WARNING THIS FICTION IS RATED MATURE FOR IN-DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS OF OCCULT AND GORE!!! IF YOU HAVE A WEAK STOMACH LEAVE NOW! I AM SERIOUS!

Whoo, another fic. And this time I'm posting this mainly because IT'S FEBRUARY 29th! Whoo! And I won't get to post anything on this date again for another 4 years! Tch, I don't even know why I like this date so much XD I just do.

Anyways! This is my newest fic, Signed in Blood (or SIB for short) and will probably get the first chapters up and then ... well, for lack of a word, die. But, oh well, I guess.

I know that you won't be able to guess anything too wel from just this chapter, but if you think YOU know who the murderer is, let me know. I might just draw or write you something if you guess correctly. However, you won't be able to probably guess correctly until the story develops further.

Disclaimer: I don't own a lot of things.

In the simplest term you can imagine: He had vanished.

Just like that, Aburame Shino—Bug Boy, as his teammate, Inuzuka Kiba, so fondly called him—had vanished.

He went out for a short, small walk— said he'd be back in less than an hour.

But he didn't return for over 2 days and going. Shino was someone who liked nature, but even he wouldn't be gone that long… especially without telling someone about it— no, he was smarter than that. They, the shinobi of Konoha being labeled as such, started getting worried. The worry just grew when the letter "Y" appeared on the Hokage Monument in Konoha … in blood. And no matter how hard they tried to wash it off, it stayed, dried up on the stone.

"What did it mean?"

That was the question that no one knew how to answer.

So, to alert everyone and try to figure things out perhaps, all the ninjas were called to Konoha— no matter where they came from. No matter what village. No matter what country... They had to come.

They all met in the tournament arena—but only because it was the largest place they could all gather in with still some spare room to move around in. Faces of shinobi, new and old, were scattered about the large, hollow arena that had once held the chuunin exams a year or so ago. Almost none of the ninjas knew just why there were they, except for maybe a select few. Tsunade, the newest Hokage, the leader of Konoha, was up front, standing above them all on the railing. Obviously, she was going to start a speech soon— hopefully about why they were all there.

As Naruto glanced about, he saw the faces of the many friends he had made along the road— he even saw Gaara and his siblings, not too far from the rookie 9 and Lee's team. But the blonde boy couldn't help but frown when he saw that team 8 was lacking a member—Shino Aburame.

'Come to think of it…' The fox mused to himself, frowning and putting a finger to his lips thoughtfully, 'I haven't seen Shino around for days. Wonder where he is?'

But the thought was quickly dismissed as Naruto saw Hinata's unusually depressed, dull eyes, staring down at the ground. Though he knew Hinata to always be a quiet, shy type, her eyes were almost always saying she was smiling on the inside. But today, her eyes showed none of that bliss— they showed depression, anxiety, and loneliness. When she glanced up and caught Naruto's eyes, she frowned and her thin eyebrows curved upward in sadness.

Hinata looked at Naruto for a moment longer before frowning, and looking down, breaking the eye contact—a most unusual reaction for her. She normally would blush, smile, and look away. But today, as Naruto had pointed out to himself several times, was not a normal day. No, something was wrong.

And he knew that deep down… it was concerning Shino.

Naruto snapped out of his thoughts just in time to hear Tsunade start her speech. She spoke of the disappearance of Shino, the blood on the wall, and how the ANBU claimed it was just animal's—that someone was joking around. She had laughed and said it might have even been Shino, just joking about, and that there was absolutely no worry. The ninjas who knew him frowned in unsettlement—they knew Shino wasn't the "pranking" type. In all the worry and befuddlement, Naruto's (and a few others') opinion was blunt: She isn't taking this seriously!

The meeting in the arena hadn't lasted too long. But it went on long enough for the ninjas to realize one thing, despite what Tsunade had said— something bad was about to unfold… and an evil force, worse than that of a demon, was about to be unleashed…

And no one was to see it coming.

Quietly, and with the expertise of a jounin, the young, brunette, purple-eyed ninja jumped from roof to roof, quietly in the dead of the night. His breath was unusually labored in the November air as he picked up his pace, stopping every now and then at the sound of a snapping twig, or twitch in the leaves of the trees. He'd look around, paranoid someone was following him, before deciding it was safe and continuing on.

Hyuuga Neji quickly made his way up the stairs of the first Hokage's monument that was imbedded into the rock. The brunette closed his pale purple eyes and muttered "Byakugan!" as his eyes snapped open. Veins around his eyes bulged as his Kekkei Genkai went into play, and the brunette looked up at the monument. He jumped and glided his way up to the spot on the First Hokage's face, where the bloody letter "Y" was written. He stared at the letter for what seemed like forever before gently putting his hand on top of it.

