8 o' clock sharp, school was in session and the apartment was quiet as the TV and radio were turned off, and Daisy and Nancy were seated at the table with their textbooks, Viola sat on the couch with hers and Chloe just sat at the end of the couch with her arms folded against her and stared straight ahead at the TV set. As they worked around the families' routine in the apartment, the A-Team got a first hand view of exactly what went on in this apartment every day. It turned out that along with the textbooks and the tests, the school correspondent had also sent a lesson plan that explained in what order the classes were done, and how much material was covered each day.

Math was the first subject of the day for all of the girls: Nancy was in 7th grade, Viola and Daisy were both in 6th, and watching them go through their lesson plan for the day, it became obvious that math was not the universal language, aggravation at math was. Fortunately theirs mothers seemed to know the material and were able to explain it to Nancy and Viola, Daisy was the only one who didn't seem to need any help, though that was likely because she could listen to the examples Jolene had given Viola since they both worked in the same grade on the same problems. Half an hour later it was onto English, which got no complaints from anybody, though at the same time nobody was particularly ecstatic about it: Viola was reading The Story of a Bad Boy by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Daisy read Theras and His Town by Caroline Dale Snedeker, and Nancy read Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, and all of them looked like they'd rather have their teeth pulled than be doing this.

While making the rounds through the apartment, Hannibal happened to come across the rest of their schoolbooks and he caught a glimpse at the other books for English: Around the World in 80 Days, The Prince and the Pauper, David Copperfield, The Swiss Family Robinson, Johnny Tremain, all very classical and therefore 'important' where educators were concerned, though he could understand for this generation that had been raised on high speed car chases and action packed shootouts and big explosions, not particularly exciting. At the bottom was another, The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare, this name wasn't familiar, he flipped open the front cover and caught the copyright date, this one was new.

All the same, he could understand the lack of enthusiasm, he'd been in their room; of course he would never flat out maliciously invade people's privacy, especially young children, but he'd given the room more of a onceover than Face and Murdock had. One thing that had gotten his attention was that bookcase, he'd noticed that the shelves were double layered and taken a look to see what was on the back. And behind all those old volumes of The Hardy Boys and The 3 Investigators, concealed between all the more innocent books were some of the more recent additions to the world of fiction. Some stuff didn't raise much of an eyebrow, books based on the TV series "Mod Squad" and a couple for "Miami Vice", but then he also came across some of the new publications for men's adventure stories. For grown men whose imaginations were far more lively than their own lives were and were a way to cope with their own mundane, routine, mediocre and execrable lives, it was hardly suitable reading material for 10 year old girls. No doubt far more mature than anything these girls ought to be reading, no matter how advanced they were in school, all the same, Hannibal had a sneaking suspicion that these were not now nor had they previously already been read by these kids, and he might not agree with it if they were, but he'd be damned if he was going to blow the whistle on them for reading books.

But, he huffed to himself, he supposed this warranted some merit to the belief that kids were growing up faster these days, all the time they seemed to be proving themselves capable of enduring more than people gave them credit for. Of course, the funny part was, those arguments were made in terms of what they watched on TV or in movies, nobody really questioned the contents of what books the children were reading. Not usually anyway, and certainly not this; now Hannibal was aware of some cases over the years where schools pulled questionable novels they didn't necessarily think were appropriate for the students to read, and sometimes those schools were helped to reach these decisions by overprotective parents, but Hannibal would bet his money on one thing for sure, no school in this country was going to be teaching this new series about The Sergeant in English lit, though Hannibal couldn't resist the amusement that occurred to him as he considered that possibility. If that would ever happen, there would be a real heyday on schools exercising censorship and removing books from the curriculum and the school libraries. But again, he had to remember, even if that did happen, it would be in a high school, not a junior high or even an elementary school, as some still considered 6th grade to be. The whole thing made Hannibal scratch his head as he really started to wonder what they'd gotten themselves involved in. Still, the fact remained, if that was your idea of good reading, you likely were not going to get much out of Wuthering Heights or of stories of people from pioneering days, colonial times or the Victorian era, not like this anyway.

By 10 o' clock, the girls went on break for half an hour, they closed their books, turned on the TV and huddled around it and kept the volume down low.

