THE SKELEITON KEY by Datboii657

CHAPTER 1 

Down the rabbit hole.

It was a bright and bustling night for Dorcya City, businessmen going to work after kissing their family’s goodbye for the day until they come back the next day to enjoy what hours they have with their children until they have to return to the boring and awful life of cubicle jobs. Of course, this wasn’t a problem for some, as Keys and Gas were fast asleep in their apartment, until the sounds of blaring alarms and gunshots hit them from across the city. Quickly springing into action, they suit up and grab some grub for the road. Hitting the streets, they ride in the rust bucket to the scene as the police are wrapping up, “Well, well, well, if it isn’t my city’s “saviors” late to the latest burglary.” Exclaimed Officer Lenard Diora with a smile of glee written on his face. Keys with a slight attitude says “Save it for the books Len, we got here late, it happens.” With Gas backing up his claim saying “We are still human Lenard, don’t forget that.”

“Well forget this, we have bigger fish on our line and they aren’t coming willingly Len.” Keys said with slight worry in his voice, “Who, what, when where, Len come on give us answers!”. Keys, Gas, and Lenard all head up into the H.S.A.I.C. building where the robbery took place, “Hey, Len what does the jumble of letters on the front of the building stand for?” Keys asked with confusion “Well, I do believe it stands for High Security Anomalous Item Catalogue, but for what the burglars stole it’s still unknown, this robbery occurred at 12:30 on the dot, they swooped in got the thing they were looking for and left all in the span of one quick minute, we have security footage but they cut most of it, they must have had a mole in the building.” Lenard said with quick precision while writing on his note pad checking the scene. Keys then exclaimed “So are you just not gonna explain who the corpse in front of us is, or are we just gonna skip this piece of evidence?” “Oh right!” Lenard said after checking his note pad once more, “The deceased here is security guard Gary Lee Jones, 63 years old and so close to retirement, he was shot 5 times in the chest and abdomen presumably after seeing our perps getting away with whatever they were stealing.” Keys then opens his phone up and calls the only person he knows fit to solve a murder case.

With Detective Dakota arriving at the scene of this crime she quickly starts the case, examining the body she concluded that the killer used an untraceable homemade 10mm bullets, the casing left behind also had the initials of the machine that manufactured it, Wiggums, the gun and bullet company. “I’ve seen this company before, it used to produce machines that let you reuse bullet casings to save money buying new ammo, it was intended for hunters on the mainland but I don’t think the perp who owns this specific ammo maker intended on using it to hunt deer, we need a guy to help us research everyone who has ever bought one of these.” The detective said with her pen vigorously writing down her large note pad, “Okay then guys, lets hit the bed and return to this tomorrow, I didn’t get my sleep and after the fight I had yesterday, I’m exhausted.” Keys said yawning. Our team then return to their home and have a good night’s rest, except for our detective who is to focused on her newfound case.

Keys wakes up and calls the detective to get up, but when she picks up right away, he was surprised, “Hey Keys, I’ve been up all night trying to crack this case but I can’t even figure out what the crooks stole, I even called up the people who owned the H.S.A.I.C. building to see if I could convince them to tell me because its related to a case, but the night guard signed a paper saying that if his death was related to an item police couldn’t investigate or know what item was.” Keys while still waking up spoke only a couple words “Okay, but like we have that factory to check out.”

“I’ve tracked down 5 living people who are related to Joey Wiggum, and believe me this company has a very sketchy history.” Dakota said while riding shotgun “DUIs, many of the family dead, says here they had a weapons trade deal with some mafia family’s including some as infamous as the El Copper Family, but those were never actually proven true so the company is still running, the only reason the company is still up is because of the massive money boost from criminals.”. Keys then spoke with a slight hint of sleep deprivation in his voice, “So these are the guys who keep feeding Dorcya Bays criminal population, well we are coming up to our first stop here, oh hey Gas, put this on.” He then hands Gas a trench coat. “What’s this for?” Gas asked confused, “Well we need to blend in better, it’s not like we are, I don’t know, hated by criminals?” Said Keys “I don’t feel like fighting just yet”.

