Disclaimer: I own nothing used in this fanfic.

Author's note: I suck at writing adventure fics, yet I keep on wanting to write one involving a crossover between Naruto and The Legend of Zelda. And when I do try to write one, the first chapter or two gets ignored by the fanfiction community. I must be a glutton for punishment or something. Anyway, here's my latest attempt. This time, I'm sticking with the Narutoverse for the most part, the more major references won't occur until the middle of the story and onwards. I just find New Hyrule and Snow/Spring country too easy to connect to one another (Spring country's rather advanced technology, rails appearing out of nowhere in the movie, isolated large island, etc), but I will still minimize the Legend of Zelda overtones at first.

Also, events are a bit different than in canon, which will be explained shortly. Some things are still mostly the same however, such as personalities. Review, please?

Spring Country Rising

Arc One: The Fourth Shinobi World War

Chapter One: Target: Spring Country

The Fourth Shinobi World War has been raging for fifteen years, ever since Konoha, at the usurper Danzo's bidding, attacked Lightning Country upon its failed attempt to kidnap the Hyuuga Heiress. The continent divided itself into three factions: Konoha, Oto, Suna, and Ame; Kumo, Iwa, Kiri, and Taki; and a smattering of neutral, non-belligerent nations. One of the neutral nations, Spring Country was aligned with the Kumo faction until a counter coup resulted in the death of its ruthless usurper leader Doto eight years into the war and thus pulled out of the war. The two warring factions eventually fought themselves into a stalemate, and signed a temporary cease fire. Yet the cease fire meant nothing to Kumo, whose Kage, with greedy eyes, turned his attention to a target seemingly too tempting to leave alone...a former ally.

Kumogakure

As the sun finally began to rise over Kumogakure, a tall, dark skinned man walked up to its large central Kage Tower, the Tower itself dwarfed by the imposing mountains surrounding the village. The two Chunnin guards at the Tower doors tensed upon seeing the man approach, but for a somewhat different reason than one would expect in the midst of a conflict.

"Yo, I'm Killa Bee and I've got to see, mah bro A this fine lovely day, yeah!"

The guards winced slightly.

"Please, by all means, go on through!"

B grinned and gave a thumbs up as he entered the tower. The two guards sighed in relief.

"Thank Kami...if he rapped more often on the battlefield, we'd have won the war already," One of the guards quipped as his partner nodded in agreement.

Meanwhile, the Raikage A was locked in an epic battle against the mortal enemy of all leaders: Paperwork. The powerful Kage used every technique at his disposal to try and outwit his opponent, but no matter what he did, Paperwork not only survived but increased in number. A growled in annoyance as Paperwork seemed to taunt him. Suddenly, someone softly knocked on the door.

A smashed his fist on his desk, smashing it to pieces and scattering his vile enemy to the four corners of the office.

Breathing heavily, he answered the knock by shouting: "WHAT?!"

His assistant Mabui, a young dark skinned woman, peeked her head into the office cautiously.

"Um...Lord Hokage, B is here to see you."

A slowed his breathing; he had more important matters to attend to now.

"Fine, send him in."

Mabui nodded, raising an eyebrow at the state of his office, and then left the room. The door swung wide open as B enthusiastically entered.

"A...what happened here, this mess'll make the janitor lose his cheer, oh yeah!"

"Cut the crap and listen up B!"

B quickly entered his serious mode as the Raikage gave a warning glare.

"I am loathe to admit it, but despite our side having more Great Shinobi Villages and more Jinchuriki, we are losing this war."

B grimaced; he himself had been driven back by some of Orochimaru's experiments, despite having gone into tailed demon mode. A continued, turning to face the window and the view of Kumo it offered.

"We need more power, and I think I've found a way to get some."

A walked to a nearby cabinet and took out a map of the northern part of the elemental continent and the sea surrounding it. He placed it on a nearby wall and put his finger on a sizable island some distance northeast of Lightning Country.

"This is Snow Country, I'm sure you've heard of it. Since the coup that killed our ally Doto Kazahana, it has isolated itself from the rest of the continent and re-named itself Spring Country. Rumor and the little information our side's spies have managed to retrieve have suggested that that country has somehow managed to dramatically warm its climate via the use of some sort of machine."

"A machine? How? Even chakra couldn't do a thing like that." B asked.

"I don't know, but the information seems credible enough. If Spring could do that with a machine, imagine what else it could do with machines. It could have technology that, if we seized it, could let us destroy the Leaf and its allies! Or, it could soon enter the war and cause either side problems."

"So..." B said as he put his fingers on his chin in a thinking pose, "You're having me lead a pre-emptive strike!"

"Exactly B. As we speak, our allies are sending what troops they can here. When they arrive, I want you to lead them across the ocean, in ships of course, to invade and subjugate Spring. Capture their technology; do NOT let it be destroyed! Understood?"

"Yo. Gotcha. Those foos better write their wills, 'cause Killa Bee's gonna get some kills, yeah!"

"I SAID NO RAPPING B!"

"Aww...party pooper."

Over the next three days, thousands of shinobi from the Kumo alliance converged at Lightning Country's main port city, waiting for the order to board the ships Kiri was providing and launch the invasion. Once B arrived, he gave the order and the army of 10,000 shinobi began to board. As they did so, one of the Taki ninja was playing with her headset, fascinated with the static and crackling noises it was making, when suddenly a series of beeps came though. She dropped the headset in surprise, but the noise stopped a couple of seconds afterward. She blinked her eyes and scratched her head full of green hair.

"What was that?" she muttered to herself, confused, as she glanced at the crowd of shinobi, and then at the sky.

"Fuu, stop playing around and start moving already, geez..." A male Taki ninja next to her complained.

Shrugging her shoulders, she picked up her headset and started moving towards the boats. She was more interested in the invasion, and the new place she would see.

Five thousand feet above the assembled shinobi army, the source of the mysterious signal hovered in mid-air. It was a large gray colored dirigible airship, camouflaged via a genjustu seal which made it look like blue sky to those below. The airship was about 150 feet in length with a crew of fifteen people. A flag fluttered on top of the airship; its background was light green, with five gray rectangles arranged in a half circle covering the top half of a dark blue circle. It was from Spring Country, and it was but one of a dozen such airships hovering above the shinobi continent, listening and watching with sophisticated equipment, and then relaying their findings via a variable frequency code back to Spring Country, where it was processed and disseminated to its government. The message Fuu heard was a warning about their imminent attack. Things would go very wrong indeed for the invasion force when it arrived.

P.S. Author's Note: I wanted to make the Spring Country flag this story's cover image, but apparently this website's image uploader hates Microsoft Paint and ends up slicing the picture in half no matter what I do otherwise. So I guess we're stuck with my default author symbol.