The Cooper X Gang
By Mutitoon90
Chapter Seventeen: The Truth.
On the outskirts of Paris, France, midnight.
The members of the Sly Cooper Gang and the Cooper X Gang were sitting down at the dining hall, enjoying a wonderful midnight dinner.
"Amazing craftsmanship." Penelope examined the dining hall.
"It's truly a work of art." Belle agreed with her mother.
"The smart ladies are right on the money." Dimitri flirted, embarrassing his daughter.
"Dad…" Luna groaned.
The Guru and Mar agreed quietly with Luna, while Justin rolled his eyes, despite that Luna was Dimitri's daughter.
"What's going on?" Murry asked Bentley.
"I wouldn't ask." The turtle replied.
Carmelita sat down at one of the chairs with Sam, Sly and Rad.
"Can you believe this?" The vixen asked her family and her son's co-worker.
"Hardly." Sam groaned.
Sly nudged his son in the side.
"How much money do you think this would cost?"
Rad grinned as he answered his father's question.
"Enough to bankrupt Mar's family."
"I heard that, Rad!" The rat announced, causing most of the group to laugh.
Sam did not laugh; she was too distorted to laugh.
"Sam?" The Panda King asked, "What ails you?"
"Everything that's happened tonight."
"It is difficult to see the happiness in this castle, but I believe that Rad is trying to make you smile." The Panda King said, somewhat showing Sam of the Cooper heir's jokes, "I believe he cares deeply for you, and would not try to make you uncomfortable. At least, that is what I think."
Sam looked at Rad, who made another joke of Mar's life style, which made most of the two Cooper gangs laugh.
"I think I see your point." The cat announced to her mentor.
Then, a thud was heard.
"Let me guess." Sly was the first to speak.
He turned and saw Baron Lubos sitting at the chair at the end of the table.
"Him!" Sam growled lowly.
The dark wolf closed his eyes and shook his head.
"Miss Down," said the baron, "I'm truly sorry about your parents; if I knew that would had happened, I would have never converted Neyla."
"Converted?" Sam asked, turning to Rad, who answered.
"Changed."
"That is right." Lubos confirmed.
"So you're a vampire?" Bentley asked, shaking nervously.
"In a sense." The baron said, "I'm not completely bloodthirsty, but I do need it for surviving the outside world."
"You joking, right?" Belle asked.
"I can survive sunlight, having a stake in my heart, fire, and all natural disasters." Lubos said, "I can climb walls, use the darkness to my will, and lived longer than most others. So, I am a vampire, just not an evil one."
"Not evil?" Justin asked.
"I was born like this." Lubos confessed, "I'm a thousand years of age."
"That's old!" Luna commented quietly to her father as he agreed by nodding his head.
"I heard that." The baron said, surprising the white wolf and the purple reptile.
"Oh, boy." Justin meekly said.
"Yeah." Murry and Bentley agreed with the young husky.
"Well!" Carmelita spoke out at last, but she never finished want she had on her mind, because Lubos interrupted her.
"I will explain why I turned Neyla into a 'vampire'."
"This oughta be good." Sam muttered loudly.
Lubos heard that, but ignored the cat and told his story.
"It started twenty-one years ago…"
It was the night after Neyla's defeat, when Lubos was on a stroll on the castle walls under the moonlight. The wolf was enjoying his quiet night when a scent entered his nose.
"Blood?"
Meanwhile, a badly wounded Neyla crawled by her hands and knees. She had collapsed to the ground when a shadow covered her bleeding body.
"Do you need some help?"
The tigress looked up at the wolf. She tried to ask for help, but she fainted before she could say a word.
"So, I took her to my castle to heal her wounds." Lubos said, knowing the questions that were going to be asked.
"By biting her?" Rad asked.
"No, young Cooper," announced the baron, "the fashion way: rest and care."
"How long did that last?" Sam asked with harsh eyes glaring at the black wolf.
"A week, at most." Lubos answered, "You see, I get blood from blood banks, which are most useful to people, like myself."
It had been a week since Lubos rescued Neyla from death, and Neyla had rested in a feather bed.