As they finally stop at the house Kyra Wiggum lives at, the Detective knocks on the door and waits patiently, coming from inside of the house comes the voice of an old lady “IM COMING, WAIT, DON’T GO, I BARLEY GET ANY VISITORS THESE DAYS.”. Opening the door, she smiles with pure happiness as she hasn’t had guest in so long, “Oh please, come inside I’ll make tea.” The old woman not seeming to care who was at her front door she blindly let our heroes inside her humble abode. As Keys, The Detective, and Gas sit down they notice how some of the décor included skeleton keys posters and toys and comics scattered around, “Sorry for the mess, my grandson is spending the month here.” Kyra said handing over some tea to Dakota, Keys spotting the Skeleton Key merchandise said “I notice he is a Skeleton Key fan, he said silently smiling to himself, “Oh yes, he loves his superheroes, but his favorite is the skeleton man, oh I can barely see let me grab my glasses.” She waddles to her chair in the living room and grabs her leopard pattern glasses from her table and puts them on, turning around she notices that the people in her living room are the people her grandson idolizes. “Oh, my you people are the people on the walls and books!”

As her grandson runs down the stairs he to sees who is in his grandmas living room, “WOAH, IT’S THE SKELETON KEY, AND MR. GASMASK, DUDE I’M DREAMING!” said the boy gleefully, with Gas quickly intervening to finally say why they are here “Mrs. Wiggum unfortunately we aren’t here for a surprise fan meetup, there has been a murder.” Looking over to his friend signing an action figure for the fan, the child then said “Woah, I can’t believe I’m meeting the Skeleton Key, I have the first issue of the comic series, can you sign that too please?” he asked with great sincerity. Keys in a position to not say no he happily obliged and signed his comic while the detective and Gas asked questions to the lady. “So, Mrs. Wiggum, we are here to ask questions about your husband and the rest of your family history.” She then spoke with guilt lining her voice “I had nothing to do with my husband’s wrong doings, he was a bad person but I never had anything to do with the dealings with those mobsters, but I do know a whole lot.” The old lady finished her sentence by sipping her cup of tea. The detective then asked “Well miss if you do know a whole lot then, can you start from the beginning?” With a sparkle in her eye Kyra started the story from the beginning.

 It was a great day for the Wiggum and Edgil mafia families, for once they weren’t killing each other, because of the marriage between Joey Wiggum and Kyra Edgil that had brought the families together. It was a story straight outa Romeo and Juliet, they were inseparable. 

After we had our honeymoon, we decided to start job hunting because at the time both mob families weren’t that big, so there wasn’t a lot of income. What money the family made went to ammo, food, and the house, those were the 3 main things for a mafia family to function. So, it was rough for a little while, but then Joey had a brilliant idea, a brilliant idea that costed us everything. We started Wiggums, and by this time the factory was only a small revolver producer, but as the years grew we started gaining more and more money, and he always put most of it into the business, every day I grew further from the man I loved, after I found out he was making deals with the most notorious mobsters on Dorcya Bay, I ran away with my little girl. After that I found this home and I’ve been living here for a little around 40 to 50 years, but I’ve been getting more and more paranoid as more of my family die, firs it started with Uncle Fred, but slowly more and more of my family died until it’s been just Joey, me, my father, and my daughter Cinthia, and her son Conner.

After Kyra had finished her story, the detective then stopped writing and asked “Ok, well our next stop is at the factory itself, is there a way in that Joey don’t know about?” “Well I do know of a way but my memory is a bit rough, I know it was at our old house though, the house is at Wiggum Ave in Southrun county it’s a red house, it’s impossible to miss it.” Kyra said taking the final sip from her tea, Gas then said being the politest he can be “Thank you for your time Mrs. Wiggum, have a great rest of your day.” With Keys, Gas, and the detective leaving her home and getting into her car for the long ride into Southrun.

As they pull up into the gas station heading to fill up Keys car for the rest of the drive, Dakota with exhausted look on her face said “Hey, I’m gonna go into the store and see if I can pick up some food, Keys you can pay for the gas.” Keys who has been saving up in defense “Well sorry Sherlock I can’t use my money, apart from the hero stuff I don’t get paid for I have a minimum wage job and I’m saving up to buy something cool.” Gas piping up trying to get going again offered to pay, which nobody fought against. As the detective walked up into the building she couldn’t help but notice all of the sketchy looking eyes watching her, when they noticed she was watching them they immediately looked away. Walking into the store she picked up some chips and sodas and asked for the price, but then a couple of the sketchy looking guys waltzed into the door with something behind their backs. Dakota now realizing she has to go picks up the food and is almost out of the door when she hears a booming voice say “Well, well, well, if it isn’t city detective coming to the small town.”

