"Especially not when the Galra...basically had hostages."

"Well, if there was any kind of 'cooperate and we'll keep the prisoners safe' deal, I, uh. Don't think the Garrison took it. And, anyway, the Galra aren't the kind to bargain when they can just take what they want." 

Magini looks like she's considering something she doesn't want to be considering. 

"...Shiro, how much is at stake here, do you think? What happens, if the Galra get the blue lion?" 

"A powerful weapon, in the hands of a civilisation that already conquers and plunders alien worlds by the dozens? Nothing good." 

"Then - shouldn't some of us go looking for it now? While we have a lead that the Galra might not?" She looks around at the others, clearly unhappy about the idea. 

...Ami nods slowly.

(-Magini is avoiding making eye contact with her, and she understands why, now, and it hurts, but what could she possibly say?)

Shiro looks exhausted, but: "You might be right. I don't remember enough to say how close the Galra are to finding the blue lion; it could be anything from weeks to hours."

"Shiro, going out to those caves in the middle of the night sounds like something you'd have yelled at me for doing a couple years ago! And you have a concussion." He looks at Magini. "Weren't you saying he's supposed to rest or whatever?" 

She curls back up into a ball, but - letting other people make these decisions is how she got in this mess in this first place. 

"That's why I said some of us. Shiro should really stay here and rest, and one of us should probably here and look after him, but... I'm not going to get any sleep tonight anyways, and those caves are going to be just as dark on the inside in broad daylight, aren't they?" 

Do they not get it? Her voice rises. "Every hour we wait, we're risking letting an expansionist conquering empire get a weapon that they care about enough to send a warship on a yearslong search for it! Why doesn't that terrify you?" 

Keith opens his mouth, an indignant response on the tip of his tongue, but Shiro cuts in first.

"Magini...I appreciate that you want to help, but this isn't your responsibility. You're just kids—smart kids, sure, but this shouldn't be on your shoulders. I'm a Garrison officer; I swore an oath to defend planet Earth, which includes all of you. I'm not letting any of you put yourselves in danger while I stay behind. That's not an option."

"But - that doesn't - " but her words fail her, and so she finds herself looking at Ami, begging the older girl for help.

??? Magini wants her to - think, Ami, think...

(And then in a jolt, she remembers... a line from a show that Magini had shared with her, a few months ago, before they'd first intercepted the Galra signals. Magini said it had been a favorite of her and her friends'. It went something like...)  

"I think what Magini is trying to say is that - in this situation, none of our formal responsibilities matter? The only thing that can matter, with this much at stake, is doing what we can to keep the Blue Lion away from the Galra. Is that right?"

Magini's eyes widen in surprise, but she nods.

"Well, if stopping the Galra is urgent enough to justify sending a group of untrained teenagers to hoverbike around the Grand Canyon, in the dark, with no adult supervision, then surely it's urgent enough that I should disregard my concussion and go with you." 

It really doesn't seem like he's gonna budge on this. Takashi Shirogane is a figure of legend at the Garrison, but somehow the legends never covered "incredibly stubborn". 

Keith objects to Shiro's conclusion and maybe if he frowns hard enough he can find the flaw in the logic that led to it. 

Magini hesitates, then gives a short nod, clearly thinking hard.

"...Keith, can you turn off your bike's headlights and go a lot slower to compensate? If we're assuming they're monitoring the area from orbit, cover of dark only helps us if we're not emitting light, right?" 

...Shiro puts his head in his hands.

"Running without lights is an even worse idea. You might survive doing that on the flat, but not in the canyons. That's more than just dangerous, it's suicidal." 

"Then if Magini is right about the light making it easy for the Galra to spot us... we should just wait until morning, right?" 

She looks at the others, trying to gauge their reactions.

(Magini is looking something up on her phone, stressed but looking less miserable than she was earlier.)

"I'm not taking Shiro on my bike with no lights and I don't think we can stop him coming without knocking him out. And he already has a concussion." 

Shiro lets out a surprised chuckle at that.

He conspicuously doesn't contradict Keith about the difficulty of persuading him to stay behind. 

"Sunrise is a little after 7 am," Magini announces to the room, glancing up from her phone. 

She... feels like she should say something else, but the words aren't coming.

"Keith, what's the bedding situation like?" 

"—uh—" He looks a little thrown by the sudden change of topics.

"There's...the couch, and the loft bed is big enough for two people, and, uh...I could put some spare bedding on the floor?" 

"I don't mind sleeping on the floor," Shiro throws out, in a manner that suggests he expects someone to argue with him about it.