Shane, who had kept his senses almost fully linked with Rachel's, suddenly froze.
This time, he was genuinely stunned. The utterly unprecedented experience even made him forget to handle the complex magic in his hands, which was spiraling out of control as his attention wandered.
A memory filled with sincerity, tenderness, and the anticipation of a long-awaited reunion poured into Shane's mind through Starfire and Rachel's lips.
Because Starfire herself was so gentle by nature, the invading memory did not even trigger Shane's mental power defenses.
And so, the magic in Shane's hands exploded with a pop.
The magical explosion tore a massive hole through the middle of Titans Tower. It failed to hurt Shane, but it did send him flying out of the tower and onto the nearby landing pad.
He splatted against the ground like a piece of Indian flatbread.
The first-person memory sharing let Shane experience the entire sequence of being a princess of Tamaran, getting captured after the Gordanians invaded Tamaran, then being imprisoned and experimented on.
Then, during those experiments, "Shane" awakened a new superpower in her bloodline. She blasted her way out of Gordanian captivity with energy, seized a spaceship called the Starfire, and began her escape.
During her long voyage through space, she suddenly received a strange, hazy memory. In it, she had met a group of trustworthy companions on a planet called Earth. With everyone's help, she had finally recovered her courage and returned to space, determined to reclaim Tamaran.
It was that memory that had convinced Starfire to visit Earth.
Shane rolled into a sitting position. He raised a hand to touch his lips, unsure whether to laugh or cry.
"That scared the hell out of me. So Starfire's here."
He actually had quite a strong impression of this alien princess,