Licensed Villains

A Job (Pt. 2)

Alloy: Is he really helping or is he robbing citizens?

Hero name: Alloy
Quirk: Metal contortion

Most have heard of Alloy, the metal hero. He's most known for his tendency to repair all damages he does, unlike majority of heroes who the best they offer up is some money to help with the costs. His company, Alloy Construction, has flourished in the past several years, being called in to help build structures that aren't from Alloy's hero damages too. The company is a single man business that's often acknowledged as honorable and truly heroic, but what if that wasn't the truth?

If one were to ask anyone what they thought of Alloy, they'd likely get a response that stated they think he is a hero. A hero he is, but only because that happens to be the title of his job. The very same job he uses to make money from. It's no secret that his company is a second income but what would surprise most is that said company makes more a year than Alloy's hero work has ever made by almost triple.

Heroes are generally well payed, especially heroes sitting in the top hundred like Alloy. If Alloy is making more money than the average business owner from his main job than how is his job as a builder giving him triple the salary?

The truth is Alloy construction has been scamming its customers. Alloy's prices are nearly double normal costs for reconstruction, wrongly so. One could blame those who are paying for the construction, accusing them of walking into the high prices blind sighted and now they're paying the price**. It would be a fair point but given the chance, most people wouldn't reject a hero. Besides, the prices seem reasonable at first glance. There'd of course be extra cost for the fact that Alloy is a hero, branding comes at a price. No doubt time is a factor as well. He can rebuilt in half the time most companies can, a plus side of his quirk. Surely with the shortened time the clients would save money from not having to put any activities going on in the structure off for as long during reconstruction.

That's the mistake people make. Heroes are depicted as idols, why would someone bother to fact check what a hero says? Heroes are supposed to be trust worthy, why would they scam anyone other than a villain?  The problem is not all heroes live up to their title and Alloy is one of those heroes.

His prices are assuredly not reasonable. Rebuilding costs him nothing but the price of materials and his own labor. By calculating the costs of his most recent builds, he is asking clients to pay for roughly thirty people working full time hours for three days at double minimum wage. For the work he gets done in four days it seems acceptable but remembering that he is a one man company that spends most of his time doing hero work and only an hour or two a day constructing rebuilds, it doesn't seem as fair.

Not only that but he is falsely pricing his materials. People pay full price for two thirds of the normal amount of materials. Alloys quirk allows him to manipulate metal which is helpful for construction. He can use less metals than normal, bending them in ways that support the structure the same way as the normal amount of materials. Or at least they would support structures if he used the proper amount of metal. 34% of the buildings Alloy has made have collapsed. The cause? Failure in structure stability likely do to lack of proper materials. What does Alloy do about this? He rebuilds the first failures again using the same scam just with more caution.

This in itself is an injustice but the fact that majority of these said materials he uses are stolen is what makes it more inexcusable. These pipes and beams are not taken from junkyards which could be considered beneficial to the environment with their reuse but instead from other buildings. It's no secret that Alloy uses metal from surrounding structures during his hero fights but it's always thought that he returns the materials he uses. For the most part, he does but some of it is escorted to his nearest job site and used in the next reconstruction.