Neil moved through it.
He was not making it dramatic, not creating distance or turning the avoidance into a display, just shifting his weight and his angle by the minimum amount each incoming strike required, the adjustments arriving with the unhurried ease of someone navigating a space they had already mapped.
CLANG
One of the secondary arms caught his forearm, not the edge but the flat of it, and the force behind it was enough to confirm that Mantis was not operating at a level that could simply be disregarded.
That was fine.
That was the point.
From outside the shield the crowd was reading a different story.
