It only took a few seconds for Claire to regret her decision. What she'd intended to be a controlled descent almost immediately sent her tumbling and twisting at a rate of speed so intense she didn't realize at first that sound she was hearing was her own scream. Part of her had wondered if she would wake up from this obvious nightmare with a jolt and find herself—well, probably not in a better situation than this, frankly.

But she wasn't waking up. She was screaming and falling, hurtling through the sky with wild abandon. She screamed until her throat was raw and struggled to control the spinning until at last she managed to keep herself steady and see where she was going.

To a whole lot of nowhere. From the clouds, the planets had seemed directly below. Not close, but not too terribly far. And now Claire realized that whatever the rules of physics were wherever she was, they were not the ones she was used to. The red pentacle seemed a very, very, very long ways away.

She stopped screaming. While the air was no longer soft and seemed warmer than before, she didn't appear to be burning up even with the incredible speeds she was falling at. She could still breathe, which seemed strange if she was dead just in general, but all in all could be seen as a good thing.

"Not one of my better ideas," she said aloud, though it was hard to say if she did or if she just thought it, since the sound of the air rushing past was so loud she couldn't hear anything else. The initial panic of falling subsided the longer it went on. It seemed silly to panic about anything when sure she was falling, but none the worse for wear while it was happening.

It got boring after a few hours. While it was difficult to judge the passing of time, Claire at one point started counting stars, which gave her a general sense of how long it had been. Doubt crept in at several points. Would she be falling forever? Had she given up the comforts of Heaven only to be stuck in this strange limbo for eternity?

"No," she decided with a shake of her head, stretching her hands out in front of her like some goofy superhero. "I must be falling towards something."

As if the universe was affirming her decision, Claire noticed the air around her fingers heating up exponentially as that red pentacle finally seemed to be getting closer. A mixture of relief mingled with a sudden, rising panic.

"…should've probably thought about the landing before I did this."

When little bursts of flames ignited around her hands, Claire started screaming again.

Below on the street of Pentagon City, several sinners stopped to look up as what appeared to be a gleaming, shooting star began to make its way across the sky.

One of them, a thin, sharp looking man with eyes as red as his hair, sat on a hotel balcony with coffee mug in hand and a folded-up newspaper on the table before him. His narrowed gaze tracked the path of the star until it became clear that it was not only getting bigger but headed directly towards the building he was currently occupying.

With a sigh, he set down his mug "Always when I'm enjoying my breakfast," he mused with a crackle of radio static and a glow of green around his pupils. His ever-present smile widened as four inky black shadow vines burst from his back, lifting him into the sky to meet the threat head on before it could cause any real damage.

She really should have thought about the landing before she fell.

As the city came more into focus, Claire's panic only grew. She was going to crash. She was traveling at such high speeds there were actual flames around her and she was going to slam into the ground and die. Maybe not die, that had already happened once today, but she was relatively sure whatever was going to happen when she did hit the ground was going to be awful and painful. Worse, it appeared that she was headed directly towards some sort of multi-story building—

And then suddenly a man appeared in the sky in front of her. At least she thought it was a man. Was that hair or ears? Claire didn't really have time to think about much of anything, panic consuming her as she screamed, "WATCH OUT!"

It was an absurd thing to do, and it was hard to say who was more surprised, the red demon man or Claire as she slammed into him. Instinctively, Claire threw her arms around his shoulders, holding on for her dear, undead life. She felt his arms likewise clasp around her as her descent stopped, and in her panic, scrambled to grab the back of his neck to try to pull herself up as one last fuck you to gravity.

As soon as her fingertips slid across the skin of his neck, a flash of light overtook her vision. Her eyes burned a searing, bright white as his flashed green, filling the sky with twirling mystical symbols of the same color. She felt like she was burning from the inside out now, a constant, livid flame from the center of her very being draining away, pushed on to whoever this red savior was.

And then as quickly as it appeared, the light vanished and Claire slumped in the man's arms, the exertion of whatever burst of power that had been too much to maintain. The man looked down at her unconscious form, adjusting his grip now that she was nothing more than dead weight, a calculating smile taking up most of his face.

"Interesting."