Serial · ongoing
Echo the Cat
A cyberpunk tinkerer, an orange cat with copper armor and a toothy grin, who fixes things with his paws and his kit — and can’t leave a mystery alone. One chapter at a time, like a book: turn the pages with the arrows or your arrow keys.
Chapter 1 — “The Sign Job”
This chapter also exists as a manga. Read the manga version →
The rain on Neon Row fell sideways, hissing where it struck the hot vents. Echo stood under Madame Lin’s awning, watching her noodle bar’s great dragon sign stutter — one moment a roaring emerald beast, the next a dying ember. “Third time this month, little spark,” Madame Lin sighed, pressing a chit for double noodles into his paw.
Echo grinned his toothy grin and shrugged into his oilskin cloak, the hood settling over his copper-plated ears. Tool belt: magnetized. Backpack: humming. He scaled the rusted scaffolding with the ease of a cat half his size, rain beading on his whiskers and rolling off his armor in glowing rivulets.
Halfway up, the wind tried to take him. He hooked his tail — copper rings clinking — around a strut and kept climbing. The sign’s junction box was a rat’s nest of corroded wire. Echo’s claws made short work of it: splicing, soldering, humming an old street tune while green sparks danced.
Then — ROAR. The dragon blazed back to life, emerald fire washing the wet street, and the whole Row cheered. Echo slid down the scaffolding, landed in a puddle with a splash, and bowed. Madame Lin pressed the noodle chit into his paw, plus one extra “for the show.”
But as he shook the rain from his cloak, his wrist scanner chirped — a signal he’d never seen before, pulsing from deep beneath the Row, in a rhythm almost like a heartbeat…
Chapter 17 is being written. Echo is already on his way.