"Maybe it's just me," Hannibal said to Lorraine curiously as the adults gathered in the kitchen, "But didn't they used to call this recess and the kids went outside for it?"

"They used to," Lorraine told him, "But we had to switch to keeping them inside during school hours when people started nosing around."

"Like who?" Face asked.

"It started with truant officers," Lorraine explained.

"They still use those?" Murdock asked.

"People started coming by and inquiring why the girls weren't in school," Jolene told the A-Team, "We tried to explain it, but they weren't hearing it."

"Like most people in this world, they only saw what they wanted to," Lorraine added, "So now, the only time the girls can go out during school hours and not have to worry, is on the lunch hour, otherwise they have to wait until 3 o' clock to go out."

"I see," Hannibal nodded slowly.

"Don't they do anything around the apartment?" Face asked.

"Well," Jolene explained, "It's difficult, people just don't get it. When people would come to the building, come in to see someone in an apartment, you couldn't make much noise or they'd call the school, the truant officers, etc., so they couldn't play any music during school hours, the TV has to be down, they couldn't run around too much or it'd drawn all sorts of attention, they had to be quiet pretty much all day, otherwise somebody would turn us in."

"Hell of a way to live," Hannibal observed.

"Who're you telling?" Lorraine asked.

"Face," Hannibal turned to his Lieutenant, "I need you to get a list of all the tenants who used to live in this building, get these two to help you, find out which ones just left, which ones got arrested, and see if you can find out where they are now, and what happened to their kids."

"Right, Hannibal."

"You really think you're gonna be able to fix this?" Lorraine asked Hannibal.

"We'll either do it or die trying," Hannibal answered.

"Or try dying," Face added with a small hint of humor in his voice.

"And maybe then we'll try tie-dyeing," Murdock added with a barely contained giggling grin.

"Shut up you crazy fool," B.A. told the pilot.

By lunch the girls had also covered the daily chapters for art history, science, and a course titled 'Critical Thinking' that Face still didn't get the point of. At 1 o' clock sharp school was back in session and now for Viola and Daisy they had spelling words to work on while Nancy, even less enthusiastic than the others were, had a course on poetry that required reading through some of the more famous and less famous prose that came out of the 19th century and the briefly mentioned lives and times of the people who wrote them. Even though Hannibal had told the mothers that he and his men would stay out of their routine as much as possible, they had some mild disruption when Murdock called out spelling cues from the sideline, only to get some jabs and threats from B.A. to shut up and stay out of it.

Now, given that this way of schooling differed from traditional methods in that there was no teacher at the blackboard yapping till their lips fell off spoon-feeding the information to the kids, and instead they just read the required chapters for that lesson themselves, Hannibal had figured that history would be a relatively quiet period. He was wrong. Though that was his own fault. He'd been passing by the girls' table where they worked and couldn't help noticing something one of them had written on a piece of paper. He grabbed the sheet and read it,

"The teachers nag,

And look at you,

Like a dirty dish rag."

He looked down at Nancy since she'd been closest to it and commented, "That's charming. Is that for your poetry class?"

"I didn't write it, I just copied it," she remarked.

"Who did write it?" Hannibal inquired.

"Myrle Dansby," she answered.

"And who's Myrle Dansby?" Hannibal asked as he took out a fresh cigar and put it in his mouth.

"A 12 year old whose family migrated to California during the Dust Bowl and who got treated like garbage just like all the other 'Okie' children," Nancy told him. She picked her history book up from the table and held the covers as far apart as possible without ripping them and said, "See?"

Hannibal bent his head down and saw that the current chapter in her history book was covering the Dust Bowl and the transition from the Panhandle to the California orchards and squatter camps.

"I see," he replied as he straightened himself up again.

Nancy put her book back on the table, then looked up to Hannibal and asked him casually, "How old are you?"

The question took him by surprise and he about swallowed his cigar. He rolled his eyes to an imaginary 4th wall and told her nonchalantly, "Too old for you."

"Were you in school when this was happening?" Nancy asked him.

"Yes," he answered.

"With them?" Nancy pointed to the pictures in her book of the migrant children.

