Save Me
Prompt: Believe

"You're all going to die," Naraku announced, adjusting the beanie on his head with a satisfied smirk. Like the madman he was, he sat cross-legged on the floor of the train, eyeing all sixteen of his hostages with delight obvious in his red-brown eyes. "It's just a matter of when," he tacked on, twirling a tentacle over his knee. "For now, I'll let the outside world think you can be saved."

"Great," a passenger muttered, sighing deeply into his hands. `As if riding this metal contraption to work everyday isn't vexing enough.' It just had to get hijacked. Something told him Naraku's threats were mostly empty, and though he had no reason to believe this, his instincts were sharp and nothing about the attack scared him.

`When I get off of this thing—' and InuYasha Takahashi was sure that he would '—I'm filing the longest complaint ever to those MTA bastards.'

Satisfied that somewhere along the line, someone would pay for his ruined morning, InuYasha closed his eyes and mentally drowned out Naraku when the demon got up to prattle some more about his nefarious plans.

.

.

Minutes later, he was startled awake by a whimper. What he saw both boiled and stirred something in his blood: Naraku had one of the passengers by the throat. What struck InuYasha as he watched her struggle—her nails clawing to no avail at the tentacle wound tightly around her neck—was her eyes. They were wide and desperate, scared and pleading…

…and they were focused on him.

Glimmering with just a spark of hope, the woman's round baby blues flickered first above his head, then down to his face. They stayed there, asking for help with words the woman couldn't speak.

InuYasha found himself at a loss for what to do.

His motto, and a hard lesson he learned from life, was to keep his head down and stay out of everyone else's way. It was a policy that kept his cursed birth as a half-breed from getting him into trouble.

But now…?

Here was this woman—a complete stranger—begging him to save her, and everything about the way she looked at him screamed that she believed he could do it. Where everyone else had disregarded him, or made him feel weak and worthless, she made him feel like maybe…

…possibly…

He could be a hero.

InuYasha startled Naraku when he rose from his seat. Never breaking eye contact with the captured woman, the hanyou snarled and raised a clawed hand.

"Let her go."

Naraku smirked. Mockingly, he raised the woman high above his head, his hold around her throat tightening.

"And if I don't?"

`I can't believe I'm going to do this.'

InuYasha cracked his knuckles and let his aura flare. Eyes widening, Naraku dropped the girl, then laughed as only a madman could.

"A hanyou?"

Like him.

His smirk spread into something sinister.

"This just got interesting."