Sango stared at the piece of paper in her hands: a letter recommending she take a leave of absence.

She knew what she fucking saw. She was a cop. She'd been trained to use her eyes, to pay attention to everything, especially when things didn't make sense.

Naked faceless men climbing out of holes in the sky was not normal, and was also not some figment of her imagination.

"Hey Madonna…" Sango knew that voice. Sango hated that voice. Mukotsu. "I heard you finally went off the deep end."

Fun fact. Mukotsu was the one who gave Sango that wonderful nickname. Back when she saw traffic duty more than the beat. Because Madonna wore traffic cones over her tits back in the 1980s. It was only creative in that Muk could keep the higher-ups safe from a discrimination lawsuit.

"Fuck off Muk," Sango scowled. She really didn't need this bullshit right now. Not that she ever needed his bullshit. "Don't you have jaywalkers to ticket?"

"Word on the street is you saw 'a ghost,'" Muk mocked, leaning so close to Sango she could smell his rancid breath.

Cops were worse gossips than middle schoolers.

"None of your business." Sango stood up, and turned to leave the precinct. "Just… taking some vacation time."

"With your new extra free time, you could entertain me." Muk never gave up.

She'd said no. She'd said fuck no. She'd told him to leave her alone. And yet, he still persisted.
She'd even reported him for harassment, and she'd been the one labeled a troublemaker.

"The neutering clinic was busy," Sango shot back, but she didn't stop walking. She needed to get the fuck out of there before she attempted to use her foot to castrate him herself.

Sango slammed the door to the stairwell with enough force that it echoed through the column of industrial stairs. She'd had enough with the politics. Enough with the claims she was a goddamned diversity hire. Enough with being called Madonna and having everything she did questioned and challenged. Sango knew what she saw. She remembered what she saw. And she'd written it down in the excruciating detail that she'd learned to do from the academy.

And it wasn't just the unbelievable she'd taken note of.

Yes, when she'd marched into her captain's office and told him she watched a faceless man crawl out of the black hole, he'd asked her if it was "that time of the month." And when she explained that she heard voices and thought there were people who'd incited the event, he'd suggested she take a leave of absence. Because her rumor-mongering was having "an impact on morale."

(There was a reason she'd been trying to transfer precincts for so long. Because Capt. Kaijinbō was both useless and sexist.)

As Sango left the precinct, she sighed. It was too early in the morning to put up with bullshit.

"I know what I saw," Sango whispered as she descended into the subway station.

Just because her office was not taking her investigation seriously didn't mean she couldn't. They were practically encouraging her to go rogue.

She would go back to the site of the strange occurrence, and she would do her fucking job. She would comb the building and see if there was anything that pointed to the culprits. Because Sango knew that there was always someone behind things, even if those things seemed supernatural and unbelievable. And she would get to the bottom of this thing too.

Sango hopped on the train, exiting at the 96th Street stop. When she got to 97th Street, she turned left. She came to a stop in front of PS163, and flashed back to the previous night.

It was close to the end of her shift, and Sango was doing one last patrol. An unearthly glow had drawn her attention, as well as the sound of two muffled voices. Sango's ears perked and she walked toward the sound, which was coming from somewhere in the school. Before she could so much as reach for her flashlight, flares of red light erupted from the building. Then a ring of electricity seemed to ascend, filling with black while it spun. At the point that the ring was facing her, Sango saw the fleshy scalp and head of a muscled man start crawling out of the hole.

But this figure did not have a face. As if it was a mannequin that they never finished molding.

"Police! Stop where you are!" Sango reacted on instinct, her gun already unholstered and in her hands.

"Someone's there!" The voice was distant and raspy, so Sango could only barely make out the words.

She couldn't take her eyes off of whatever grotesque creature was currently crawling out of the black, but in her peripheral vision she swore she'd seen movement in the school. Then suddenly, the ring began to wobble and destabilize, before collapsing in on itself, taking the faceless figure with it.

As soon as it was gone, Sango charged into the school, hoping to find the owners of the voices. In part to understand what the hell they had done, and in hopes that she'd seen some elaborate prank. But even as she checked every room in that school, she could not find a single soul. Whomever had nearly set the faceless man free had escaped.

Sango should have stayed at the damn school that night, collecting evidence, but she was so rattled that she'd run out of there and back to her car. She'd driven back to the precinct and caught the night shift captain. When he laughed at her hilarious "joke," she probably should have figured out how the rest of it was going to go. But no, she decided to extend her pain by arguing. And then by telling her captain in the morning.

And that was why she was now on forced vacation, to "relax" so she stopped "seeing things."

But it had happened. She was there! And now, she was going to fucking prove it. Prove to them all that something had happened the night before at PS163.

