I decided to read this one in its entirety because that was how it was entered in the Role Reversal Challenge. I was curious about how you would make this scenario work. However, you took me by surprise with it. I like the added mystery of the team trying to figure out who is the father and who that means the mother is. So, it makes it a funny story, but also one with a little bit of mystery and possibly feels down the road. Actually, this whole story threw out a lot of unexpected twists, which helps make the role reversal much more solid. Great work!

Best,
Zad

If you think the A-Team are such arseholes why do you keep writing about them?

Hi, Bella,

Congratulations for completing your story for the WA Role Reversal challenge.

Though I’ve only seen a repeat of one episode and the 2010 movie in recent years, I was a fan of the series during its original run so I was looking forward to reading this since the summary sounded humorous. The story lived up to that promise and the characters and most of the dialogue seemed to be right in character.

The team is trapped in the van with the baby and they’re having trouble with a lack of supplies for taking care of a baby, knowledge on how to go about doing it, and intel on the identity of the mother (or, it turns out, the father). To make matters worse, they don’t know what to do. My favorite example, out of many, was Hannibal taking off his gloves but then putting them back on before attempting the changing operation.

I loved that you were able to include references to their skills in creating what they needed out of practically nothing and their frequent non-fatally incapacitating enemies. Settling on a duffle bag to contain the possibly pending explosion from little Sarah’s diaper and using duct tape to secure the new one seemed to be right in line with their usual creativity.

The role-reversal part of the story was interesting, with the whole team switching from their usual action-adventure roles to become those of a reluctant child-care providers. The mystery of little Sarah’s mother and father and how they’ll take care of the little girl are good set-ups for the story’s continuation.

Possible SPaG:

((…daily, so [he?] trusted his own grip on the child.))

In summary, this was fun and was a great job. Thanks for sharing this cute story.

The fact that it took the A-Team an hour to change a babies diaper had me chortling with glee. Hilarious.

I don't know the story, or the characters only having watched seconds of the show back in the 80s or whenever it aired, but this was fun.

Ah, we're getting outside my drive-by knowledge of the A-Team here. Decker is a recurring antagonist la Chauvelin, I take it. And BA has a *mother*? :-D

"the psychiatric ward where Captain Murdock resided" - *what*? (Hasty Googling.)
Apparently I managed to miss that detail, back in the 80s; in my defence I have to say the character didn't come across as in any way crazy in the first chapter...

I like the way that Decker's mental categorisation of the baby is as 'infant civilian' ;-P
And he automatically assumes that it's male; not sure if that's an improvement on the protagonists referring to "it" in the first chapter!

Ouch, there was a bug in the baby's nappy? No wonder the poor little creature was screaming ;-p

Face is changing the baby in full protective clothing - but we know he loves her really :-D

And I'm assuming "Big Daddy" is a new codename for this vital operation? ;-)

"It ain't my kid either."
"So who is?" Murdock asked
- This is a bit confused: after "It ain't my kid", "Who is?" implies "so who is your kid then?" Presumably you meant either "So whose is she?" or "So just who is the father?"

(So I was right: it *isn't* any of them. I suspected as much!)

"I- I don't want you caught. I just thought if you had Sarah than when Rod found you, he'd have to listen to me." - so basically, she absolutely does want the team caught, in order that they can be caught with the baby ;-p
Frankly I really don't understand what she thought she was trying to achieve by this - simply getting Decker to so much as acknowledge his child's existence?

NB typo: "[then] when Rod found you"

"The A-Team are gonna chase and catch Decker" - and this is your role-reversal element, presumably (as opposed to your 'taking on an unexpected role' element in Ch1).

"Creating the best off road buggy he could, an electric rocker for the cradle and the most exquisite, musical mobile" - this is a sentence fragment of the type I remember you over-using in an early excerpt you posted on WA :-(
Fragmentary sentences (no subject, no main verb) can be very effective as a stylistic device, but unfortunately this one just looks as if you split the previous sentence at random by accident; there doesn't seem to be any particular reason for it...

