Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo all walked into the local hairdressers in town, wearing their newly-acquired Dazzlings outfits. They all took their seats on a leather couch by the front door and waited for someone to attend to them.

The hairdressers was very well-kept, with black and white tiles adorning the floor. There was some hair underneath the chairs where other customers were having their hair cut, but it was hastily swept away by some of the members of staff. The chairs themselves were black with armrests for the patrons to lay their arms down if they so needed. There were also mirrors in front of both the workers and their clients, as well as many different barber's tools, spray bottle, gel tubs, and shavers with multiple different interchangeable clips.

"Do you think they'll even be able to get this right?" Applebloom raised her hand and gently brushed her hair back. "I mean, the Dazzlings had an awful lot of hair when they came to CHS, so I'm not really sure how they're gonna tackle this situation."

"Relax, Applebloom." Sweetie Belle coiled her arm around Applebloom's chest. "This place has great reviews on the internet. Rarity often comes here whenever her hair gets a bit frizzy. The staff here are all incredibly talented and'll definitely give us the Dazzlings' hairstyles if they can."

"Yeah. We even got the proper accessories to tie our hairs up like the Dazzlings do." Scootaloo opened her backpack and pulled out a spiked hairband, two hairclips with stars on them, and a small purple scrunchie. "We'll just show them what we want, give them the items, and then boom! Cutie Mark Dazzlings."

"Cutie Mark Dazzlings?" Applebloom glanced over at Scootaloo and tipped her head to the side. "That seems a bit too corny, don't ya think?"

"Kinda sounds like an awful lot to take in." Sweetie Belle shook her head. "Plus, we'd be too much on the nose for a group name."

"Look, I think we should just call ourselves the Dazzlings and nothing else." Applebloom gently pushed into both of her friends. "It's cosplay, after all, and we want to be as accurate to who we're trying to be if we're gonna win this thing."

"Applebloom does have a point there, Scootaloo." Sweetie Belle put her hand on Scootaloo's shoulders and helped her sit back down. "Accuracy is everything in the cosplay world; both for look and name. You don't want to cosplay as someone and pass it off as your own original character; it just doesn't feel right."

"I just don't see what's the problem of spicing up a bit." Scootaloo shrugged and watched a smartly-dressed man approach the three of them.

"Good afternoon, ladies." A man with glossy black hair greeted the Cutie Mark Crusaders. "Can I be of assistance today?"

"Yes, please, sir." Sweetie Belle stood up and showed him a picture of the Dazzlings. "Me and my friends are taking part in some contest at our school, and we're looking to have our hairs done up like the people we're dressing up as. Do you think you can make our hairs so that they look like this?"

"A custom haircut?" The staff member squinted his eyes and looked closer at the picture. "I'm sure that we can work something out on that. May I ask, who's getting which haircut?"

"I'm getting this one." Applebloom pointed to Adagio's hairstyle.

"This one's mine." Scootaloo showed the man Aria's haircut.

"And if I'm not mistaken, this leaves this little lady with this ponytail haircut, am I right?" asked the man as he zoomed in on Sonata Dusk's head.

"Yep. That's me." Sweetie Belle fluttered her eyelids gently.

"Three custom haircuts. That will come down to fifteen dollars." The man pulled out a notebook and wrote down on it with a pencil.

"Wow, that cheap?" Scootaloo tilted her head at the man and fished a five dollar note from her pocket. "I would've thought it would've been more, seeing as these are tough haircuts to make."

"Oh no, it's no trouble at all, you three." The man lead them over to three separate barber's chairs once Applebloom and Sweetie Belle gave him their share of the money. He sat them down, boosted the chairs up, and tied black cloaks around their bodies and a large, thin black collar around their necks. "Just wait patiently and I'll get my best barbers on the job."

"You sure that these guys can do this right, Sweetie Belle?" Applebloom glanced over at her friend.

"Trust me, Applebloom. Give these guys a picture and they'll be all over it." Sweetie Belle pulled out her phone and flipped through more pictures of her with different hairstyles. "They've never let me down before, and I highly doubt that they're gonna start today."

"How many times have you actually come here before, Sweetie Belle?" Scootaloo raised her eyebrows.

"Two or three times. Maybe four at most." Sweetie Belle shrugged. "But they've never failed me before, I know that for sure."

"How can you be sure they're that good if you've only come two or three times?" Applebloom crossed her arms underneath her cloak. "I'd say that you'd need to come at least six times before you can judge whether or not they're good at their job."

"Look, Applebloom, just trust me on this, alright?" Sweetie Belle put her phone away and tipped her arm. "I wouldn't bring you two to this place if I knew that it was bad."

"Alright, but I'm not expecting much from this." Applebloom sighed and tipped her head back against the chair, closing her eyes.

"You worry too much, Applebloom." Scootaloo crossed her legs and cracked a smile for the mirror. "These people are trained professionals. They wouldn't even be working here if they weren't good at their jobs."

The Cutie Mark Crusaders simply sat back and waited as three separate ladies walked out of a door by the end of the building and came up to them. The ladies greeted their customers and pulled out a pair of scissors and examined their separate photos as vividly as they could. The teenagers laid down their accessories and gave the instructions to use them to hold up the hairstyles.

