So like historically sometimes there would be this guy that would hold a shield for you. So after you swing your sword, this guy will run out in front of you and block the counter-attack. But in the game, you have superpowers, so this guy carrying your shield probably has superpowers too. Like maybe he's super fast and is invisible. So that would explain why it looks like your shield guy has no shield. The invisible guy is carrying the shield and making it invisible.
Ok so maybe that's kinda lame cause you could do that with your imagination. But maybe the shield guy's invisibility isn't perfect so part of him actually is visible. Like he has a gold tooth and his powers can't make gold invisible. So when you're looking at this character, you see this gold tooth fly out in front when the character is attacked. A gold tooth is probably something that a small development team can handle in terms of modeling and animation. Maybe some particle effects too.