"No," Hannibal shook his head, "I went to school more towards Hollywood, but make no mistake, the kids I attended with didn't come from money, and everybody knew it."

"Still…" Nancy sneered up at him and remarked, "I wonder what you would've made of these kids if they'd gone to your school."

"A lot of people like to forget the way the migrants in this state were treated in the 30s and 40s," Hannibal stated, "And it's no wonder. Even though most of them were white, they were well informed nobody wanted them around: not in their shops, not at their movie houses, not where they were hiring, didn't want those kids in their schools with all the other kids, the hospitals denied them entrance and let migrant children die after they became disease ridden at the squatter camps in the middle of nowhere, because nobody wanted them bringing all their dirt and poverty and misfortune upon the 'white people' out here in their nice clean cities and towns."

B.A. grumbled under his breath and murmured, "That sounds familiar."

"And they didn't want Okie children attending school and therefore were made to sit in the back, on the floors, ignored except when they were ridiculed by the other kids and the teachers because they were poor and wore rags and overalls and went barefoot. Nobody wanted them in school with the normal kids because the teachers thought they were a bunch of dirty, dumb hicks from the farm too retarded to learn how to count or read or anything and therefore considered the lot of them a waste of time to bother with," Nancy added, "That sounds familiar too, it's a song we know very well by now." She looked up to Hannibal and added, "You see, we too are almost human, almost just like the real people out there."

"No wonder you excel in history," Hannibal noted cynically.

"But of course," Nancy responded with a touch of sarcasm, "Martyrdom is widely popular throughout all history, a subject I relate to very well. A subject we all relate to."

"We know the feeling," Hannibal replied lightly.

"Not like this you don't," Nancy told him.

"That's enough, Nancy," Lorraine stepped into the room, "Get back to the chapter, and stop being rude to our guests. It was your idea to bring them here after all."

"Well he doesn't," Nancy told her mother, "All they have to worry about is the government and the military, we're persecuted by everybody: police, social workers, the courts, the teachers, and our own neighbors."

"Enough," Lorraine firmly told her daughter, though once Nancy was bent over her history book again, Lorraine turned to Hannibal and said under her breath, "I'm afraid she's not wrong though. Anybody who doesn't homeschool their kids doesn't seem to get it, and for some reason that's a threat to them."

"People always fear the unknown," Face commented.

"More than that," Murdock chimed in, "They're afraid of anybody that runs around free."

"Thank you, MacGyver," Viola spoke up from her seat at the table.

"Don't you start too," Jolene said as she came out of the kitchen.

"He has a point," Hannibal told the women, "Your children have more freedom than the ones at the other schools, this method doesn't punch a time clock, it's not exact, you define your own scheduling and can change it at any time, and they still, it seems, accomplish the same amount of work, if not more, in the same amount of time or less than it takes all those other kids. And yes, that's going to be seen by some as a threat, but not so much as the fact that you have the freedom to do just that."

"We don't fit their formulae and therefore that makes us a threat," Jolene concluded, "Is that really what this is all about though? It seems like a lot of trouble to make over nothing."

"There was a lot of trouble to be made over simply being Jewish in Germany too once upon a time," Hannibal replied, "Their persecutors certainly found the time to bother then. I guess it lends credibility to that old saying. Idle hands are the devil's workshop."

3 o' clock in the afternoon and school was done for the day. Hannibal watched as the girls got up from the table, stacked all their books on top of each other, as well as their writing pads and notebooks, and let out a sigh of relief to be done for another day.

"Now that that's done with, maybe we can have some fun around here," Hannibal said, and turning to his captain he added, "Murdock, you know where the park is near here, right?"

"Sure, Colonel."

"Fine, take the girls down there and keep an eye on them, but don't encourage them," he added teasingly.

"Okay, Hannibal," Murdock said, and went to round up the girls.

"Hannibal, are you sure that's a good idea?" Face murmured to the colonel.

Hannibal turned to his lieutenant and asked, "What's the matter with it, Face?"

"Are you sure sending Murdock is the right idea?" Face asked.

