In the last decade or so to come, Alison managed to find the three Leviathan Seals, but she was never able to break them.

"Guess I need the heroes," Alison sighed to herself as she stared at the large, glowing symbol etched upon one of the brick walls surrounding one of the many gardens of the estate. Although she wasn't surprised by this fact, it did frustrate her a little to think that she was so powerless to do anything without the heroes. Just once, she wanted to be able to save someone on her own, and not totally rely upon future humans to do it for her, but no amount of magic or machinery would break the Seal, so Alison was forced to wait, just like always. She glared up at the Seal, cursing it.

"I don't have the patience to wait on your stupid magical weakness!" she told it, and then that was when she got an idea...

Following Alison's successful attempt at finding all three Seals, Alison got the brilliant idea to teach Riley a bit of magic of her own. If she really was the other half of the Sorceress, then surely she'd have a natural talent with magic, right? But what was Alison going to teach her? Well, it wouldn't be anything too big, no spell could free Riley from her glass box so a big spell wouldn't do much anyway, but it was going to help the young girl communicate with the outside world. Alison was going to teach Riley a bit of telekinesis.

Alison managed to get Sireen to teach her basic telekinesis, or at least, to teach her the required spell to perform such art, but Alison herself was never able to do more than lift a few pebbles an inch off the ground. She just didn't have magical blood in her veins, but that didn't matter to her. She wasn't the one who really needed this spell anyway, it was Riley. So once Sireen's lesson in levitation was over, Alison took her newfound knowledge back to Riley's treehouse and got the girl to learn how to make things move without touching them. She had far better success than Alison had. Now Riley had a way to "interact" with the outside world. Now that she knew how to make things move with her mind, she could leave notes around the estate for the future nine heroes.

"When they arrive, you can use this pen and paper to send out notes to help them find you," Alison said, placing a pad and pen in front of Riley's glass box. To test it out, Riley waved a hand and chanted the words that Alison had taught her. The pen and paper both responded to Riley's voice at once and rose straight up and she was able to scribble out "thank you, Alison" on the first page of the notepad. Success!

Now, telekinetic communication wasn't the best of options, but it was all they had and Riley was so grateful for Alison finding the Seals and then giving her a way to physically communicate with the outside world that she didn't mind at all. What's more, in time, Riley and JPG became an official couple and that, mixed with Alison's help in finding the Seals, was what killed the last of Riley's old rivalry with the vampire. Now, there was nothing but warmth from Riley to Alison.

Alison, herself, had been totally unaware of this secret rivalry between herself and Riley. It was because she only ever viewed JPG with platonic love, so she never saw herself as a competitor to Riley. She figured that Riley's old hostility with her had just been general angst on her part and even now, the vampire still never had a clue that Riley used to envy her. In Alison's eyes, watching JPG finally declare her love for Riley official had been something she'd seen as a long time coming, not a loss of a competition.

"It's about time," Alison snorted as JPG and Riley kissed awkwardly through the glass.

"Shut up, Alison," JPG replied, voice muffled because her lips were still on the glass.

"You don't talk to your princess like that!" Alison reminded the inventor with a teasing smile.

"You aren't my princess, though," JPG replied, still looking at Riley. "She is," and even Alison couldn't argue with that one.

Alison continued to keep Riley's secret while masterminding a plan to overthrow her father and find the heroes Sireen kept talking about.

"They will be here any day now! I can feel it!" the witch once declared. "That foggy dream with the tarot cards came back to me, only this time, the tarot cards were a bit clearer! I still can't tell you what exactly everyone looked like, but I think it means that the time of their arrival is almost here!" and Sireen sounded so sure of herself that Alison didn't doubt her in the slightest. Insetad, she already made plans for their arrival.

"I will be there when they arrive. I will lead them through the mansion. I will be the one to protect them from Dorian. When they come, I will be there to guide them through their quest to defeat him," she muttered to herself, mapping out the plan in her mind.

And as the days drew even closer, Alison finally decided to do a "test run" of her plan. Although, of course, she knew she could not predict how exactly everything would occur, she ran through several mental scenarios in her mind. She paced herself from the main door of the mansion to Dorian's ballroom and then to the various escapes that she and her future companions could use. She even managed to secure a few sunstones from Sireen, the witch had created them using a bit of that mystical fire magic she'd told Alison about on the night they battled Karin, in case she needed to protect any of the humans from her court members.

"Down the hall, maybe down the stairs, maybe into the chamber in case any of them get caught," Alison chanted to herself. Perhaps all of this pre-planning was a bit over the top, but it was the only thing that kept Alison distracted and feeling like she was actually doing something worth the wait. She even ran down into the lower bowels of the mansion where Dorian usually kept his Warm Ones. Since he didn't realize that the reason they all died so quickly was because of mercy kills from Alison, he continually left them in the same spot, shackled in a back room in the farthest, lowest corner of the mansion. It was well-hidden, but still easily accessible.

