Actually they only lasted five minutes. That's about when the explosions began.
***
The dragon was pathetically easy to take out. Angel jumped on its back and stuck his sword through its eye. It fell to its death and squashed half the invading forces with its death throes. That part was just funny. Angel found it less funny, having been pinned for a couple minutes under its left wing and forced to lie in the goo of the squished demons. His hair looked really dumb when he got up.
Illyria took down the giant by climbing aboard, punching a hole into its stomach and shredding inward until its torso was a cave and it looked down in shock before toppling face first to the ground like something out of a slapstick comedy. Then Illyria gracefully climbed out of the hole in its back, as regal as a God King could be and began the slaughter anew.
Gunn may have been on fire in the Senator's office but was less so during the battle. After he started hunching over after every swing of his sword and panting wetly Spike simply pushed him down onto a crate and stated ripping apart anything that came close.
***
That was when the explosions started. Illyria looked rather pleased that she would be able to die in an explosion of glory after all.
Unfortunately for her, and fortunately for everyone else, the explosions weren?t for them. Well they were, but in the "we thought you could use some help" way and not in the "we thought a legion of demons and a dragon just wasn't enough to satisfy our wrath" way. Which was good, because they'd expected to die. That didn't mean they wanted to.
The champions paused to look for the source of the explosions and found the windows of the Hyperion behind them lined with girls in tight black uniforms, each toting a rocket launcher aimed at the approaching demons. They each fell back from the windows in unison to reload. Then a wave rippled across the air and the demons froze in their places.
And stayed frozen, like someone pressed pause on reality.
Gunn looked up at Spike, who was frozen in the process of ripping the head off of an ugly blue cyclops.
"Ummm..."
"Hi Gunn! And Angel and Spike and um, weird blue lady I've never met before. Great outfit." Willow waved at them all, then seemed to realize none of them could move their eyes to look at her. "Oh, right."
She walked up to each of the champions in turn and touched them. They each unfroze, some more gracefully than others.
Faith came sauntering into the alley then, flanked by three other girls. "All done?"
"Yup. Now it's just mop up." Willow went to Faith and gave her a steamy kiss goodbye. "I'll just leave that to you guys. Have fun!" With another wave the witch disappeared.
And so, they "mopped", hacking off heads, running the demons through with swords, Illyria kicking and punching through anything in her path, reveling in the destruction.
It took the champions and the slayers all night and when dawn approached Angel, Spike, and Illyria opened up the Hyperion and fell asleep in the dusty poof in the center of the lobby. Gunn was already on a morphine drip at the nearest hospital.
***
That was how Connor liked to imagine it anyway, when it was dark rainy midnight and the rolls of thunder sounded like pillars smashing to the ground.
Because he was okay, so Angel had to be okay too. He'd promised.