We watched. The team moved in a formation I recognized as close to what Misato drilled us on, but tighter, the spacing between members constant despite terrain variation. When the Crawlers hit from the trees, the response was immediate and minimal. No wasted movement. The formation adapted without communication that we could see, which meant it had been internalized past the level of conscious decision-making.
"They're not thinking about where to stand," Nishimura said. "They stopped thinking about it sometime around their fiftieth gate run. At that point, formation maintenance is as automatic as walking." He paused the footage. "You're in your first month. You're still thinking about it. That's fine. It's supposed to be where you are. The problem is confusing the current state with the permanent state."