"their skill set didn't cover calming hysterical woman" - typo for 'women', presumably

"especially ones who abandoned their baby" - I think this should probably be 'abandoned their babies'; if you're going to pluralise the women in order to generalise about them, then you need to pluralise the babies as well. E.g. "I hate men who leave their ties undone" even though they only wear one tie apiece :-)

Hah. I remember this chapter from back when it was first linked in the challenge thread; putting the A-Team in charge of an infant is certainly a fish-out-of-water scenario. And I love all the military imagery used about the baby (wailing siren, need to regroup, deadly explosives, supplies, manual), and the way that - despite the belated revelation that its name is Sarah - the child is clearly an "it" to all of them :-p
Also BA's reactions ("Don't wave that thing near me", "Can't communicate with that") and the way he sticks close to Murdock on the grounds that the latter will have picked the best possible anti-stench location... Murdock opening windows 'because it's good for the lungs' - and coincidentally to improve the smell :-D

Effectively understated humour: "the Sergeant would have jumped out. However, he was driving, which meant immediate evacuation was complicated". "Hannibal laid the baby down, then removed his black leather gloves. Eyeballing the little infant's bulging diaper, he thought better of it and put his gloves back on". (Plus leather gloves are in fact going to be much *harder* to clean afterwards :-P)

I can't help wondering just where they do get a clean nappy from (I was picturing them having to improvise by sacrificing articles of clothing!) Did the baby come with spares?

"these things don't come with a manual" - yes they do; Murdock was reading from it earlier :-D

Yes, BA Baracus is the one man who can be absolutely certain he's not the father :-p
But reading that note, I have a certain suspicion that the wording is going to turn out to be misleading, and that the A-Team are simply being asked to keep the baby safe until Sarah's *real* father turns up at the weekend...simply because that would be the classic comedy twist for this scenario!

Can't help reading "TAT-TAT" as gunfire :-D

A few issues that struck me:
"Hannibal raised his eyebrows questionly" - I think you meant "questioningly"?

"you know we only do that when we're non-fatally incapacitating our enemies, to stop them pursuing us": this sentence feels a bit clumsy, first of all because I had to re-read it to be certain what he meant - "non-fatally incapacitating enemies to stop them" feels like too many stacked negatives to be clear - and secondly because it's too much of a mouthful. I find it hard to imagine anyone actually coming out with that in the heat of the moment! (I'm not clear how opening the rear doors helps stop enemies pursuing them anyway, but I'm assuming the team drop items out of the back of the van...)
I'd suggest slimming it right down to "you know we only do that when we're trying to stop enemies pursuing us"; I don't think you need the complicated euphemistic verb about "non-fatally incapacitating", which is basically a diversion in the middle of the point Hannibal is trying to make.

"Face replaced Murdock, peering apologetically between the front seats" - I was a bit confused here, because previously Face had heard Murdock chip in "from the back", implying that Murodck was behind him: apparently they're actually *both* in the back of the van?

"she needed a few days peace" - "a few days' peace", i.e. a few days of peace

"it had more to do with keeping the newly fitted diaper on, than fatherly affection" - you don't need the comma in here (in fact in principle you shouldn't really ever have one in the middle of a "more to do with X than Y" expression, although it's possible to create specific examples where it would be correct).

"where he was reading, 'Your Baby and Child: From Birth to Age Five'" - I note that an earlier reviewer told you to insert this comma, and I can guess at why they thought you needed one here, but it's actually incorrect :-(
"Reading" isn't a speech tag: he wasn't pronouncing the words "Your Baby and Child" out loud. It's a simple factual statement, and you can't put a comma between a verb and the noun (or proper name/title) to which it applies*.
"He was reading a book"/"He was reading the Bible"/"He was reading 'Your Baby and Child'".

