Title: Of Feminism and Stilettos
Characters/Pairings: Minato/Kushina, but mostly just Kushina being a feminist nut.
Rating: K+. One teensy-weensy bad word.
Notes: Written in under an hour, when I just could not stand to draw another reaction mechanism again. Kushina reads Twilight, and she does not like what she sees. So, before anyone starts to harp on me, let me lay out a standard disclaimer: I do not like Twilight the Series--I don't like the writing, I don't like the characters, and I especially don't like nor do I agree with the themes and concepts the book espouses. A lot of what Kushina says here is a lot of what I think, and given that I am a feminist with rather egalitarian tendencies, and that's what Kushina tends to be in my personal cannon, this is what came out. I'm not even going to pretend that I'm unbiased here; I don't like Twilight or any of its spawn, and if you'd like to speak more about it, feel free to PM me. Of course, having said that, this is supposed to be humorous. Enjoy!

And as always, please remember to review!

Kushina spends some of her days since going on maternity leave in his office, comfortably lounged in an armchair tucked against a corner, reading. He likes the arrangement—she's considerably pretty (which makes just looking at her an enjoyable activity), considerably entertaining (which helps him when the piles of paper in his 'in' tray begin to overwhelm him), and, most important of all, she's not out on some treacherous mission. She's safe, the tiny life growing inside her is safe, and all of this just serves to keep him happily scratching away on paper.

He is also quite delighted that she had taken up reading, which was considerably less dangerous than some of the other hobbies she had tried to pick up: needlepoint had ended in blood, pottery had ended in tears, and soap-making, which had not only ended in blood and tears, but had also led to an emergency evacuation of the Hokage tower. In her defense, Kushina swore to the high heavens that the arts and crafts manual had said to boil the ethanol.

But he really should have known that so long as the person in question was Kushina--and especially a bored and pregnant and rather fidgety Kushina--she could and would wreak havoc, no matter how innocuous the materials she used.

Kushina stalks into his office, plops herself down on a chair opposite to him, and stares. Her brows are drawn in consternation over a pair of angry eyes as she searches his face.

And while the fact that she is visiting him is nice, he's a little disconcerted by the invasiveness of her gaze.

He lets thirty seconds pass in this manner, and then he's had enough.

"What is it?" he asks.

She blinks and shakes her head, tossing a book down on his desk. It sports a pair of hands holding a red apple on a black background. Oh, he recalls, it's one of those books. Hundreds of copies of it had been imported recently, and demand for them was such that book-sellers were ordering even more. He had glanced at the trade agreements, and figuring that books were generally a good thing, signed them and gone on to more pressing matters.

Kushina is shaking her head.

"I love you, Minato, but I'm afraid you don't dazzle me."

"…What?"

"Have you read those things?" she asks, but goes on before he has a chance to answer, "Poison, I tell you. I was hoping that the whole 'dazzle' bit was, you know, one of those fancy metaphors you're always going on about, but what the hell, the brat glitters in sunlight!"

"Kushina, love, is this one of those things I can blame on your uterus?" he asks slowly.

"No, damn it! I can't believe you authorized those things! You know who's been reading them?" She's worked herself into a fine froth by now, he thinks, cringing. Any chance to head her off is now long gone. "Kunoichi! Young, impressionable kunoichi who're learning that being absolutely helpless and tolerant of invasive, controlling behavior from a significant other is a good thing! Kunoichi! Tell me that this isn't debilitating and I will stick a kunai in you!" She picks herself up and whirls around. "Schedule me as soon as you can as a guest lecturer for the Academy! I've got get these girls to re-learn that there is more to life than descriptions of how perfect the manflesh of your lover is!"

She stalks out the door, muttering about sexual independence and the conspiracy of male hegemony in women's lives and how stilettos so could kill if stuck into bodies in the right places.

Minato, as usual, is left winded, confused and slightly dizzy.

Passersby would later recall the phrases "Seize your independence--you have sex when you want!" and "Boys who stalk are the ones you make doubly sure to stab!" and "When he asks if he dazzles you, what do you say?" followed by a resounding chorus of "Not on your life, you bastard!" floating out of the windows of the Academy. Needless to say, they were suitably alarmed.

Minato rubs the bridge of his nose with two fingers.

"Let me get this straight," he begins again. "When you walked into that classroom, you found a group of young, obedient ninja who would listen to their instructors when they asked them to do things, and when you left, they had morphed into a group of hard-nosed feminists who all but proclaimed that they were out for their male class-mates' nether regions and then trooped out to claim their independence from the social norms that, uh, 'tied them down to lives of mediocrity,' I believe were your words?"

She smiles brightly at him. "Yep! Isn't it great?"

The results, over all, are positive: the girls show renewed interest in training and there is a noticeable increase in girls who refuse to "dumb ourselves down, Sensei, because if those boys want stupid girls, they're just not worth it!", girls who decide that, perhaps, becoming a medic-nin isn't the only option, that, perhaps, climbing to jounin and beyond is not so unfeasible a task, that, perhaps, they, too might be as cool as Kushina-san one day.