mika asked as she set a fork, knife, and two sizes of spoon at each place setting behind Iro.

Iro’s ears flicked in mild irritation at being called “doggy” so casually, but he’d been called worse before.

“I got through school in the human world, decided to come home to pursue a career. This job came with a room, and I thought I’d be able to look around while doing it, but…”

He looked pointedly down at his maid uniform. “I guess not everything goes to plan all the time.”

Mika snorted and finished setting out the cutlery. “You can say that again. All right, cups and saucers next. Tea cups and wine glasses.”

Iro gave Mika a side eye and smirked. “Your favorite kind of glass, I assume.”

Mika turned and squinted at him before grinning. “Oh, we’re going to get along just fine. Will you be needing a dog bowl for your meals?”

Iro barked a short laugh and shook his head as he and Mika returned to the kitchen.

***

Mika slumped in her chosen dining chair on the left hand from the head of the table, furthest from the seat. “Where’s Skalla? She’s the best cook.”

Cerys scoffed as she marched out of the kitchen with a third tray of food items.

“You’re just mad because I’m not letting you steal the extra fried scraps or making you your favorite fish. Zel has been gone for almost a week. I know they haven’t been eating well in their time away.”

Mika huffed. “So, we’re just going to eat salad for all three courses?”

Cerys looked offended. “Nonsense. We’ll do salad for the appetizer, I have the lasagna in the oven, and I made a healthy fruit pudding for dessert.

“If you ever took any initiative to improve in the kitchen, you’d be able to get cooking duty too.”

“I take an interest in wine…does that count?” Mika mumbled.

Cerys rolled her eyes and waved at Iro. “Iro, dear? Would you go and fetch Airy? I’m certain she’s forgotten to come for the meal, and the master is supposed to be returning any moment now.

“She ought to be in her room. Just make sure she comes to dinner clothed.”

Iro nodded and glanced toward the end of the dining room that led back into the foyer and the stairs to the second floor, where he had last seen Airy.

He walked through the dining hall and through the foyer, his flat maid shoes clicking softly on the tiled floor.

He really didn’t hate the dress, all things considered, but the skirt portion made stairs a bit more troublesome than he was used to.

Iro walked through the spacious and elegant halls of the second floor, listening and smelling for something that might help him find Airy, the red-feathered harpy.

The clattering and mumbling sounds coming from a door along the hall were a good place to start.

Stepping up to the door, Iro knocked a few times and called out, “Airy? Is that you? Cerys said to come down for dinner.”

He was only answered by more clattering and a definitive thudding sound. Sighing and steeling himself for the worst, Iro unlatched the door and peeked inside.

Within the room was indeed Airy, the red-feathered harpy. Her condition was a fair bit more than he expected.

Buried under a movable clothes rack was the harpy in question with her head sticking out of the end and her wing-like arms splayed out above her. “O-oh, h-hello, n-new friend. Can you come help Airy? She stuck.”

Iro sighed and peeked behind him to make sure nobody else would see him and Airy in what he was fairly confident would turn out to be an awkward scenario. “Yeah, let me help.”

He stepped in and inspected Airy’s tangled condition and helped her unhook her clawed feet from the rack and began to lift it.

Once off her enough, he saw that she was totally nude. “Gah! A-Airy! W-why are you naked?”

Iro yelped, averting his eyes in an attempt to be respectful. He finished standing up the rack and kept his eyes closed, leaning on the metal frame.

Airy sat up and looked down at her nude form and hummed.

Her body was mostly human-like, with her shoulders and arms covered in feathers and shaped like wings, while her legs changed at the knee to turn into bird-like talons.

She had red plumage right above her butt and a head of spiky red hair. “Airy was too warm? Maybe?”

Iro opened one eye to check for a suitable outfit on the clothes rack he had untangled her from to find her standing between him and it with her feathered ass waggling absentmindedly as though she was dancing to music.

“Airy likes this one. And this one! Ooh! And this one—”

Iro reached out and grabbed the first one she had picked and forced it into her odd hands. “Let’s just…pick any one of them. Come on, let’s get downstairs.”

Airy blushed and shrank slightly, holding the maid outfit in front of her chest. “Airy can’t put on this one…alone…” She held up the garment to Iro. “Can dog help Airy?”

Iro sighed. “My name is Iro, and yeah, I guess. Come here.”

Cerys is going to kill me if she sees me with Airy like this.

Iro helped Airy slip her feathered arms through the large arm holes and pulled the one-piece mini dress over her head, the skirt reaching barely a quarter down her thighs.

She wiggled excitedly as he tried to help her dress, but she paused once the dress was on.

“Oh…Airy forgot her…p-panties…” She pointed timidly to an open drawer in a nearby dresser and hid behind her hands. “C-can Iro help? Airy can’t really bend in this dress.”

Iro sighed and blushed. What a job.

He paced over to the drawer and picked out a white and pink striped pair of underwear, and Airy called out, “Socks too! T-the next drawer down.”

Iro peeked into the next drawer and found a white pair of socks and brought all three items to Airy. She lifted one taloned foot for Iro. “P-panties first. N-no peeking!”

Iro blushed a little harder and set to work, helping Airy slip one and then her other foot through the holes of the dainty garment and slowly pull it up her smooth thighs.

Iro pulled until she shivered and squeezed her legs together. “N-not too far up…” She whimpered.

Iro unsnapped his fingers from the garment and blushed. “Sorry. Socks?”

He held up one of the white sleeves and helped Airy step into it. The bottom of the sock was open to let her talons peek through while covering the rest of her bird-like lower legs.

She hopped in place once both were on and hugged Iro as soon as he stood. “Thank you, doggy! Come on, dinner is starting!”

She dashed out of the room and left Iro to follow, shutting her bedroom door behind him and walking to the stairs.

As he started down, he heard more lively conversation, and upon entering the dining hall saw two people he didn’t recognize.

One was a creature similar in size to Cerys, but she had a spider-like lower body with a human torso where the spider’s head ought to be.

The other was a fairly normal-looking human girl, but something smelled off about her.

Iro felt a tug on the back of his collar and was quickly spun around and tossed into the nearest wall and pinned against the cool surface with an arm planted on the wall beside his head.

In front of him, pinning him in place with her sharply-dressed body, was a tall, red-skinned, horned, grinning woman.

Her breasts, only barely smaller than Cerys’s, were right in his face, her suit top unbuttoned to show off an inordinate amount of cleavage. Due to the height difference, Iro was left staring clear down the valley of her chest.

He forced himself to look up with a timid blush covering his face, and she grinned down at him with a predatory gaze and licked her lips, a forked tongue peeking out from luscious lips surrounded by smooth red skin.

With a seductive and smooth voice, she said, “So. This little morsel is my new maid?”