[For a moment, the changeover is somewhat alarming to Ben, who takes longer to come out of the place in his head Manticore forced him to carve there; his eyes click over, heavy and sharp as a knife blade, when Alex turns and draws the X5 up short behind him. It's only a moment, but it's a long moment, and then Ben blinks and something in his shoulders relaxes.

There's no sense lying about it; he reaches up to touch one, carefully but not gingerly, to make sure there's no blood. Glancing to clear the area one more time, he switches modes again from nonverbal to verbal and does not shake his head.]

I'm fine. I should have anticipated that the process with which your power displaces energy and creates force would have some manner of percussive side effect, and the acoustics of our surroundings amplified and focused that particular aspect. It's physics, Alex, not anything you did.

What you did, in fact, was very good.