After a week of banging away in the open space at home after school, Anna finally forged a set of cosplay equipment that looked almost identical to Wonder Woman’s appearance in the movies.
Of course, aside from the appearance and durability, these things shared no similarities with Wonder Woman’s Greek divine artifacts.
Putting aside the lack of various special effects, there was even a slight difference in sturdiness.
But Anna was very satisfied.
Although this equipment couldn’t be used to fly through the heavens or slice through aircraft carriers, using it to block bullets, RPGs, and grenades in daily life was easy and pleasant.
Striking a few poses in front of the mirror, holding the long sword and shield, wearing the red-and-yellow Eagle Armor with the WW logo, the small battle skirt beneath it, Vibranium bracers, Vibranium boots, and the lasso coiled at her waist—woven from fine Vibranium wire and carbon-nanofiber thread she got from her mom—the little kid Anna looked left and right in the mirror with great satisfaction.
She let her pre-dyed brownish-black hair fall over her shoulders, highlighting the ‘Tiara’ on her forehead…
Anna strutted happily in front of Lorraine, thinking that if she added a yellow LED strip to her ‘Lasso of Truth’…
then she could seamlessly go next door and pretend to be Wonder Woman.
Well, a six-year-old version.
…
Now, Mom Lorraine was watching her be vain in front of the mirror because they were heading to Stark Industries in California today to talk business.
So, she was taking the kid, who had just finished her equipment, along with her.
After the kid had been vain for a good while and Mom Julia had packed the luggage, the family of three and their two dogs got into Lorraine’s modified 6-wheel Ford F-150 pickup Police truck and roared off toward California.
Because they had to conduct normal business transactions with ordinary people and maintain a normal travel speed, they couldn’t just fly through the sky this time.
They had to drive to California at a normal pace.
Mom Lorraine’s Ford F-150 was the VelociRaptor 6X6 model released by the famous American tuning shop Hennessey.
Based on the Ford F-150, it had a starting price of around $350,000 and was limited to 50 units worldwide.
It looked several times more imposing and aggressive than the standard 4-wheel production F-150; it looked like a Transformer, minus the ability to transform. You are reading on NovelPing, the official source.
When Mom first drove it home, Anna had practically pounced on it and didn’t want to come down.
And after Mom brought the truck home, she continued to modify it in the truck bed, installing a retractable M autocannon.
After seeing its power just once at the firing range…
Anna wanted to lick the truck every single day.
Mom Lorraine had spent nearly $500,000 on this truck, making it more expensive than the two-story Police station in town; the cost was equivalent to five years of the town’s Police budget.
Furthermore, the cost of the 20mm autocannon shells fired in a single minute of full-auto would have taken the old Anna a year of farm work to earn.
Of course, a normal Police station couldn’t possibly have such a thing.
Those constantly watching town councilors and taxpayers wouldn’t allow Police Chief Lorraine to waste so much public money.
However, no matter how many issues there were, they could not stand up to the fact that Lorraine, a huge tycoon of a mother, donated twice the car’s price to the town just for this vehicle, right?
So, the car sailed through all sorts of inspections without a hitch, eventually becoming the most expensive asset in the Police station, and everyone turned a blind eye to the Director’s various instances of ‘using official vehicles for personal business.’
Lorraine’s investments in the small town Police station did not stop there; she was a vehicle and firearms enthusiast, after all.
There were the custom sidearms for two officers worth about $4,000 each, twenty sets of US military special operations gear worth over a hundred thousand dollars stored in the station, and six Gatling gun weapon stations hidden in the outer walls.
These investments alone were enough to cover the town’s normal fiscal budget for 50 years.
Furthermore, would you believe that the Director, who was constantly subsidizing the Police station with her own money, even had a satellite reception and control system in the station’s command room…
Anna, that little brat, earned tens of thousands of dollars a year working for her mother, but she still ended up looking like a pauper.
It was self-evident who she learned this extravagant spending habit from.
Because after this past week, Anna’s grand short-selling scheme was a complete success.
On the very day Tony dropped the bombshell at the press conference, Stark stock had already plummeted by over 30%.
Coupled with the fermentation over the following days, and with Stark Industries slowly shedding its weapons business under the stewardship of Tony’s Uncle Obadiah Stane.
Moreover, after speculators saw that Tony had not been kicked off the board by Obadiah Stane—that competent CEO—in league with other shareholders, Wall Street realized they were serious about never dealing in weapons again, causing Stark Industries stock to take an even deeper dive.
By today, compared to before Tony returned, Stark Industries stock had depreciated by as much as 50%.
A week ago, Anna had asked Old Larry to help her short Stark stock with 20x leverage.
Over the course of the week, her assets had increased tenfold, so before the market closed yesterday, Anna withdrew all her funds.
She certainly knew there was still room for Stark stock to fall, as in her memory it eventually dropped by as much as 56%, but that would not happen for another month or two.
Moreover, Stark Industries stock was currently hovering around the 50% threshold, with a bunch of big sharks watching the stock to fleece it, and organizations like S.H.I.E.L.D.
and HYDRA were all stirring up trouble…
So, in every sense, Anna, being small and weak, quietly withdrew from the stock market after raking in a huge profit.
After paying Old Larry his 10% commission and setting aside the ten million for the heart-shaped herb money to be repaid to Princess Shuri, Anna, the newly minted little tycoon, took her 90 million or so in pocket money and ran off to California with her two mothers for a massive shopping spree.
Their business this time had a little to do with Tony, but they were not here to buy his stock.
Right now, Tony and Obadiah Stane, those two guys with ‘insider information,’ were confidently and vigorously buying back stock at the low price, so they would not be selling at all.
Besides, Nick Fury was also secretly buying up stock with S.H.I.E.L.D.
funds.
So, a small fry like Anna had absolutely no room to intervene.
However, because Stark had decided to stop dealing in the weapons business, for the past week, besides bickering with the board and buying back stock, Obadiah Stane had been busy dealing with the mountain of surplus weapons and production lines at Stark Industries.
Anna and her family of three had come to California now to negotiate the business of those discounted weapons and production lines with Obadiah Stane.