• Published 17th Nov 2016
  • 3,598 Views, 230 Comments

Little Stars - Shadowmane PX-41



The CMCs are now the Dazzlings. Oh joy...

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Planning

"Alright then, it's decided." Scootaloo looked at her fellow crusaders in a quiet room. Both she and Sweetie Belle had their arms raised while Applebloom sat with her arms crossed, pouting at the two of them. "For this year's Fall Formal, the Cutie Mark Crusaders will dress up as the Dazzlings to win the crown!"

"I still think that this is the worst idea we've ever had!" Applebloom sulked and snapped her head away from her friends. "The Dazzlings made everyone at CHS hate each other with no end in sight. You can't just dress up as them without provoking boos and jeers from the audience." She threw her arms towards her friends. "It's like cosplaying as Adolf Hitler!"

"C'mon, Applebloom. It can't be that bad, right?" Scootaloo walked over to Applebloom and put her hand on her friend's shoulders. "You're just jumping to conclusions without even considering the good things about cosplaying as the Dazzlings."

"I don't see how you could possibly make those witches seem good." Applebloom brushed Scootaloo's hand off of her shoulders. "I wanted to hang Applejack in a gallows when we were under their spell back at the contest, I was that mad."

"How did you think I felt when Rarity and her band made it through back at the contest like that?" Sweetie Belle walked up to Applebloom. "Listen, Applebloom, sisters fight, but they'll always be together forever. Even if we were mind-controlled by the Dazzlings, we're still always going to be the little sisters."

"By about three years." Scootaloo raised her finger. "Heck, we're still just on our first year at Canterlot High, and our sisters have been there for much longer."

"The point is that we're going to lose or we may not even be allowed to be in the Fall Formal at all!" Applebloom shook her head. "Even if magic doesn't show up, I don't want to be hated by the entire school for dressing up."

"Applebloom, no-one is going to gang up on you because we're dressing up as the Dazzlings." Scootaloo held out her hand. "Sunset Shimmer went through the same thing after last year and look at how she's grown now."

"That's entirely different, though!" Applebloom whined. "Sunset Shimmer used to be a ruthless rebel who held the school in an iron fist. She deserved the backlash we gave her back then." She hung her head and sighed. "We're just three nobodies in the crowd of bigger, smarter, faster, and stronger CHS students. I don't want to be rememebred for dressing up as one of the Dazzlings and being attacked by the entire school for it..."

"The students at Canterlot High aren't stupid, Applebloom." Sweetie Belle gently patted Applebloom's back and picked her up. "Even if the Dazzlings left a bad impression on the entire school, we're not going to become pariahs for dressing up as them."

"If anything, we nearly became piranhas after the whole Anon-a-Miss incident." Scootaloo rubbed the back of her head.

"It's 'pariahs', Scootaloo, not piranhas." Sweetie Belle cocked a brow at her before returning to Applebloom. "But she does have a point. We've already done some pretty bad stuff here. I know that dressing up as the Dazzlings to win the Fall Formal can't possibly be any worse than that."

"You keep saying that, but I'm still not convinced." Applebloom brushed some of her hair back.

"Please, Applebloom? Just do it for us, OK?" Sweetie Belle's eyes got wider as she got closer to Applebloom. "If we get hated, then that's fine. At least we'll still be friends."

"Yeah. C'mon, Applebloom. Join us." Scootaloo knelt down before Applebloom and held her hand out. "Cutie Mark Crusaders stick together. We can't do this without you. So what do you say?"

Applebloom lightly recoiled at Scootaloo's gesture and looked both her and Sweetie Belle in the eyes. Despite how much she thought about the plan backfiring, she and her friends had done everything together. No matter how big or small the trouble they had gotten into in the past, she didn't think that it would be right to leave them over a bad idea. She bit her lips and extended her own arm out, fighting back the tears in her eyes.

"Consarn it, girls." Applebloom let out another sigh shook hands with Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo. "Looks like you've roped me in..."

"Great!" Scootaloo exclaimed and stood back up straight.

"But I'm not gonna be held responsible if this whole plan backfires on us." Applebloom shook her head. "If it all goes wrong, then you're gonna be the one to blame, Scootaloo."

"Alright. Now that we're all on board with the idea, we need to decide on the most important thing," Sweetie Belle said. "Who's going to cosplay as which Dazzling?"

"I think you should cosplay as the one with the ponytail, Sweetie Belle." Scootaloo pointed to the girl in one of phone's pictures. "She looks pretty cute."

"And you can be really cute sometimes." Applebloom nodded in agreement.

"They have names, you know." Sweetie Belle pointed out. "I managed to ask them back at the Battle of the Bands, and they said that their names were Adagio Dazzle, Aria Blaze, and the one you're referring to is Sonata Dusk."