Without a moment to spare she whips around, Colt in hand. She spots 5 men all wearing black trench coats and hats all with bandanas and sunglasses, 2 were holding Drum guns, and the other 3 were holding baseball bats and golf clubs, without a beat she fires 2 shots at the gun holders, she then gets hit with a bat causing her gun to go flying, quickly kicking the first guy she grabs his bat and whacks the other 2. After that she called the local police for back up. When the cops arrive they quickly set it up as a crime scene, Keys, Gas, and the Detective start looking for clues on who had sent the hitmen to kill Dakota, “Hey look!” Keys said while picking up one of the guns, “These guns were made by the one and only Wiggum, somethings fishy here and I don’t know what it is.” He said while looking closer at the guns, “I do have a theory though, what if Joey started hiring hitmen to take out fools he didn’t like?”. The detective already thinking the same thing says “It don’t make cents, Kyra said that the Wiggum family was a very small one.” Gas then said wanting to get his theory in spoke “What if Joey never hired anyone, what if he became the top dawg and started his own new family?”. Everyone stood in silence thinking hard on why, what, when, who, and why? With little no evidence they make their way to their final destination for this case, Wiggums.

As they start the van and hit the road they can’t help but notice how odd this case is, they don’t even know who stole the mysterious item yet, there closer to solving the Wiggums case then they are the H.S.A.I.C. case, but they know of they get to the factory they will be getting the answers they need. As they pull into the red house they can’t help but feel like they’ve gotten nowhere, they start to doubt themselves, not even the detective has had a case this tricky, but they trudge on. Entering the abandoned home, they see glimmers into the past, dolls and stuffed animals with mold on them, walls with paintings of homesteads, a dining room still furnished and with rotten food on the table, it was obvious that Joey couldn’t stand to live here after Kyra left with his only kin. They got through the first floor until Keys phone starts vibrating, “Yo, who is this?” Keys asked “Keys, its Lenard.” “Oh, hey Lenard what’s up, me, Gas, and the detective have bee- “Len then rudely interrupts and says “Where are you guys, nobody told me what’s been going on.” Gas then proceeds to tell Lenard that something bigger is going on in Southrun, Lenard then spoke with annoyance in his voice “We have jobs to do in the city, I could care less, Southrun isn’t in my jurisdiction.”

“Well we aren’t the cops, Len.” Keys said while starting his van, “But I am Keys” Said the detective, Len then said “Oh yea that’s true, you can’t work here, you ARE under jurisdiction.” The detective then said her goodbyes to Keys and Gas and left for Dorcya City, Keys and Gas then start the rest of their search around the house when reaching the second floor Gas says how they haven’t found anything here, but then Keys spot the attic door opens it up, revealing a small gun workshop with power and many rusted guns, ammo benches, and materials. While looking around the ladder to the attic closes and something humanoid jumps out and starts a fight, throwing the first punch the monster hits Keys dead on into his chest and he gets flung into the wall, losing his air, whipping out his duel pistols he fires multiple shots into the monster’s chest, the monster seriously injured, then grabs a broken support beam and spear-throws it at Keys. Keys looking for an escape grabs a piece of sheet metal and deflects the wood beam into the celling, the monster grows angrier and starts running at Keys, he then throws the sheet metal and it collides with the monster and slices it directly in half ending the fight, Gas finally being able to get into the attic barges in and spots Keys standing over the mysterious monster.

Looking around the attic they notice the ammo benches having the Wiggums logo on it, and that they all have been used recently, they are getting somewhere on the main case. They found evidence of a someone living in the attic, and they found their personal journal. Flipping through the pages reveals who had stolen the mysterious item, Lucas Kenji, Fritz Liner, Brody Saffron, and Doug Halloway. Gas after reading the journal with Keys says “Ima send a picture of this to the detective, see if she can get some profiles and help us from home.” They then hear walking from downstairs, and multiple people talking. Taking no time, they gather pictures of stuff and take the evidence they need to keep these people in prison. But then, just as they were gonna leave, bullets start bursting out of the floor as the sound of machine guns rattle their eardrums.

