If the canon timeline is still accurate, Akatsuki are due to start collecting bijū in earnest in 2 or 3 years, with Madara!Tobi declaring war not much later. We need to either hope this doesn't happen in our AU, derail Akatsuki (which is hard, because that's their actual goal and they're powerful), or just hide and hope for the allied nations to win.
... This actually kind of puts us on a timer. Maybe we should figure out if that's still going to happen, learning about Akatsuki fits with our "learn how to missing-nin" goal anyway.