Alison took a look at the door, but didn't bother to peek inside. She just wanted to make sure her father hadn't done something crazy, like installing security around the room. He hadn't! Good! So if anything were to go wrong and someone got taken, Alison would know where to go. And since she already knew there wouldn't be anyone inside, Dorian hadn't kept any Warm Ones in recent months, Alison knew because she did a body count, she left the door closed and remained upstairs without taking a look inside. But if she had, things might've gone very differently.

Although her math was correct, there was still a live human shackled away in the darkness. It was a young man who had stumbled into the estate through magic beyond that of the Sorceress. He had not come in carriage like all the other humans before him. His arrival was due to... something else. The Sorceress had found him, running through the grounds, lost and afraid, but once she was finished with him, she handed him off to Dorian as a special gift, attempting to make sure that the vampire king still trusted her. Dorian took the offering exactly as she'd expected and thanked her for it before whisking the young man away to that dungeon-like room.

Now, that particular Warm One had been locked away for a few weeks now. The only time he ever saw the light was when Dorian came down to feed on him. But because he had not been amongst a hunting party group like normal, Alison hadn't even realized he'd been locked away inside. If she had, things might've gone a bit differently for him... But, thinking that she had done all that she could downstairs, Alison returned back to the foyer, running through other scenarios she wanted to test out.

Then at long, long last, just like Sireen had promised, they came. The nine heroes of the future came. And after a near-death experience at the fangs of Dorian, Vera, Calvin and Morgan (in that order), Alison managed to whisk most of them away to safety. She lost one girl, the Explorer, but then she had come to realize that there was a tenth boy amongst the group too. His friends called him Joey. All of Alison's original nine, Explorer included, had recognized him at once. But how? Alison was sure she'd never seen him before, yet somehow, he still had arrived at the mansion, and all of his friends knew exactly who he was.

Alison's first sight of him, of this Joey fellow, had been of him strapped up to one of Dorian's blood-draining machines. It was for whenever Dorian didn't feel like feeding directly. Admittedly, it was a messy process. The machine made it a lot cleaner and it also ensured the survival of the victim for more feedings. Seeing Joey strapped up to that machine made Alison realize that he had been in this mansion for quite awhile and a chill ran down her spine. Just how long had Joey been here? And how had Alison missed his arrival? Little did she know it was because that outside source had practically dumped him right onto the estate grounds on a night Alison had been visiting Riley in her treehouse. And of course, since Alison hadn't even realized that he was here in the first place, she never made any attempt to find or save him. Until now...

Alison quickly escorted her other eight guests to safety. She regretted leaving Joey and the Explorer behind, but if they wanted any chance of saving their friends, they would have to be patient and think things through first.

"If you want to save Joey, you'll have to kill my father," Alison told the remaining eight. Although Joey and the Explorer were still in danger, still stuck in the ballroom, Alison knew Dorian and his vampires would be more concerned with trying to find her and the other eight first. She knew that Joey and the Explorer had at least a couple hours to be saved before Alison needed to start panicking. For now, it was more important to get the other heroes focused on defeating Dorian. He was Priority Number One.

"Why would you betray your father?" one of them, the Novelist, interrupted. Alison paused in her planning to look up at him. Although she did not hesitate to reply, she still felt every single person she had ever loved flash through her mind before she answered his question.

"There are other people who want out, I'm doing this for them..." JPG, Sampson, Sireen, Riley, herself... But Alison, refusing to lose focus now, only shook her head and continued to talk. "Ok, now, there's only one way to kill a vampire as powerful as my father..."

For the rest of the night, although Alison managed to maintain a fang-sharp focus on the tasks at hand, refusing even to let the deaths of the heroes sway her faith in them, that one little phrase she'd told the Novelist refused to leave her mind: "I'm doing this for them." Over and over again, for the whole rest of the night, that became Alison's moniker. It was what she said when she was scared, tired, angry, defeated, grieving or any combination of all of the above. It became a life-saving device for her, something she repeated during the course of that long, cursed night. She said it before every death match and after every loss. Before every monster and after every achievement. While they were hunting for gems that would complete the Crown of Oblivion, the only tool that could free the mansion, Alison would tell herself this. Every gain and loss, every friend and foe, every emotion she faced, Alison would continue to say: "I'm doing this for them."

But then, even when the heroes' quest required Alison to make the ultimate sacrifice, even when the last of her undead life was being ripped away by the claws and teeth of a werewolf (her first and last ever "defeat" in battle), she would say: "I'm doing this for them." Even as she told her brave companions to leave her to die, even as she watched them try to protect her after all she had done for them, even after she watched them flee, even after she was on the ground and in pain, even as the very last sight of them and the rest of the world had gone, even after Alison was totally and finally dead, her life essence imbuing itself into the werewolf gem, all the vampire princess could think was: "I'm doing this for them."

