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 Courting Culture Confusion, but the main difference is that Izuna lives. The only other major change is that Naruto happens in Japan, solely because I didn’t know that wasn’t cannon when I wrote the first story. Everything else is part of the butterfly effect, and the world building necessary to make those things happen.
Frankly, you could start this story completely independently of any of the others, so this is what you need to know if you are:
Izuna lived and married Hikaku, Tōka, and Seto, an original character created by Writingfish (idraax) in their Tobirama aus: Problematic snippet collection.
Tobirama married Madara.
Madara never left the village and shared the Hokage position with Hashirama for almost ten years before Hashirama retired and left Madara to shoulder the Hokage mantle alone.
Everyone had kids.
Zetsu tried to kill Tobirama and convince Madara to activate the Rinnegan by manipulating various people in the Elemental Countries. Its plots were exposed. The First Shinobi World War was the armies of the Elemental Countries versus Zetsu, and Zetsu was killed. In the wake of that, the village was flooded with refugees and people trying to join it, and it expanded dramatically.
Over the course of the next two decades, the west increased pressure on Japan to abandon its policy of isolation. Seeing the gunboat diplomacy employed by the British against China, Japan grew increasingly divided on the topic. Combined with the long term economic problems and several natural disasters, the bakufu of the daimyo began to lose control of the Elemental Countries.
On July 8, 1853, US Navy Commodore Matthew C. Perry's four-ship squadron appeared in Edo Bay. He delivered letters from US President Fillmore and sailed away but warned that he would be back. He returned on February 11, 1854 and the Convention of Kanagawa was signed.
Knowing that the pressure was not going to let up, Madara handed the hat to Kagami who became Sandaime Hokage.
Consul General Townsend Harris arrives in July 1856 and attempts to open negotiations with the Emperor in order to gain access to Japan as a whole rather than the Elemental Countries individually.
That is where this story begins.
If you have been following this series, Engaging with the Enemy takes place in 1858, while this story actually predates it and begins in 1856.
Warnings:
There will be lots of cannon typical violence.
There will be frank discussions of politics, including some of the more fraught decisions made by all parties.
One of the characters becomes blind, and there is both a description of it and discussion surrounding it.
There will also be original characters.
All the founders had children and several of them are the central characters in this story.
If OCs are not for you, maybe this isn’t your kind of story.
Please, read with care for yourself and skip the story if any of this is not for you.
Finally, a note on characterisation for anyone who hasn’t read To Tempt a Target - all of the children of Izuna’s line call him chichi. Hikaku is their tou-chan, and Seto is tou-san. You can get a feel for their family dynamics from that.