"Murdock knows what he's doing. If he could survive his crash in 'Nam I'm sure he can handle 4 girls," Hannibal replied as the captain headed out the door with said four girls right ahead of him.

"But do you think it's a good idea sending him alone?" Face asked, "After all you're sending him incase there's trouble, and what if there is?"

"If there is it won't be much," Hannibal told him, "School's out now, there's nothing that anyone can legally or even under the guise of legally, do to those girls, they'd have to come here where we are to try and accomplish anything for their agenda, whatever it is."

"Whatever it is?" Face repeated slowly, "Then you don't think it is because they homeschool their kids?"

"Oh I have no doubt," Hannibal said, "That there are some people in the world that are fanatic enough to do just that. Like Murdock said, people fear whoever runs around free, and that's these people, they don't conform and do what everybody else does, so some people consider that a very real threat."

"Careful, Hannibal," B.A. told him, "You starting to sound paranoid."

"Only two apartments are left occupied in this whole complex," Hannibal pointed out and shook his head, "That is not paranoia." To both of his men he added, "These parents get arrested, their kids are taken away from them, where are they put? In foster care, where are they sent then? Right into the public schools their parents fought so hard to keep them out of. The judges who are handling these cases have very strong personal feelings of opposition against what these families are doing, and therefore would be only too happy to go along with whatever the police and the People have concocted for them. That's not a win-win situation for whoever's behind this conspiracy? What is?"

"I'm a bird, I'm a plane, I'm a choo-choo train, TOUCHDOWN!" Murdock whooped and hollered as he ran up the wrong end of the park slide, jumped over the side and grabbed hold of the gym rings on the swing set, and used the forward momentum of swinging on them to project himself over, and up, onto the monkey bars, where he held on by one hand and with the other scratched himself and writhed around howling like a monkey. He spun around hanging onto the bar and realized that his efforts to get a reaction out of the girls was having very little effect. The only one watching him was Viola; he spotted Nancy and Daisy seated on a couple of swings talking to themselves as they lightly pushed back and forth on them. And Chloe…Murdock looked around to see which way she'd gone and he saw Chloe standing on the top of a climbing tower that looked a lot taller than would be safe for kids to play on. She stood at the top looking at the ground below her, almost as if she was contemplating jumping off of it.

"Chloe!" Murdock hollered as he dropped down from the monkey bars and sprinted over to the tower, "Don't do it!"

Murdock grabbed onto the bars of the tower that pointed every which way with large gaps between them to climb through and started making his way up towards her. She watched him through the corner of an eye but otherwise didn't move; her feet remained firmly planted, not a single muscle moved in her entire body. Murdock reached and stretched and pushed up with momentum, and finally reached the top of the tower and realized they were even higher up than he'd realized.

"I made it, Ma, top of the world," he murmured under his breath.

Before he had a chance to think, or she had a chance to react, he grabbed Chloe and pulled her back from the edge, but was careful to make sure neither of them lost their footing and made the rough trip 17 feet down. Sure people survived longer falls than that, but it was certainly high enough to do some serious damage, especially if it was intentional; after all it was all rock and concrete down below, not the ideal means for making an emergency jump by any means.

Murdock was struggling to catch his breath as he slowly backed away from the edge, inch by inch, and just when he thought things were going to calm down, he had a sudden jabbing pain in his back and he yelped in response. He tried not to lose his grip on Chloe but she broke away from him, and Murdock was able to twist and turn from side to side as he was being assaulted to see that it was Nancy and Daisy beating him all up and down his back with their fists.

"Hey!" he yelled as he realized it wouldn't take much to send him right off the edge, "What gives?"

"What's the big idea of grabbing Chloe like that, huh?" Nancy demanded to know as she dug her doubled fists into his back again.

"Yeouch!" Murdock hollered, and sidestepped so he could grab them and keep them off of him, "Stop that will you?"

"Answer the question," Daisy told him.

Murdock turned to the older girl and saw she was standing off to the side of the building's top with her hands thrust into her pockets and she looked like she didn't have any idea what was going on. Realizing she wasn't going to help him explain his own position, Murdock explained, "I thought she was going to jump!"

The girls stopped trying to lunge at him and Nancy asked him, "Are you nuts?"

