A telephone rang.

Normally such an occurrence would not be cause for disconcertion. The bleary-eyed girl vaguely understood this as her surrounding slowly focused around her.

The noise repeated itself.

Rising to her feet, the girl was once again put off by the change in mass and center of gravity. Movement after an unexpected change was graceless at best and impossible at worst. As the bed coverings pooled around her feet, the girl took stock of her surroundings and slowly remembered where she was.

The noise repeated itself.

Glancing around bemusedly, the girl noted many trees, a chilly mist that hung close to the ground, and a mountain range stretching off into the distance. Also, she noted a panda sleeping near where she was standing.

The noise repeated itself.

Finally, the disconcertion was made understandable. Such civilized sounds should not be heard in such primal places. Curious, the girl made off towards what she thought was the source of the noise.

The panda slept on.

-------

About five hundred feet from the campsite the girl knelt and retrieved a cell phone from beneath a clump of wet leaves. Looking at it intently, the girl began to wonder at how it had come to be in such a remote location.

The noise repeated itself.

Puzzled, she flipped open the phone and placed it alongside her head.

"Hello?"

"Ranma? Ranma is that you?" A distraught female voice called to the red-head over the phone's speaker.

Ranma looked at the phone, bewildered. "Yeah, it's me. Who are you?"

"No time! Just don't be scared and listen to everything you're told within the next few minutes. Everything-- oh shit!"

The line went dead.

Ranma was vaguely worried for the person on the other end of the phone, but there was nothing she could do. While turning back towards the campsite, a puddle caught her eye. "Something's odd about that puddle," she thought. A moment later she was proven correct as the puddle bubbled, rippled, and glowed, finally ejecting a young girl with odd markings adorning her face. She looked around urgently. Eyes falling on the young martial artist, the strange girl exclaimed "Ranma! Quickly, there isn't time for you to waste. Get over here!"

Ranma felt an odd sort of sincerity and authority from the raven-haired child. Wonderingly, she didn't balk at being told what to do and instead dashed towards the puddle. "At least my curse can't activate, " she thought dimly as she linked fingers with the odd water-borne girl and drifted into the space between places.

The panda slept on.