The girls were relatively silent as they let the ladies get on with their work. The sounds of scissors cutting hair, music from the radio, and water flowing into the nearby sinks filled the air as the CMCs felt their hairs being played around with by their separate workers. With how delicately they were being worked on, Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo barely felt a thing as the proceedure went through. To them, the whole thing seemed therapeutic to them, and they simply closed their eyes and sighed peacefully as their old hairstyles soon disappeared and were beginning to look very close to that of the Dazzlings.

Eventually, when enough time had passed, the CMCs opened their eyes again and were met with a completely alien sight. Their hairstyles had been completely redone and were now identical to that of the Dazzlings—minus the colours in their hair. They felt their hair to see if it was stable with their hairpieces and smiled in approval afterwards.

"See? What did I tell you?" Sweetie Belle looked over at Applebloom and her new hairstyle. "They've never let me down."

"We strive for nothing but the best here at Canterlot Barbershop." Sweetie Belle's barber nodded as the three girls stood up and took their collars and cloaks off, letting the hair fall down onto the floor. "Your praise is welcomed and appreciated, girls."

"Looks like I'll definitely be coming back here after this." Scootaloo smirked and nodded, pumping her fist as she took one last look at her new hairstyle. "Thanks!"

"You're welcome, girls. Have a nice day now." Scootaloo's lady waved her and her friends off as they walked towards the door. "Good luck in winning that contest you girls were talking about!"

The Cutie Mark Crusaders walked out of the building and down the road, the light of the sunset elegantly draped around their chests and shoulders. Their new hairstyles glistened in the light and were on full display for all to see. They still had issues walking on the tips of their toes, but they were slowly managing to cope with it, walking straighter and with more balance and composure than before.

"Well, looks like we've got everything done, right, crusaders?" Sweetie Belle asked as the group made it to the end of the path.

"Yeah!" Scootaloo nodded. "Acting? Check. Costumes? Check." She gently lifted up her two ponytails. "Hairstyles? Check. We've got this in the bag."

"I'll be honest, I didn't think ya'll would be able to pull this off when you came up with this idea, girls." Applebloom wrapped her arms around her fellow crusaders. "But you've really gone and blown me out of the water. These are really impressive!"

"Told you there was nothing to worry about, Applebloom." Sweetie Belle folded her arms and nodded as she turned the corner with the other girls and approached a nearby park. "Whenever I do cosplay, I make sure that everything's perfect. Straight down to the hairstyles."

"But it's not exactly perfect, is it?" Scootaloo pointed to the hair. "The Dazzlings have their hairs different colours. There's no possible way that we could dye them like that in time. Heck, we don't even know how to dye by ourselves."

You're perfectly fine, Scootaloo. What you just said applies to us." Sweetie Belle looked at how accurate Scootaloo's hair was to Aria Blaze. "But you do have a point. Without the proper colours, we might lose some points in the judging section."

"Not to mention that if we ask our sisters to colour our hairs, not only are they gonna get suspicious on how close we look to the Dazzlings, but if they do go through with it and find out after, we'll be in more trouble than a log at a logging factory..." Applebloom nodded.

"Wait a minute..." Sweetie Belle let the last sentence sink deep into her mind. "We look like the Dazzlings from head to toe."

"And?" Scootaloo nodded, then gasped when she realised what Sweetie Belle was thinking about.

"WE LOOK EXACTLY LIKE THE DAZZLINGS!" The Cutie Mark Crusaders all cried out, alerting the attention of multiple different patrons in the nearby park.

"Oh man, oh man, oh man, we're so going to get busted!" Scootaloo ran on the spot, shaking her legs wildly. "If Rainbow Dash finds out, I'm gonna be ruined! She'll never like me after this!"

"Applejack's gonna ground me so hard, she won't even let me see ya'll! Not to mention the fact that we lied to Rarity and that I mentioned it was for anime!" Applebloom fell to her knees. "I'm doomed!"

"Girls, stop it!" Sweetie Belle slapped both Applebloom and Scootaloo's mouths with her hands, took in a deep breath, and exhaled loudly. "We're not in trouble yet. We just have to hide for now. No-one we know can see us, and no-one who doesn't know us can't know, alright?"

"But Sweetie Belle, we look just like—"

"I know we look like the Dazzlings, alright?!" She gritted her teeth and glared at Scootaloo before sighing and hanging her head. "Just stay low, hide from everyone, and when you get back to your houses, make sure that you hide your hair at all costs! Nobody must know!" She pulled her hands from her friends' mouths.

"We just have to get home without raising any suspicion and we're in the clear. Then, when we do get home, we just cover up our hair until the Fall Formal." Applebloom inhaled and exhaled deeply. "That can't be too hard, right?"

"Why do I get the feeling that this is going to be a disaster?" Scootaloo mumbled as the three girls began to walk through the park, their confidence shattered by the risk of them being caught by Applejack, Rarity, or Rainbow Dash.

What had started out as a perfect plan for the Cutie Mark Crusaders now had the chance to end in tragedy with how much they stuck out. If so much as one of their big sisters found out about their plan to cosplay as the Dazzlings, then it would all be over for them. With that grim thought lingering in their minds, they pressed on, unaware of what the future held for them.