"That's what they've been saying about me for 10 years," Murdock answered, "What's going on?"

"You really think Chloe's dumb enough to jump?" Daisy asked, "You're crazier than we are."

"Well then," Murdock looked again to the teenaged girl and asked, "What was she doing on the edge?"

"She always does that," Nancy told him as they got loose from his grip, "She's not an idiot, she knows what she's doing, she knows how to climb up, down, backwards, even with her eyes closed. She'll never fall."

"Well I sure hope that's true," Murdock replied, "But that's still a dangerous thing to do."

"Which is why she does it because she's older," Daisy spoke up, "She has more experience at it."

Murdock's head was swimming, he addressed all the girls and told them, "Let's get back down to the ground so I can figure this out. High altitudes don't help with figuring."

One by one they all climbed down and were back on the park ground, which Murdock could've just fallen on his knees and kissed then and there. He could manage being thousands of feet up in any aircraft, no matter how questionable, how shaky, how iffy, face any danger, meet any threat, but an experience like this had just about been enough to put him right over the edge, mentally speaking.

Murdock's first order of business was with Chloe, without really thinking he marched over to the girl and started to ask her, "Does your mo," then he realized what he was saying and instead turned to the other girls and asked them, "Do your mothers know she does this?"

"No," Viola answered matter-of-factly, "Why would they?"

Well, it was a good point, Murdock was just guessing this wasn't ordinarily something kids did at home unless they tried doing it from the landing of the stairs. All the same, Murdock's legs felt like rubber and his face felt hot, and he was starting to get a good idea of what it was like to be a parent to teenaged children. Regardless, the fact remained he was not a parent and therefore was very limited in what he could do with these kids. So he decided not to do something he would regret, and instead exhaled long and slowly, before turning to the girls and saying to them, "While we're here, let's stick to a game that takes place on ground, okay?"

The girls looked to one another and each other questioningly.

"What's the matter?" Murdock asked, "Isn't there a game you usually play when you come out here?"

"We used to," Viola answered hesitantly.

"Ghostbusters," Nancy said more affirmatively as she glared up at him.

"But we can't play it now, we don't have enough players," Daisy added.

Murdock did a quick head count to see if he missed anything and he commented, "There're four of you here."

"That's not enough," Nancy said, "Not those Ghostbusters, the real ones, you know," she pointed to herself and said, "I'm Spencer."

"He's Tracy," Daisy added, pointing to an invisible character, then to herself, "I'm Kong."

Now Murdock got it. "You mean that old TV show?"

"Not so old," Nancy spoke up, "There's a new cartoon of it out."

"So to play that game," Viola explained, "We need three people to be Eddie, Jake and Tracy the Gorilla, then we also need somebody to be Prime Evil, and one of the girls was always Futura."

"And I always got stuck playing Belfry the Bat," Daisy added almost resentfully.

"How come?" Murdock inquired.

Daisy cleared her throat, plugged her ears, and let out a loud high pitched screeching yell that should've shattered glass if there was any around. By the time she finished, Murdock's whole body felt like a piano tuning fork vibrating inside and out.

"I see," he murmured as he forced his body to stop shaking limb by limb. Once his arms stopped feeling like Jell-o at his sides he said to them, "So maybe the game's changed a bit but the rules are the same, right?"

"I suppose so," Nancy replied.

"We never thought about it after the others were taken away," Viola explained.

"Okay," Murdock said, "I can understand that, but, until we get everything settled, life still goes on, right? So the game can still go on, and since there aren't as many players now, there'd be room to switch everyone around. So," he looked to Daisy and said, "Instead of being Belfry, you would be…"

"Eddie Spencer," she answered gleefully as she stepped up.

"Right, and you would be…" Murdock turned to Viola.

"That would make me Jake Kong," Viola pointed to Nancy and explained, "She's the only one mean enough left to be Prime Evil."

"And that would make Chloe Futura, so that gets everybody sorted out," Nancy said, "Except we still need somebody to play Tracy the Gorilla."

Murdock had the strangest feeling he'd already inadvertently walked into that one, so to humor the girls, he raised his hand and said in a deep, guttural voice, "Okey-dokey."