Epithets: I'm guessing that you were trying to make this chapter friendly to the fandom-blind, but suddenly talking about "the pilot" in a context where it has absolutely no relevance to the character's activities ("the pilot had moved away to dispose of the cigar") not only comes across as being a crude attempt to avoid repeating the character's name, but is actively confusing to the fandom-blind. If you don't know that Murdock *is* a pilot outside the context of this story, then far from giving information the phrase forces you to stop and puzzle out who can be the one meant :-(

Likewise, suddenly referring to BA as "the muscly black man behind the wheel" a considerable way into the scene feels weird: it'snot relevant to the action to highlight it at that point (Hannibal isn't ordering him to regroup because he's black), and if you weren't picturing the Sergeant from the start as Mr T, then it's a sudden mental jolt of revision. If the information is important (and I think in this case it is, because of the paternity implications) then I'd say it really needs to be introduced the *first* time we see BA, not after he has already been characterised for several paragraphs of action; the point at which it might be reasonable for someone to notice it.

Good examples of giving information in this way: the actual introduction of BA ("the Sergeant would have jumped out. However, he was driving"), which seamlessly establishes both his rank and that he is behind the wheel. Hannibal's introduction: it makes sense both for Face to think of him initially as "commanding officer" in the context of an emergency, and to refer to his history in that context.

"BA clenched his bejewelled fist" - it feels natural to bring BA's rings into it at the point where he attracts attention by waving his fist prominently ;-D
Conversely, calling him "the gold-clad man" immediately afterwards feels like an awkward epithet, because his clothing isn't relevant to the sentence in question (unlike Hannibal's gloves...)

The description of Hannibal and Face as blue-eyed and Murdock's brown hair works well because it's in the context of trying to identify the baby's physical traits: basically the principle behind using epithets is whether it's reasonable for the narration to focus on that particular element at that specific point. In this chapter, you've mostly got it right :-)

Overall I've been impressed by what I've seen of your fanfic on the forums; quite apart from the purely mechanical problems with dyslexia, you've really got a handle on characterisation and how to tell a story, and you manage to make your writing interesting in a way that a lot of teenagers with no practical issues totally fail to do. (In fact, there aren't that many mistakes left in this chapter, at least not after this long...) This story is entertaining, and I'm planning to read more chapters of it - not least because I want to know whether my guess about the baby's father is correct!

I've seen your story and how you were named by the spammers, so I thought I'd fight fire and misdirected rage with kindness and love.

Now bear with me as I know a little about the A Team but not much.

I found this story pretty funny overall, the concept of Macho Military Men with a baby is always adorable. I love the part in a previous chapter of "These things don't come with mannuals" and "Army says if it isn't in the maunal don't do it." I may have paraphrased but it was funny. And I loved the twist at the end, it was pretty cool and the very ending was pretty sweet. Overall, nice fic.

HI! I'm fandom-blind but I'm reviewing anyway.

I honestly don't know what I was expecting, but this was actually very good despite my not having half a clue about most of it. I can only assume that the characters are written true to form, but their interactions were smooth and the overall chapter flowed nicely.

I liked the humor, and I laughed out loud once or twice, especially at the way the baby was being held to try and alleviate the stink. It was also almost cute, which is probably saying a lot for these men, who seem very macho and tough.

I normally don't like reading when I'm fandom blind because I prefer context, but this was surprisingly enjoyable. I'm glad I read it.

Down with Critics United!

They are the cancer to our society.

The root of heresy needs to be burnt to crisp

with over thousand innocent souls without remorse or guilt thereafter.

No sacrifice is too great and no treachery too small.

Remember, we all are walking under the immortal shadow of Him.

His light shines so brightly, it will guide us to our foreseen destiny that is in our grasp.

A great moment we all should not pass.

Praise Be The Emperor of Mankind!

If you are on the same page, cp this message.

And Bella119 is dumb.

Hybrid of Fate is nothing. She needs mental help.

cathrl, do u want to be my daddy? I won't promise to be a good girl :D

CrystalRei should quit.