"So, you were left to die." Lubos concluded after Neyla told her story, which was about her being beaten to death by a gang of thieves.
"Yes." The tigress replied weakly.
The baron thought for a few moments before he spoke again.
"I have a way for you to live for a little longer than you could have thought about living."
Neyla's ears perked up when she heard this.
"Really?"
Lubos saw the gleam in Neyla's green eyes as he answered.
"Yes, but I will tell you as soon as you well enough to make a decision."
"All right." Neyla said, knowing that she was far too weak to even get out of bed.
"So, you gave the choice." Carmelita stood up, almost outraged, which was heard in her voice.
"Yes." Lubos answered, closing his eyes in shame, "Only when she was well enough, and I believed that I could change her."
"Fat chance." Sam muttered in her breath.
"I have to agree with you, Sam." The baron said, still keeping his eyes closed, "If I had known what would have happened, I would not have not changed her, and she would have been dismissed the moment she was well enough to travel."
"Really?" The Panda King spoke next.
Lubos nodded, saying 'yes' to the Panda King.
"I don't believe you!" Sam stood up and slammed her fists onto the table, "You claimed to have tried to change that monster, which was also my mother's sister, yet you failed!"
Lubos did not answer, but knew what Sam spoke about: the night of her parents' deaths.
"Sam…" Rad whispered as he saw that fury and hatred in the cat's eyes.
Lubos heard this and sighed deeply before he spoke again.
"I understand your fury, but there is something else that you do not know."
"And that would be?"
"It's about that night." The black wolf replied.
"What do you mean?" Sly and Rad asked in unison.
"It was nine years later, when Sam's mother and father were murdered." Lubos announced.
A house was engulfed in flames with a dark, bat-like silhouette flew away from house the blazing house, while on the ground Lubos saw the silhouette.
"Neyla!" The baron growled under his breath, then a loud cry broke into the night.
"HELP ME!"
Lubos heard the child's voice and flew into the burning house. He was in the house for a few minutes before he escaped the inferno with something in his arms, which were covered with his cape.
"Do not fret, little one." Lubos said, removing his cape from the young cat he rescued, "No one will try to hurt you anymore on this night."
But the cat, who had inhaled a lot of smoke, did not hear him, she was out.
Lubos caressed the white hair on the cat's face.
"What!" Sam exclaimed rather quietly.
Rad knew that Sam was shocked; the cat would have yelled, if she were outraged.
"I did safe your life, since it was my fault that your mother and father were brutally killed" Lubos said with regret in his red eyes.
The cat sat down and folded her arms, showing her disbelief in the wolf's words.
"That still doesn't explain why you planned to marry me." Sam announced loudly.
"It was merely a ruse to fool Neyla." The dark wolf answered with a grin.
"A ruse?" Sam asked in confusion.
"Whoa!" Carmelita exclaimed quietly.
"You can say that again." Sly agreed with his wife.
Rad nodded with the others.
"But why?" Belle asked.
Lubos sighed again before he responded.
"Neyla found out about me rescuing her niece, but I had to fabricate an explanation to her, and she accepted it."
"Did she believe it?" Bentley inquired.
"Not at first," confessed Lubos, "but as time passed, she started believing me until she was truly convinced that I intended to wed Miss Down."
"That explains some of this story." Justin said, looking at Luna.
"But not all of it." Luna announced.
Lubos grinned as he said, "Very true."
Mar knew what Luna meant.
"The Fiendish Klaws." The rat pointed out.
"I had no idea that Neyla had formed a posse to destroy the Cooper clan." The dark wolf said, "If I had known, I would have stopped it long ago."
"Right." Sam and Carmelita said quietly to themselves.
Lubos laughed a little.
"This is very strange." Sly admitted.
"You are not alone with that feeling." The Panda King agreed.
"Yeah." Murry said.
Lubos rose from his seat.
"You all may use this castle for the night." The wolf announced, "But I must asked you to leave as soon as the sun rises."
Then, Lubos disappeared into the darkness, leaving the two Cooper Gangs in confusion.
5:45 a.m.