"You do look like kind of a Sonata, Sweetie Belle." Applebloom gave her a pat on the back. "So, are you gonna dress up as her for the Fall Formal?"

"Sure." Sweetie Belle nodded. "Now we just have to decide on who you and Scootaloo are going to dress up as."

"I think I'll dress up as the golden-haired one." Applebloom tapped on Adagio's face on the phone. "She seems like the most level-headed out of the group."

"Guess that just leaves me with Aria Blaze." Scootaloo nodded and put the phone back in her pocket. "So, now that all of the roles have been filled, what else do we need to do, Sweetie Belle?"

"Well, I've been to a bunch of conventions with Rarity and my parents, so I've picked up a few cosplaying tips." Sweetie Belle walked over to her white and pink backpack and pulled out some pictures of cosplayers on stage, performing with their friends for a crowd. "I've already talked about how accuracy gets you more points, but on a stage, you have to quite literally be who you're trying to dress up as." She laid the pictures down on the table. "We might be able to look the part, but we'll need to act like the Dazzlings as well if we're gonna win the crown."

"But how do we do that?" Scootaloo lifted her arms and shrugged. "We barely even saw the Dazzlings around CHS. We were more focused on winning the Battle of the Bands instead of getting to know them better. What about you, Applebloom?" She turned to face her. "Do you know how we're supposed to act?"

"Well, I don't really know much about that," said Applebloom. "Applejack prefers me not to even think about the Dazzlings after what they did to us. She won't even let me know what songs they sang at the contest!"

Suddenly, Scootaloo gasped. "That's it!"

"What is it, Scootaloo?" Sweetie Belle jumped at Scootaloo's exclamation.

"If we don't know how to act like the Dazzlings, then we'll go to the only people in Canterlot High who do know." Scootaloo walked over towards the door. "The Rainbooms. Sunset Shimmer's friends."

"Scootaloo! Didn't we discuss earlier that—"

"More specifically, Pinkie Pie." Scootaloo nodded. "I know that Applejack and the others'll probably be disappointed, but with Pinkie Pie, there's very little that can make her sad or angry. I'm sure that she'll be able to tell us how the Dazzlings acted."

"Plus, it's for a cosplay. There's no way Pinkie Pie would ever say no to something like that." Sweetie Belle beamed and walked over to Scootaloo. "That's genius!"

"Thanks, Sweetie Belle." Scootaloo gave her a smile.

"But we're not done yet." Sweetie Belle raised her finger. "We still need to either find their old clothes or make new ones, have our hairs done so that they look like the Dazzlings, learn their songs, and then put it altogether for a practice run before we're ready for the Fall Formal." She pulled out her own phone and opened up an app that allowed her to create her own digital checklist. She rapidly typed down all of the points that she had listed and quickly turned her phone off again. "Done, done, and done."

"If we can't find the Dazzlings' clothes, we can always ask Rarity to make some replicas." Scootaloo nodded as she opened the door out to the corridor and went back to get her backpack. "As for the hairstyles, we should grab some accessories and go to the local salon to get our hairs done like them."

"Wow. You two really thought this one out, huh?" Applebloom's jaw lightly hung open as she watched Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle exchange their plans.

"Yep!" Scootaloo grinned. "This has to be perfect if we're in with a chance of being the Princess of the Fall Formal."

"But we're still missing the most important part of the puzzle; the act." Sweetie Belle slung her backpack over her back and walked towards the door with Applebloom and Scootaloo. "Sure, we have all of the other parts nailed, but without a convincing enough act, we can't possibly win the contest."

"They did some singing, so I can imagine that we'd have to spring for someone at Canterlot High to give us a hand with that." Applebloom tipped her hand. "Maybe Vinyl can provide that?"

"You can't trust Vinyl Scratch with the music, Applebloom." Sweetie Belle looked over at Applebloom. "Half of the time, you don't even know what she's going to do. Heck, I don't even know if she's said a whole word this semester!"

"And recently, she's been hanging out with that Crystal Prep girl." Scootaloo twisted her hand around her wrist. "Lemon /Tart was it?"

"Lemon Zest." Sweetie Belle pointed out. "But the point still stands. We're gonna need someone who's good at making music to provide us with the soundtrack for our performance on the night."

As Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo discussed their act on the night of the Fall Formal, they were slowly but surely becoming more confident in one another. Even Applebloom, who had thought that the whole idea would fall to pieces when they tried to execute it, was having doubts about her take on the situation. It was a very tightly-woven plan with very little error. The only thing that they hadn't accounted for was the audience's reaction to them when the time drew near to decide the winner.

Despite how cheerful everyone was for the planning stage of the process, Applebloom still had a nagging instinct in the back of her head that everything would go horribly wrong. She hid it away exceptionally, though, as she knew that the Crusaders would fail anyway if she wasn't on board with the idea. No matter what would happen, she wouldn't leave Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo for anything—even cosplaying as the Dazzlings.