Crossing the street and moving down the sidewalk, Cozy glow made a hard left and trotted towards the first house she happened upon. The neighborhood was new and likely filled with possibilities to make bits, but the thought did little to comfort her - no, if anything, knowing she’d be subjected to yet more unfamiliar ponies caused a knot to form in her stomach.
As she wheeled a little red wagon behind herself, stopping just shy of the building’s threshold, she paused. Her past experiences had led her to believe there were two types of ponies who answered the door, though one sort was far less grating than the other. Steeling herself, putting on the biggest, broadest smile she could muster, she fluttered up and rang the doorbell.
Waiting patiently on the doorstep, hearing a quartet of hooves steadily clip-clopping nearer, she slowly exhaled. Sure enough, after a hoofful of seconds, the door swung open to reveal a middle aged, unicorn mare. She had no idea who the pony was, nor did she care who the pony was, but her beaming face never faltered. The resident, standing a full head and shoulders taller than herself, scanned the front yard, before eventually peering down at her diminutive visitor.
“Golly, I hope I’m not bothering you,” Cozy began, hitting the unicorn with the tried and true puppy dog eyes tactic, “but I was wondering if you’d like to buy some fillyscout cookies!”
The mare leapt forward, out of her home, and wrapped her arms around her. It was a surprise attack, one which took her woefully off guard, but she quickly composed herself. There weren’t many who were brazen or foolish enough to aggressively hug a complete stranger, and it was rarer still for somepony to accost an unknown filly, but Ponyville seemed to be rife with unnecessarily affectionate imbeciles - that being said, it made her job all too easy.
Gingerly pushing herself away, forcing herself to grin from ear to ear, she eventually broke clear of the mare’s clutches. “So I can mark you down for a -”
“Aren’t you the cutest little thing?” the unicorn interrupted, rudely pinching the filly’s cheeks.
Finding her face veritably smashed between the mare’s hooves, Cozy’s earlier question was answered - the resident was the most insufferable sort of potential customer. By and large, townsponies would either politely turn her offer of mass produced confections away, thwarting her attempt to huck product, or buy a few boxes from her. Paradoxically, the most unbearable ponies were often her best customers, leaving her in a tricky situation.
On one hoof, she wanted to sell as many of the cheap, poorly made cookies as possible; the quicker she sold her supply, the quicker she’d be done for the day - the quicker she was done for the day, the faster she could distract herself from the unfortunate turn her life had taken. It was a travesty, knowing a genius like herself was being wasted on such childish affairs, but therein lay one of the problems - she was a child. She was a filly, for all intents and purposes, and society insisted on treating her as such.
Due to her age, unlike her former teammates, she’d been relegated to mandatory service with the local fillyscout troop. The job, if it could be called such, was painfully simple - she sold cookies for the organization and, in turn, they paid for her living expenses. Within the first day of her indentured service, she’d outperformed all of her fellow members.
Between her adorable aesthetic and her ability to play the part of a sweet, innocent, fillyscout to a T, she was the perfect little salespony, but there was a catch - she absolutely hated everything about the setup. Not only did she have to routinely serve with other scouts, but she had to attend their meetings, wear their uniforms, and sell their revolting pastries - still, those weren’t nearly as bad as having to deal with the public. Since she’d begun her work, a day hadn’t passed when she wasn’t left unmolested by denizens of Ponyville.
Being fawned over by patronizing, simpleminded townsponies was common, far too common for her tastes, as was being accosted by the blithering imbeciles who seemed to infest Equestria like a plague. The blasted ponies had no sense of personal space, often hugging her, ruffling her mane, or even squeezing her cheeks, while she tried to huck the horrid, overly sweet, chalk-like cookies. Hate wasn’t strong enough to describe how she felt towards her fellow equines, especially because she usually had to deal with them after her job was finished.
To her surprise, Twilight had allowed her to have a small apartment for herself, possibly for fear that she may corrupt the malleable minds of those at an orphanage, so she did get a bit of respite. Though the troop didn’t afford her any sort of commissioned pay, they were charitable enough to give her a weekly stipend for her efforts. She made enough to keep her head above water, barely, and used what little extra she had to distract herself from her misery.
While she may have been young, she was an intellectual titan compared to her dimwitted kin - as such, she found typical entertainment boring. Theater and films did little to stimulate her, and she abhorred social gatherings, but she did have a few things to keep her occupied. Since her liberation, she’d taken to playing chess in the Ponyville park on her afternoons off. Much to the chagrin of the local players, her foes quickly discovered she wasn’t some rank, witless filly.
Crushing ponies and various creatures in games of strategy didn’t come close to executing plans of world conquest, but it was the best she could do. Effectively crippled by the infamy she’d garnered, with practically anypony and everypony on the continent knowing who she was, there was little she could do - heck, she didn’t even have any menacing abilities like Tirek or Chrysalis! As regrettable as her lack of preternatural powers was, she had something much, much more dangerous up her nonexistent sleeve.
She’d done the math, crunched the numbers several times, and systematically accounted for anything which could possibly upend her scheme. She’d been saving spare bits since her release, and won cash at a number of chess tournaments since then, bringing her closer to enacting her plan. If everything lined up properly, and she knew it would, she’d be able to crush the Equestrian economy and send the world into turmoil in less than a year.
She would have preferred a strategy which didn’t create a global crisis, but the Princesses had forced her hand. Through a number of careful investments, convincing her fellow fillyscouts to buy certain stocks, and possibly causing a barge to accidentally block a major waterway, she could thrust the world into a cataclysmic financial depression. And from the ashes, using every ounce of her intellect and charm, she would rise to become a businessmare supreme - after all, friendship may have been power, but money is a darn close second...