Sam was in her room, asleep from the excitement of the evening, when an awful noise had awakened her.
"What was that!"
In Rad's room, the Cooper heir was also removed from his sleep by the very same sound.
"That sounded awful!"
Rad, who had slept his clothes on, ran out to the hall, but saw nothing.
"That was strange." The raccoon said to himself.
"You can say that again." Sam's voice spoke out, frightening Rad.
"Whoa!"
Sam saw Rad's reaction and apologized to him.
"Sorry about that."
"Please don't do that." Rad said after regaining his wits.
"It was an accident." Sam defended herself.
Then, the awful noise was heard again.
"That noise!" Sam said.
"So, we both heard it." Rad confirmed, "Let's check it out."
"Right." Sam nodded.
Then, the duo ran off for the source of the sound.
It had been twenty minutes after Rad and Sam started searching for the maker of the strange and frightening noise.
Sam sighed deeply as she had lost hope of finding it.
"This is difficult!"
"Yeah." Rad agreed, "But it did wake us up."
"Good point." The cat nodded.
Then, the noise came again, and it sounded closer to the duo.
"That sounded like a scream." Rad announced to Sam.
"Yeah." The cat agreed.
Then, the duo ran to the source again.
In a dark dungeon, Lubos was placing a magenta sphere on a pestle, when Rad and Sam entered the dungeon.
"Mister Cooper, Miss Down," Lubos politely asked, in spite of his shock, "what are you two doing down here?"
"We were about to ask you the same thing." Rad announced.
"Yeah," confirmed Sam, "we heard an awful sound."
"You did?" Lubos asked, very shocked.
"Yeah." Rad said.
Lubos sighed deeply as he turned back to the sphere.
"You heard Neyla." The wolf said.
"What!" Rad exclaimed.
"But she was destroyed, wasn't she?" Sam asked.
"Her mortal-like body was." Lubos said.
"Her body?" Rad asked.
"Yes," Lubos confessed, "when a vampire's body is destroyed, a sphere is left in their place. It will take a few years for them to recover their body, but that depends on the master's wish." The wolf finished with a grim grin.
The cat and the raccoon were confused, recalling that they had never seen a sphere.
"But how did…?" Rad started, but the baron interrupted.
"I managed to hide this one from you two, your gang, and Sly Cooper's ring of friends."
"Okay." Sam accepted the explanation.
"Now," The wolf said, "I must asked the both of you to return to your rooms."
"All right." Rad nodded his head as he began to leave.
"Of course." Sam said, following the raccoon.
Once both thieves had left, Lubos sighed to himself, saying, "This is not what I wanted to do for my time on Earth."
Ten minutes later, Rad and Sam had returned to the hall that they were in went the both of them had decided to investigate the noise.
"Well, I know now that Neyla's not going to be gone entirely." Sam said, shaking her head in shame.
"Hey," Rad responded and placing his hand on the cat's shoulder, "I should be the one really worried, not you."
"Why?"
"Because Clockwerk tortured and chased my family from thousands of years. And now that my family has gotten peace in our minds, Neyla comes back for blood."
"Quite factual." Lubos said, appearing out of nowhere.
"Whoa!" Rad and Sam exclaimed in fright.
"My apologies." The wolf said, realizing what he did, "I did not mean to frighten you."
"'Frighten' doesn't even start there." Sam announced.
"Still, I did not mean to inject fear into your hearts." The baron insisted on gaining the forgiveness of the duo.
"You didn't." Sam said.
"Yeah, there's a difference between fear and startled." Rad added.
The wolf smiled kindly and disappeared into the darkness again.
At sunrise
The Cooper gangs left the castle using the team van.
"That night was strange." Murry commented.
"At least, it's over." Bentley announced.
"Oh, yeah." Sly agreed with the turtle.
Sam and Rad looked at each other, knowing the truth.
"Should we?" The cat asked the raccoon.
"Nah!" Rad replied, "Let's not ruin their peace."
The feline smiled at the raccoon as she replied.
"You're right."
The two fell silent, allowing the conversations of the others to enter their ears.