Glass is shattered as the bullets spiral in all direction and the only way out is death and all seems hopeless, Keys and Gas notice the giant metal bullet benches and start concocting a plan, with Keys jumping on top of the Ammo benches he starts walking across the benches until he can reach the window, after he does that then Gas does the same, but then a bullet ricocheted of a pipe and hit Gas as he got to the window. Gas now injured, limps with Keys to the van, without the bad guys noticing, and they drive off before they notice the movement has stopped in the attic, when they leave the house they notice that the van is gone and that they slashed their tires. Back to Keys, driving into a nearby clinic for help, he calls Dakota for help, “Will Gas be ok?” she asked with worry in her voice, Keys with no energy to keep moving says, “Yea, he is gonna be ok, the doctor said he will survive but he cannot do any work for a week so he can recover.” The detective asking what he will do now, Keys tells her that he will probably keep going, but says he needs some sleep so he will park the van in the back for now.

When Keys woke up he started the car and went the last couple of miles to the Wiggums factory, thinking to himself, “Who were those people who ambushed us?” “Were they the robbers who stole that item I don’t know about, if yes, why?” he thinks to himself, why do I have to do this alone? I don’t have any help to take down a mafia empire, I don’t have anything except some guns and gadgets. As he spots the factory in the distance he decides that acting is the way into this place, pulling into some woods he parks his van and puts on his pizza delivery outfit and walks to the door. “Hello? Pete’s Pizza Delivery here! A mobster opens the door and says, “Who ordered that pie?” which Keys replies, “uhm, a Mr. Wiggums?” he guessed, “Ok walk to the top flight of stairs and walk down the large ominous hallway of past family members.” The ganger said while letting him in, walking around the factory he walks into a bathroom and switches costumes into the Skeleton Key. Going up the stairs he finds the right hallway, and starts walking down it, opening the door at the end of the hallway, it reveals El Copper sitting on his great big leather chair holding a copper plated pistol.

Around the room are the rotting corpses of other mobster bosses, Mr. Wiggum, Gregory Danno, Felix Vanny, all godfathers who mysteriously went missing a few years ago. El Copper suddenly spoke “I’ve been waiting for this day, I thought it was gonna be detective Frank who walked through those doors, but your even better.” When Keys looked back to the hallway, the doors closed with such force the wind that blew back made papers fly, “If you want to live Skeleton man then we have a game to play, you pick, but, if I win you die, if you win I’ll tell you anything you wanna know.” El Copper said while grinning ear to ear. A little while later after some thought Keys said with confidence, “Tag.” The mobster had turned confused and asked him why, which Keys replied, “Well its easy, I say we have a 24-hour game of tag, if I’m tagged then you kill me, if I succeed and evade you and your goons then I get my answers.” With El Copper agreeing to this game it starts immediately with Keys running past the guards that didn’t even know what to do. Running down the hallway past more and more doors he reaches a corner and enters a room. In the room is the mafias gun room, Keys not even with the slightest amount of regret some guns and ammo for himself. With new found weaponry he decides to find a new exit to huddle down for the day.

Back in Dorcya City we see Dakota at her job in the police station, she is working a case about a bakery getting robbed by a hungry drunk, thinking about her friends who are in the middle of nowhere. Places like Southrun are like redneck areas to the people of Dorcya City. She then gets a call from Gas, “Hey, did Keys get home safe?” he said with a hint of pain, “What, Gas, Keys hasn’t entered the city, that means he is still with you.” After a couple of moments Gas speaks again, “He is at Wiggums, send back up immediately, I’m in a clinic and cannot get to him.” With zero haste she jumps up and runs to her car, before that she gets interrupted my Len again, “Hey where do you think you’re going, we need you to work on some unfinished cases.” Lenard said while handing her more papers, “I can’t Len, Keys needs my help, and Gas is in the hospital!” Not wanting to hear Lenard’s excuses she gets into her car and speeds off to Southrun. Driving all the way to Wiggums will be hard but she doesn’t care, speeding down the road she passes cows, fences and the occasional building. With it now being past 10 she arrived at the clinic where Gas was located, walking into his room she asked if Gas was ok. He said yea but he directed the conversation to getting Keys out of the Wiggums factory. Driving down the rocky road she gets a random flat and her progress is halted.

