It’s a dismal day as it is, raining like the world’s crying tears of boredom, and Hyde can’t bring himself to disagree, sitting here in a dead-end bar nursing a pint of liquor. He’s gotten the day off - not much to be done loading a truck if the rain will ruin the cargo while it’s being loaded - and so he’s got a whole day to himself. Which is why he’s here, in costume, having himself some liquid courage while he thinks about what to do.

He’s been considering a hit on a bank, just for a classic job, but that’d be too finicky. The vault would take ages to get into even if he chose to muscle it open with his powers, and most of the shit in there is stuff he wouldn’t be able to get any profit off of. There’s been no armored cars going by for a while now, probably wary of him after that hit he did on a museum transport. At this point, he’d take just about anything to stave off the boredom.

Rocksy muscled her way into the bar, her body already muscled up in a craggy stone form to bulk out her purple and blue costume as she sat down next to the other cape, snorting derivatively at him. "Drowning the woes of being a fucking D-Lister?" She taunted, flagging over the barkeep to order some cheap swill.

He turns to look at the talking rock with a disinterested glare, scoffing in return. “Me, a D-Lister? At least I’ve gone out and done shit. Who the hell’re you, anyway? Never heard of you, newbie.”

He takes another sip of his liquor and proceeds to pretend that the newcomer isn’t there - she might look pretty strong, but if she feels the need to back it up with bluster, then it’s probably an act.

Rocksy snorted as she down her drink, slamming it down onto the bar top. "You're a fucking maniac who fucks shit up. I'm part of a group, a team, a CREED. We got a plan to make this shithole of a world a better place not just fucking around and stealing for yourself. You can fuck off and let me be.

She turned back to the bar, picking apart the shards of glass from the cup, collecting them in her hand, ready to collect them into her body for when, not if, the fight start out.

Hyde can’t help but let out a bark of laughter at her response. Honestly, he can’t help himself at this point. This no-name who he’s never heard of, claiming to be part of a group? This is blatant desperation he sees, obvious like a gaping wound, and he’s going to see how far he can stick his metaphorical fingers into it before he gets a reaction.

He turns on his stool to face stone-covered lady, leering at her. “I won’t refute that I’m by no means mentally sound. But if you feel the need to try and hide your weakness with bluster and boasting and not a shred of proof, then you’re nothing but a scared little animal trying its damndest to not get eaten by the actual predators.” He adjusts his positioning on his stool, a shit-eating grin spreading across his face.

“Me? I might just be starting out, sharpening my claws and all that, but at least I’ve done shit that people acknowledge. Like that hit on a museum transport I did not too long ago. You? I’ve not got a single clue as to who you’re supposed to be. And you still haven’t told me your name, so that’s not helpful.”

He keeps facing her, taking another swig from his bottle of whiskey. Silently daring her to try and start shit.

She snarled, growing her body to bulk up, into his face, adding class to her nails like claws. "I'm fucking Rocksy Stone, I'll kick your fucking ass six ways to sunday." She grabbed him by the collar, glaring at him. "So your gunna fucking sit down, shut up and apologise for pissing me off."

As his collar is grabbed, Hyde just continues to look at her, his grin growing feral as he starts morphing his biology in preparation for a fight. He cherry-picks a few different traits - musculature and partial skeletal structure from bears, to get that strength and bite force; a mix of scales and exoskeleton from reptiles and lobsters respectively, for extra reinforcement; and finally, morphing his teeth into that of a lion.

By the time he finally deigns to respond to Rocksy, a coat of dark gray scaly armor has begun to cover his body as it bulks up a bit, his teeth now a set of wicked leonine fangs made to rip and tear. “Why don’t you try and make me, rabbit. Or maybe mud pebble is more accurate.”

Pulling Hyde up, Rocksy made to slam him into the ground, her other arm sailing down and growing into a massive stone mallet with glass shards poking out of it as she became her full stone form of craggy rock.

He lets himself be slammed, the impact barely felt by him as the scales and chitin absorb most of the force and the rest is negligible due to his altered musculature. The mallet tipped with shards of glass is a more pressing concern, but not by much. He reaches out an arm and catches the mallet-arm with barely noticeable strain, grin growing even more feral as he gives a rumbling chuckle.

“Not bad,” he comments, getting back up while keeping the mallet from hitting him, looming over her form by at least an entire foot. “But then again, not good enough.” And with that, he uses his free hand to throw a punch into her center mass with all the bodily strength of a bear compressed into a large humanoid, aiming to send her at least crashing against the wall.

All the bar patrons have since started running and are mostly all out, the bartender long gone.

Strong as he was, Rocksy was a large golem of stone at this point, the punch only managing to send her skidding back, the wooden floor of the bar being torn up sending splinters flying everywhere.

As she recovered herself she grabbed the edge of the bar with her real hand and hurtled it at Hyde, charging in behind it as wooden spikes grew from her feet, punchering the floor bellow to give her grip.

The wood splinters against the chitin-scale armor he’s covered in, the impact barely felt due to the material’s fragility compared to him, and he manages to put some more muscle on to warrant being half a foot taller. But a lumbering brute made of stone gives even the strongest of creatures pause. Which means he needs to change tactics.

Hyde backs away in order to keep away from Rocksy a bit, giving him some time to turn some attention to his right arm, shifting it into a pincer. Thick, bulky, and armored to hell and back, like a lobster; barbed and spiked on the inside to help his grip, like a scorpion. Once it’s finished forming, he lashes out with it in an attempt to clamp it down on Rocksy’s left shoulder in a literal vice grip. And in the event he succeeds that grapple, he then lets loose with a wild haymaker straight into the Brute’s face.

The lobster claw snipes the charging golems shoulder with a crack, the stone spiderwebbing fractures from the crushing force as she strained against it, catching a haymaker to the face before trying to grab the arm that hit her.

If she managed to make contact she'd pull down sharply trying to piston leverage the joint to snap it, either way she'd kick back, wood and stone shattering as she bucked trying to pull herself and hyde head over heels.

Hyde’s arm is grabbed and yanked down, eliciting a crunch that is clearly more chitin than bone, though the villain grunts in pain as a response. Unable to move due to grappling Rocksy and having been grabbed, he cannot avoid being taken along for the ride and not-quite-suplexed into the ground.

It is about this point that Hyde decides to stop fucking around, and ceases being human-shaped.

He gradually but not-slowly shifts from an upright biped into a sprawling, flailing mess of octopus arms with suckers and plated with crab chitin, a rather heavily-armored lump of chitin at the epicenter of said arms and hiding all but a single, furious eye from view, revealing that the naturally-armored lump is most likely Hyde’s head. The full dozen sucker-and-chitin-covered arms flail about like clubbed whips, aiming to grapple the rocky Brute.