Nate never gave much thought to the "End of Days." He was not the most religious man, and he knew the sun was not scheduled to explode for some time to come, so he always kept his mind firmly in the present.

Nate never expected he would be around to see the end of the world.

Everything was going wrong, and as anyone could have predicted, the masses quickly united in a rioting chorus blaming the X-Men, the Mansion, and mutants in general.

Stephen Graves would have cut ties with the Mansion and hid away until the worst of the panic was over. After a year of struggling and love and attempts at redemption, there was one thing left for Nate to cling to, and it was that Nate Holloway was a better man than Stephen Graves.

He was not one of the X-Men, but Nate was a proud member of the Mansion family, and if it was time for a last stand, there was nothing in the disestablishing world that could keep him from the front lines.

Nate was one of the first faces the mobs would see, stationed between the fence and the Mansion. The outdoor lights accompanied the sun, giving Nate as much shadow power as he could manage.

The mob could be seen in the distance, making its way as an intimidating force toward the Mansion. In the final moments Nate had left before the warfront caught up to him, he wondered if Quin was alright. She was a police officer and a mutant, so she was either doing her best to control the mess, she was being blamed for it, or she was there when everything went wrong... Nate shook the thought off, trying to remain as close to optimistic as he could manage.

Nate could not afford to be distracted. He had been a great many things in his life, but right now, he was a teacher, and his students resided in the heart of the Mansion. If the angry horde was going to lay a hand on a single child, it would be a hand stained in the last drop of blood Nate could give.

The mob was shaking the gate violently, striking it with sledgehammers and other large objects. Nate could only hope the first line of defense would last long enough to… well, he wanted it to last. There was nothing coming to save them; there was no reinforcement to stall for. The mansion was facing its last stand against New York City.

Nate wondered if there was anyone in the mansion that saw themselves coming out of the battle alive. There was a line between being hopeful and being naive, and Nate could not bring himself to be either. Regardless, if he could not find hope for himself, he would fight so the young could hope and be naïve.

The people were lifting one another up in an attempt to hoist themselves over the fence. The multiple large lights staged behind Nate allowed him to create shadowy tendrils long enough to target and knock back the climbers. Without trying to downplay the situation, Nate could not help to grimly parallel the situation to whack-a-mole. People were tossing rocks and objects on fire, but Nate had a shadow wall between him and the mob that could easily stop such weak projectiles. Until they eventually broke down the gate, which would happen in any second he was sure, the main objective was to watch as people approached the top of the fence and push them away accordingly.

They should have called in Quin if this was what the first line of defense would be. It was not too long before that Nate was on Coney Island and Quin promptly beat him in whack-a-mole. It was a pleasant memory of a world that was clearly gone. He would never see Quin’s face again.

There was a groaning of metal, as if the gate apologized to Nate. He could not be upset; it was an amazing defensive structure, but a violent majority rarely loses.

People began to flood into the courtyard, still throwing objects and some even firing off rounds in his direction. The bullets unnerved him, as they always had; the floodlights were pointed at the mob, essentially blinding them, but all it would take was one lucky idiot and one lucky bullet to finish the first line of defense.

The rioters were quickly closing the gap between themselves and a lonely Nate. Before they could get within a short enough distance to throw crowbars and bats at him accurately, he replied with the entire reason he was one of the first lines of defense. With the sheer space and density of his shadows, Nate was able to form a large wave beginning at his feet but spreading to be fifteen feet high and wide enough to encompass most of the courtyard.

The wave caught the closest people, knocking them back; some into the metal gate and some into other rioters. Bullets pierced through the wave, but no one could see him past it.

There was no time or reason to conserve his strength; he would give this last stand everything he had. The moment one wave would hit the gate and dematerialize, he was already casting another one out at the crowds. It was an unrelenting mob, but much of it was untrained and running on nothing but ignorant hatred. With each wave, there were more people lying unconscious at the foot of the gate, and more people on the ground colliding violently with one another. They had numbers, but maybe they could be stopped. There were more X-Men in the mansion, and if he continued doing a solid job of defending the courtyard, maybe they could take the offensive.

Quin was out there somewhere dealing with the masses of lunacy, but she was trained. She was on a team of highly trained police designed to handle very dangerous criminals. The thought hesitantly entered his mind: Quin would survive. She had to; it just made sense.

Quin would survive, and with each wave, Nate grew more optimistic about his chances. He had to survive; not because he was trained or because of his mutation, but because he had a reason to survive.

Nate cast out another wave, larger and faster than its predecessors, fueled by conviction.

It took an instant for a tiny hole to appear in the wave, and everything began to grow colder.

The wave collapsed, as did its creator. Nate was on the ground, clutching his chest. A lucky idiot with a lucky bullet, shooting wildly into the darkness. After everything, one bullet that could not have even given him the courtesy of an instantaneous death. He would grow colder and his vision would go darker for the excruciatingly slow thirty seconds before the mob trampled him on their way into the mansion.

The mansion would fall. Hope and naivety were one in the same.

But with his last conscious thoughts, Nate still hoped for Quin’s safety.