We then find Keys hiding out in an old machine, he thinks it was used for trash but the thing looks long out of order, thinking he was safe he opened his emergency survival box and pulled out a small candle and lit it. Not noticing the mobster watching him from the observation window, waiting, but for what? Suddenly the lights turn bright and the loud booming voice of El Copper says, “Well, well, well, this was a nice hideout for you Keys, unfortunately for you, the candle gave you away!” Then we see mobsters trying to get in the machine but El Copper tells them to not, without any warning the gigantic smelter turns on and the flames start with a fiery blast startling Keys, then the conveyor activates and he starts moving, with every step he takes El Copper turns up the speed knob, forcing Keys to run to survive until he can’t no more.

Turns to the detective speeding down the road after fixing her tire, she hadn’t had a flat before but she had a manual somewhere to tell her, finally reaching the factory she spots Keys van in the woods, then the heavily guarded front doors, heading inside the rusty deathtrap she grabs a disguise and walks to the door, “Hey its Pete’s Pizza here got a fresh pie for a, uhm.” She said wondering what name to blurt out, with one of guards replying, “Oh Mr. Wiggum must have got hungry again, yea go right in.” Walking into the factory she notices how empty it is, basically nobody is there. Entering the main gun factory part, she spots the flames growing through the window of the trash compactor, not to mention the mobsters at the entrance of the compactor. Walking to the nearest empty room, she changes back into her normal clothing and starts following the laughter, looking through an observation window, she spots Keys running endlessly. Noticing the mob boss in the 2nd floor observation window she starts her run to stop the conveyor.

Running down the halls finding no staircase, the sounds of a screaming hero filling the halls as the flames seem to grow louder. Sprinting past some guards, she spots the staircase in a hallway filled with traps, most of which crudely made from trash and office supplies. Keeping a slow pace through the treacherous hallway, she hears the laughter coming from the 2nd floor dying as its replaced by gunfire and screams, quickly fast walking through the traps she makes it to the stairs she runs up, bashing through a door revealing a room filled with mobsters riddled with bullets. Seemed someone already turned off the garbage burner, the smell of melted plastic left the air as the smell of gunpowder and iron filled the room. Slowly walking through the bodies, she notices that Keys wasn’t in the compactor any more, looking at the scene she deducted that he must’ve used a new gadget to latch on to one of the observation windows and break through it. Just as she was taking pictures, the sound of glass being stepped on rang out from the other side of the observation level, walking slowly to the other side of the large cylindrical structure she spots Keys laying on the floor unawake. “Hey, if it isn’t the city cop, here to find your friend little lady?” as the opposing figure of El Copper steps out from the shadows with another mobster. Within an instant he throws a ball at the detective causing her to lose her balance and fall, the mobster now walking to her takes out a vile and chugs it. “Kill her Lucas.” Copper said as he left the room and locked the door. 

Lucas still walking towards her starts transforming, as fog starts rolling into the room making it hard to see the man in front of her. She notices the figure growing taller and the arms longer, she spots stuff falling from the silhouette. Now on her feet she starts backing up from the rapidly approaching figure, frozen in fear, hitting the wall behind her she comes to her senses and whips out her pistol and fires rounds into the thing’s chest, seemingly doing nothing to stop her imminent doom, she then sprints out of the direction of the monster as it starts to run behind her. She tries to find a room to hide in but she can’t see a thing, feeling around the wall she finally hits a door and runs into the room with the monster hot on her tail. The thing clawing and punching at the ancient door, she knows it’s only a matter of time before it gets inside the room so as a last resort she fires what ammo she has left but it only seemed to break the door and not the monster, as she huddles in the corner she closes her eyes and.

A loud sound erupts into the air and she hears the rapid gunfire of automatic guns ring in the air, the monster now distracted starts running in the newly visible room. She then notices the source of the gunfire. With rapid succession Keys fires round upon round into the beast’s chest as it starts to slow down, when he is done with the clip, it lies dead on the ground.