Now onto the actual review:
In fact, if they hadn't been doing 55 on the freeway, Face was convinced the Sergeant would have jumped out. However, he was driving, which meant immediate evacuation was complicated.

Tom hasn't watered the flowers yet. :-)

You've been hit by them too? I'm sorry to see that. Hopefully this review can help cheer you up after their antics.

The A-Team looking after a baby? Oh, no...

In all seriousness, this was funny to read. I'll give the next few chapters a read later on but I enjoyed this fic, the chemistry between the characters and them trying to figure out what to do with it was great, as was Hannibal's realization.

Overall, this was a great first chapter. Good luck with your next story!

Down with Critics United!

They are the cancer to our society.

The root of heresy needs to be burnt to crisp

with over thousand innocent souls without remorse or guilt thereafter.

No sacrifice is too great and no treachery too small.

Remember, we all are walking under the immortal shadow of Him.

His light shines so brightly, it will guide us to our foreseen destiny that is in our grasp.

A great moment we all should not pass.

Praise Be The Emperor of Mankind!

If you are on the same page, cp this message.

And Bella119 is dumb.

Hybrid of Fate is nothing. She needs mental help.

cathrl, do u want to be my daddy? I won't promise to be a good girl :D

CrystalRei should quit.

Now onto the actual review:
"We could open the rear doors," Face suggested hopefully.

God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. :-)

Down with Critics United!

They are the cancer to our society.

The root of heresy needs to be burnt to crisp

with over thousand innocent souls without remorse or guilt thereafter.

No sacrifice is too great and no treachery too small.

Remember, we all are walking under the immortal shadow of Him.

His light shines so brightly, it will guide us to our foreseen destiny that is in our grasp.

A great moment we all should not pass.

Praise Be The Emperor of Mankind!

If you are on the same page, cp this message.

And Bella119 is dumb.

Hybrid of Fate is nothing. She needs mental help.

cathrl, do u want to be my daddy? I won't promise to be a good girl :D

CrystalRei should quit.

Now onto the actual review:
"Sorry, Hannibal, we used them on the last mission. You know when we set the tear gas off in the potato factory. I haven't had a chance to get new filters." Face replaced Murdock, peering apologetically between the front seats. He passed his colonel a cigar. "See if this helps you get on the jazz, if nothing else the smoke can mask the smell."

Let's just hope she won't evaluate the grammar. O.o

Down with Critics United!

They are the cancer to our society.

The root of heresy needs to be burnt to crisp

with over thousand innocent souls without remorse or guilt thereafter.

No sacrifice is too great and no treachery too small.

Remember, we all are walking under the immortal shadow of Him.

His light shines so brightly, it will guide us to our foreseen destiny that is in our grasp.

A great moment we all should not pass.

Praise Be The Emperor of Mankind!

If you are on the same page, cp this message.

And Bella119 is dumb.

Hybrid of Fate is nothing. She needs mental help.

cathrl, do u want to be my daddy? I won't promise to be a good girl :D

CrystalRei should quit.

Now onto the actual review:
Hannibal and BA gratefully leapt on the idea and quickly wound down the windows.

Boredom is itself boring, hence it tends to feed on itself. xD

Down with Critics United!

They are the cancer to our society.

The root of heresy needs to be burnt to crisp

with over thousand innocent souls without remorse or guilt thereafter.

No sacrifice is too great and no treachery too small.

Remember, we all are walking under the immortal shadow of Him.

His light shines so brightly, it will guide us to our foreseen destiny that is in our grasp.

A great moment we all should not pass.

Praise Be The Emperor of Mankind!

If you are on the same page, cp this message.

And Bella119 is dumb.

Now onto the actual review:
"Leach, author of Murdock's new book on how to be a mom," Face clarified, as the pilot had moved away to dispose of the cigar.

. T-T

The A-Team is my favorite show! This story is so cute! Good job :)