Down Tilt and occasional Dive Kicks are probably the best options to get back to a safe distance, or in dive kicks place, the ground. Uppercut is fantastic if they just keep wailing on your shield, but becomes high risk if they start reading it and baiting it. F-tilt is amazing at stuffing approaches and keeping them on their backfoot, but it is NOT safe at all against characters with fast OoS options if you do it up close and they shield. You're either put in a rock paper scissors situation or just get punished no matter what. Pikachu will totally destroy your soul if you hit their shield up close with ftilt. In general though, it's best to mix up all of your available options so you don't become predictable.