Sango didn't have much time before the school opened, so she would have to work fast. She thought back to where exactly that red flash had originated. It was… somewhere over the center of the school. And the voices the night before. Sango strained her brain, focusing on the shout of "someone's here." Had it… echoed? Finally, wherever they were, they had been able to escape without running by her, which would imply the back of the building.

Sango walked carefully to the gymnasium, ready to flash her badge if anyone asked. But… no one did, so she scanned the perimeter of the gym. Something about the back corner, behind the bleachers, spoke to her gut. Sango walked purposefully to the spot, stopping just as she passed the risers.

The alcove was isolated, but with access to several escape paths. There was one corner in particular that was obscured from every entrance. When Sango looked at it, she smirked; she knew it. A blackened circle was burned into the lacquered floor. Sango imagined that that was the location of whatever it was that made the ring in the sky. When she put her hand on it, she found that it was burned into the floor. Sango pulled out her phone and took some pictures, including one with her foot in the frame for scale.

Then something else caught Sango's eye. On the way to the emergency exit, there was a crumpled piece of paper. It was nondescript, and it could have easily been garbage. But something told her to pick it up. At the sound of voices, Sango hurried and grabbed the paper, before slipping out the back door.

The trail that ran behind the school made for an easy getaway, and meant that whoever was there, whoever made the burn mark on the floor and raised the faceless man could have fled, directly away from Sango's position.

The likely chain of events made sense, and it reassured her that she hadn't been seeing things. Someone had been in that gymnasium and did something that opened the sky to make a creature crawl out. Now all Sango had to do was figure out who and what. Sango opened the crumpled piece of paper. Written in tiny neat handwriting, were the words: 2nd Ave & 42nd Street.

Sango's eyes widened. It couldn't be a coincidence, could it? The address was across Manhattan. It was written on a piece of paper lying between the scorch mark and the exit, dropped as whomever it was fled the night before?

Sango picked up her pace out of the school grounds, and back toward the subway. Usually, she would run back to the precinct and alert them to the situation. But… not this time. Because Capt. Kaijinbō had told her that this thing that was happening was probably all in her head.

She wouldn't have any backup in this particular investigation.

Running directly to the next target would be rash, especially given what had tried to crawl out of the hole the first time. True, the people had run the moment they heard her voice, but that just meant they would probably be prepared the next time. And Sango was alone.

No.
Not until she had a better handle on what she was dealing with.
She needed to prepare for what came next.
It was time to put on her detective's hat and do the work.

When Sango arrived at her apartment, she pulled out her laptop and began searching. "Faceless man" mainly pulled up a lot of creepypasta bad photoshops and ghost stories; there was nothing about strange ringed black holes in the sky. She searched for whether there was some significance to 42nd and 2nd, and while it sat amongst the South American consulates and buildings, nothing stuck out.

No strange phenomena, no red flashes, nothing.

"At least they haven't struck… yet," Sango murmured to herself.

And at least that area was heavily trafficked and covered in security cameras. If they struck there, there would be videos of it.

Sango then typed "black hole ring of light New York" into Google, just in case. When the search result came back, Sango groaned. It was an article from Musashi World News: the "Aliens Ate My Baby" tabloid.

"Of course…" Sango grumbled, but when she saw the teaser that accompanied the article, she gasped.

The image was of a black hole in the sky, surrounded by a white ring. Just like the ring she saw over the school. "ARE DEMONS TRYING TO INFILTRATE NEW YORK CITY? Find out more below the cut!," the article read. Sango clicked, then opened the video. Some annoying tourist type was screaming, but Sango saw the neon white ring and the pitch black beyond it.

It was exactly the same as the school. Then, a small tuft of pink hair appeared and the video went blank.

"Holy shit," Sango murmured.

She would bet her house that that video was legit. Sango read the article… Strange phenomenon was seen around Times Square… Could it be that demons are trying to enter our realm through these portals?... The article claimed that the event had happened a few days ago. And... the article sounded legit and even researched.

Sango scoffed. Writers for Musashi World News were creative writers at best, and crackpots at worst. But… this… Kagome Higurashi seemed to have done a lot of legwork for a sham story. There was a little map of the witnesses to the event and where they were standing, triangulating it to 42nd St & 11th Ave.

"So… these are happening all around New York." Sango's eyes widened.

She could go back to Capt. Kaijinbō and show him this!
She could explain that share saw exactly the same thing!
And that she thought she knew the address of the next "portal!"

No.

The article would make it all worse. Musashi World News: even if Sango was certain that this was the one needle in a haystack true story in the tabloid, no one would believe her.

Sango sighed, then typed one more thing into google: the name Kagome Higurashi.

When she looked at the links and bios flooding her screen, her stomach dropped. Those results had made one thing become immensely clear: she needed to find Kagome Higurashi. And she needed to find her as soon as possible.