Chapter Text
This story is set in the world of Escape & Evade, a world in which the village was formed quite differently to cannon.
There are reasons for the differences from cannon in this story and many of them are contained in The World Building of Escape and Evade.
However, there are a few things that might be relevant so I’m going to put them here:
Characterisations differ significantly from cannon as the the timelines have diverged a lot over time.
Minato was never adopted into the Namikaze family and instead married into the Uzumaki clan.
They live in Konoha.
There are no Jinchūriki.
The Second and Third Shinobi World Wars never happened.
The Uchiha massacre never happened.
Zetsu is dead.
This AU is set in Japan.
The Meiji Restoration has occurred, and Japan is no longer isolated from the outside world.
The daimyo no longer hold power. Instead of replacing the daimyo with prefectures, the shinobi villages administer the elemental countries under the divine guidance of the Emperor. They hold political power and he provides legitimacy.
There is no centralised and expansionist Japanese military. The elemental countries are far more interested in competing internally for resources and importing western knowledge.
Naruto is born in 1895, but the First Sino-Japanese War never happens and never will happen.
Warning:
Fifteen year old Naruto and Sasuke make out in one of the later chapters, but there is no sex - hands mostly above the waist and lots of kissing.
This story is written episodically and, as such, is complete as it is written now.
However, I will add more to it later once I finish Rock the Revolution, the story of how Rock Lee becomes the star of Recon and crucial to Hinata’s radical revolution within the Hyūga.