Jackdaw

A few days after the adventure is over and the lanky black-furred Xero has bid you an absent-minded farewell, you're added to...a group chat, of all things. There's quite a few members in the chat aply titled "SIDEKICK ALUMNI CHAT/MYSTERY GANG SHITPOSTING," none of whom you know. After a flood of messages pinging you, you almost write it off as spam until you realize that they're talking about...

"JACKDAW STRIKES AGAIN," a message celebrates after you're added. Another one enthusiastically declares: "one of us one of us one of us"

Jackdaw? You're intrigued enough to stick around and ask. How do any of these other creatures know the odd Xero who you'd happened to meet as you were bartending? He hadn't exactly seemed like the sociable type—to be honest, you'd only initiated conversation with him out of sheer curiosity. That night, he'd seemed moody and oddly lethargic, and right before you were due to close up, he shortly explained to you that it was because he was, for lack of a more specific word, bored.

"I *need* something new," he'd said, peering blearily up at you from where he was slumped across the bar, the side of his face sticking to a stain you hadn't had the time to wipe. "How does anyone stand being so...still, for so long? I'm going to claw myself out of my own skin if I don't find something really *exciting* soon. I don't suppose you understand."

But your favorite part of bartending wasn't the actual craft of mixing drinks, and it certainly wasn't the hours. You liked meeting people, liked the thrill of guessing things about them off a mere glance—how their day went, how they liked their drinks—and, over the course of the night's conversation, uncovering the layers they wrapped around themselves and revealing who they were. On the slow nights when there were no especially mysterious customers that caught your eye, you sometimes left underwhelmed and unsatisfied. Your curiosity was always a part of you that you were unable to quash. So you answer, quite honestly: "I don't understand exactly, but I think I have felt what you mean."

Jackdaw hadn't really responded to your declaration that night. But a few days later, he'd burst into your bar looking like a completely different creature—animated and eager, a strange light in his eyes, he'd said do you: "Good, you're here. Did I mention that I'm a detective? Come help me investigate something. It will be difficult and potentially deadly but this one looks very, very interesting."

And, inadvisable as it seemed—well, you'd went. How could you resist a sales pitch like that? After a thrilling investigation and the unraveling of a complicated case, you'd said your goodbyes to Jackdaw and gone back to your cozy little bar and your quiet mornings and you realized, at some point when mixing some cocktail or another, that it just wasn't that satisfying anymore.

Then you'd received the text. The other members of the Sidekick Alumni explained to you that they'd all been in the same boat—they'd met Jackdaw by sheer circumstance and, for some reason or another, he'd invited them to serve as a half-assistant, half-sidekick, sometimes-friend, on one of his cases. He had a habit of doing that, it seemed—whisking random strangers off on adventures. The group even sends you a couple memes about it.

And that's that. Jackdaw doesn't come by your bar again. You sometimes think about asking after him, either from one of the regulars that he'd seemed to know, or tracking down one of the people you'd met during the case. In the meantime, you bartend and complain about it to the other Sidekick Alumni, and once in a while a new confused person is added to the chat. Once in a while, the group organizes hangouts—sometimes it's a hike, sometimes it's a movie, sometimes it's investigating activity at a supposedly haunted house. It's not a murder mystery, but it's not bad and there's always something new.

The only thing left to wonder is why Jackdaw decided to pick you, or any of your new friends, in the first place. The others have theories, but you think that maybe he just likes to have company. You understand. An adventure is always more interesting with a friend or two in tow.