It was definitely blood.

He scrunched his nose in disgust and pulled his hand back, wiping it idly on his shirt (which he would later regret, but at this very moment he did not seem to care). He stared again at the letter, his Byakugan taking in every aspect of it. It's shape, colour, size… Neji closed his eyes and a mental image of Aburame appeared in his head, next to the bloody letter. Picking apart the blood, molecule by molecule it seemed, was slow… but in the end…

The DNA didn't lie.

Neji's eyes snapped open in shock, his Byakugan fading. For a quick minute, Neji's emotion guard seemed to be down, as his hands trembled and his body shook.

"That blood…" Neji whispered, his eyes wide, "is… Shino's…"

Kakashi had found the corpse that morning, and pathetically enough, Aburame Shino's body was not far outside of the village at all. The white-haired jounin quickly looked away, though, at the sight of the boy's sliced-open throat and felt an unsettling feeling in his stomach at the sight.

It was like the boy's throat was grinning up at him…

The cut was deep enough and far enough through that the white knobs of the bones of his neck were shown through the tattered muscles. The brunette laid sprawled out, his mouth only slightly open, as if his death was quick and instantaneous. Though, Kakashi could see, that had not been the case. It seemed that Shino had died painfully and slowly, bleeding to death…

Shino's coat had been torn, ripped, and dirtied, suggesting a tussle, and blood was spattered everywhere in that small open area of trees. Though the blood had dried up long ago, the clearing still reeked of dried blood and decaying flesh. Kakashi forced himself to look over Shino, and it was then he noticed the boy's trademark sunglasses had been flung off and laid broken and useless next to his bloody hand. His eyes were closed, and if it hadn't been for the blood (and the fact his throat's skin was so thin and destroyed that Kakashi worried if he moved the body, its head would roll off like some bad horror movie scare), the jounin would have just thought he was just sleeping.

But he knew better, and Kakashi couldn't help a saddened sigh as he kneeled next to the dead shinobi, who used to have such a future ahead of him…

The jounin had carefully carried him to a grave sight (all the time, silently praying his head wouldn't loll and fall off) and buried the team 8 member and a small, black stone marking the young shinobi's resting place.

Naruto couldn't even get Hinata to stop crying. She kept whispering over and over again that it was "her fault" and that "she should've gone with him"… And even when she was in the arms of Naruto, her long time crush who never paid her a second, or even a first, thought, the boy whispering calming words, she continued to cry, almost as if he wasn't even there.

Little did she know, soon those tears were going to be for someone else other than her friend and teammate…

Nobody suspected anything would happen until later that night, when the silence of the night was broken by a scream that erupted from the Hyuuga household. Doors slammed and flung open as windows were unlocked and thrown upwards. People raced out of their houses, looking around in confusion, as the scream echoed off walls and bounced down streets.

Hinata was first one out of her room, followed by her younger sister, Hinabi, as they rushed to Neji's room. Down the halls, outside of the one connected home and into the other where Neji resided. The two sisters raced down his hallway, not caring if they woke anyone up (most were probably awake already, grumbling seeing as they had been woken up at precisely 3:00 in the morning), as the they stopped in front of the brunette's door.

"Neji…!" Hinata called, jouncing the knob of the door, desperately trying to get it to turn. Neji never locked his door. He may have had a slight paranoia in the past, but once he had hit 11 he seemed to lose it. "Neji… Open up!"

There was no reply. Hinata couldn't even hear a slight stir in the silence of the area. Not a finger lifted from inside her cousin's locked room.

"Please, Neji, open the door!"

All of Hinata's pleas fell on deaf ears. After her soft calling turned into frantic screams of terror, the house of the Hyuuga's was still strangely dead, until Hinata's father finally came out, demanding to know why Hinata and Hinabi were up so late— and screaming to boot. Her father narrowed his eyes and frowned, not in contempt but in worry, as Hinata quickly explained that she had heard her cousin scream, the elder Hyuuga took matters into his own hands.

He braced himself and motioned for Hinata and Hinabi to step away from the door. He turned to the side and ran at the door, ramming his stiff, broad shoulder blade into the fragile oak wood door. The door shattered inward and the elder stumbled forward, but quickly regained his balance, and brushed himself off.

But what they saw made their father cringe, Hinabi scream in terror, and Hinata burst into tears.

Neji was dead.

And there you go. Neji Hyyuga's dead, and so is Shino. Who do YOU think will be next? Better yet, who's the murderer?

R&R please.