But why? Why was Alison's determination to do this for them so strong? Well, maybe this time, it went beyond vampire loyalty. As strong as that was, there was something even beyond that that Alison would feel every time she thought about all the sacrifices she had made and was making for those nine heroes. It was the crazy belief that they would actually do it. That they would actually complete their quest, rebuild their Crown of Oblivion, free Riley and kill the Sorceress. She had no reason to believe this but, for some reason, she did. So she wasn't just protecting them on idle hope or even deep-seeded loyalty. She was doing it because maybe, just maybe, she somehow knew that they would actually do it.

And sure enough, though she wouldn't be around to see it, the heroes would, in fact, escape the night. Granted, only two would survive, but they would manage to avenge their friends by defeating the Sorceress and freeing the mansion of her terrible curse using their hard-won Crown of Oblivion, all the gems, including the werewolf gem that took Alison's life, firmly in place. One of the two survivors, the girl that Alison had died for, would remember her fondly, setting up a memorial back in her own time. She would be forever grateful for Alison for dying in her place and showing such deep, unwavering, unshaking loyalty to her, protecting them all throughout the whole ordeal no matter the personal cost that had come with it. She wouldn't let Alison's love, loyalty, protectiveness or sacrifice be forgotten, ever. She was doing this, for her.

With the mansion forever in ruins, the curse broken, all of the inhabitants would be forced to go back home. It would be a bit of a culture shock for them, all of them having been inside the confines of that mansion for at least 50 years by then, but they would have no other choice. The surviving vampires would go home with Queen Susanna as their new leader (she didn't shed a tear for her fallen husband or daughter). Jorogumo and her spiders would return to Japan (neither Kira nor Haruko would mourn Alison too terribly, their friendship with her having lapsed away anyway). Sireen would finally go home to her realm to lead her slowly-thawing country. Cedric and his newly-made Automaton Bride would travel the world together using the leftover money from the Sorceress' mansion, and the Dark Army would simply vanish away...

So, everyone that was still alive was sent home while all the fallen found their eternal peace and rest under the foundation of that cursed mansion, which now was no more than a large house, all the magic and terror gone now that the monster responsible for it all was dead. This would come to include the eight heroes who perished for the gems, all of the lieutenants that died trying to keep those gems away from the heroes. The werewolves, the Confederates, Alison, Morgan, Vera, Calvin, Dorian, the Gingerbread Woman, Sampson, Torhil, the harpies, Karin, the Promethean Men. All of them, dead and buried beneath the mansion's foundation.

And as for Riley and JPG? Well, Riley and JPG would walk out of that accursed mansion together, hand in hand. Riley would shake, hardly daring to believe that she was free from her glass coffin, and the evil woman that had put her there. She would revel in the knowledge that she was finally getting to have the life she'd wanted for so long, a life with JPG. And while JPG would never fully recover from Alison's death, she would never dishonor that memory by wasting away in grief. Instead, she and Riley would live the life they deserved. They would travel around and across the globe, together. They would live their lives to the fullest because it was what Alison would've wanted. They were doing this for her.

AN: The End!

Did y'all know this was originally only going to be a one-shot?! (This chapter, starting from "Alison quickly escorted her other eight guests to safety," line and going to the end, was originally going to be the full story). But then, my love for backstories got the best of me and the one-shot became a novella. But hey, I think it turned out really well and I had a blast writing it! I know I messed up a lot of the canon, but hey, it be like that sometimes, right? Anyway, hope you enjoyed, sorry it wasn't very YouTuber centric (to me, the side-characters and backstory were more interesting), but that's just how the story chose to go.

Also, I've only ever seen S2, so if anyone does comment on this with theories that tie S2 into S1 or S3, I won't understand it. Just thought I'd give everyone a heads up about that. And I have no interest in seeing the other seasons, just another fair warning from me.

Also also, the only reason I saw S2 (and not the others) was for Alison. (In case you didn't know, I think she's AMAZING). I saw her death in a compilation video, was intrigued by the fact that she actually sacrificed herself, and I have been in love with her and the entirety of S2 ever since. Protective characters are my life and Alison is major protective. In quite a few of her scenes, she's either ready to fight or ready to protect and my heart just explodes every single time. (Sorry, I'm shameless, in case you can't tell).

And in regard to the story, here's your Joey cameo, AquaEclipse, and the explanation as to why Alison never found him sooner.

And yes, it's my theory Alison taught Riley magic. Why else would Riley have been able to communicate, through notes, with Joey and the other survivors? And no excuses! Those notes were too situational and direct to have been random chance or dumb luck or prewritten! Riley sent those notes to Joey and friends intentionally, on the fly, as the episode unfolded! And how else would she do this but magic?

If anything else confuses, please ask! Thanks!

(Shout-out one last time to canufeelthemagictonight for being an awesome person and posting an AMAZINGLY well-written novelization of the series and Leah Merone for having an awesome EtN-based Youtube channel, you rock!

And many thanks to AquaEclipse as well for staying with me throughout this whole fic! I've appreciated every single review you've given! You're the best!