Maxwell’s experience with the Midnight Staple Remover was fresh in his mind when he started the trek back to his dorm room. He decided to stop by the signboards again to check and see if she was still there. When he found that he wasn’t he asked the nearest person walking by. “Excuse me.”

she said. Looking a little confused she stopped, looked at her watch and then said,

“Um . . . yeah, okay but did you see a half naked girl wearing a mask and carrying staple removers go by here?”

She thought about it for a moment. With that she bowed her head, smiled, and walked away. It was then that Maxwell realized she wearing a katana at her side. Maxwell stared blankly at where she had been and then turned to go back to his room.

As he traveled back to his room he began to notice that the brown squirrels were gathering around him. He stopped for a moment, puzzled by their actions. One of them approached him and said, “We heard that you were collaborating with the grey squirrels to get rid of the evil lady. Is this true Maxwell? Are you really trying to help our enemy only and not us too?”

“What? Of course not, I would never do that. I want to help all you squirrels. The grey squirrels just happened to be there to take me to their Shaman. He asked for my help and I agreed provided that he would give me a way to defeat her.” The squirrels still looked at Maxwell angrily. “If the Shaman can help me get rid of the Midnight Staple Remover, the staples won’t kill you anymore. That would help all squirrels, not just the grey squirrels.”

“That may be true, but if you take help from the grey squirrels and not the brown squirrels it’s like picking sides in our war.”

“What? Why? I would never pick sides. I love all you squirrels, the last thing I want to do is see you get hurt. Please, there must be some way I can prove this to you,” Maxwell was beginning to panic, he wanted all the squirrels to love him, not just he grey squirrels.

“All right, follow me,” the brown squirrel said, “I will take you to the elder.” Maxwell was still confused on the whole squirrel war thing. He couldn’t understand how the squirrels could hate each other just because their fur was a different color. He was equally fond of both the grey squirrels and the brown squirrels and loved to spend time with both of them. It hadn’t occurred to him that he had never had both typed of squirrels near him at the same time.

The brown squirrel took Maxwell to the location of the Elder, who was located as far away from the grey squirrel Shaman as you could possibly get and still be on campus. The Elder looked for the most part the same as the Shaman except his wrinkly fur was brown instead of grey.

“Ah, Maxwell, it is good to see you again. It is unfortunate that it had to be under such circumstances,” the Elder said. He had a raspy voice, for a squirrel.

“Elder I don’t understand this war. I have been friends with both you and the Shaman for a year now and neither one of you has ever mentioned anything about a war,” Maxwell said, still confused.

“There is a good reason for you not knowing about the war. It is because we did not tell you. Humans should not be involved with squirrel affairs.”

“But you’re getting me involved in it now.”

“This is different. This time the human is what is causing our problems. Therefore we are calling on a human for help. But we cannot allow you to side with the grey squirrels and let them keep their stronghold. Only if you help us too will we accept the fact that you are not choosing sides.”

“What if I kept protecting the squirrels, all the squirrels after the Midnight Staple Remover was gone? Would you believe me then that I’m not taking sides?”

The Elder thought about this for a moment. “Yes, I suppose that will work. But you must promise to protect all of us regardless of color. Come visit me before you see the grey squirrel Shaman and I will give you something to help you remove our human problem.”

“I will do as you ask Elder.” This was followed by a humble bow, much like that given to the Shaman, and then Maxwell left.

By the time Maxwell got back to his room it was 2:15 AM. After getting thoroughly thrashed and then running around between the Shaman and the Elder, Maxwell was tired. Crashing onto his bed he barely had time to notice that his roommate wasn’t there before he was out like a light.

The following morning Maxwell woke up from a terrible dream. The squirrels were dying from the staples and every time he picked one up to save it, it would die in his hands. It was horrifying. He looked at his clock; it said 7:45 AM and he had an 8:00 AM class in Grayson Hall on the far side of campus. Panicked, he quickly jumped out of bed, threw on a shirt, grabbed his backpack, and ran out the door. He almost ran over Deke in the hallway.

“Hey man, what’s your hurry?” Deke asked in a rather passive voice.

“I gotta get to class,” Maxwell said as he ran out the door. Actually he almost ran into the door. He was lucky that Pledge Boy was coming in from the other side. Well, almost lucky, he managed to miss the door, but he ran smack into Pledge Boy, did a 360, and promptly jumped down the first half a flight of stairs. Pledge Boy stood there stunned as Maxwell kept running to class.

2:50 PM came and Maxwell was out the door of his last class. He was on a mission, a mission to find a new identity. He had to think for a while about this. How many people have dual identities, and who are they? Then all of a sudden it hit him, of course, superheros! And what do superheros wear? SPANDEX!

Now that Maxwell knew what he was going to wear all he needed was to find the supplies. He set out on foot into the city of Eugene in search of his new identity. He started to think about the colors he would use. He liked green, and green was the color of the leaves in the trees where squirrels live. Then again there was a lot of green in Oregon, but oh well, green was a good color. So, green and what else? Green and red? No, too Christmasy. Green and blue? Nice, but not quite what he was looking for. Green and yellow? University of Oregon colors, school spirit. He like the U of O and the squirrels he was trying to save lived on campus. All right, green and yellow it was; now all he needed was the spandex.

Maxwell wandered around downtown for a while slowly finding what he needed. He managed to find everything he needed except boots. He had a good idea now of what his outfit was going to look like, he just needed to figure out where to get yellow boots. The typical yellow rain boots wouldn’t work, not very practical for fighting a staple removing fiend.

It was around 8:30 PM by the time Maxwell got back to his room. Stumbling through the door he threw the shopping bags onto his bed and sat down. “Dude, what’s in the bags?” his roommate George asked.

“Stuff . . . don’t worry about it,” Maxwell replied.

“Whatever,” George said turning back to his computer, quickly losing interest in Maxwell.

Midnight came and Maxwell fond himself outside, and costumeless, preparing for another battle with the Midnight Staple Remover. Without the boots Maxwell couldn’t’ assume his new identity so he would just have to fight her as himself.

The Midnight Staple Remover watched Maxwell as he approached her. “Back again Squirrelboy?”

“Don’t call me Squirrelboy, I’m a man not a boy,” Maxwell replied, fists clenched, “And I’m here to stop you from removing staples.”

“No way man, no one can stop me from removing staples. There are thousands of them all sticking out from the board and they aren’t holding up anything. If you can convince the people who put posters up here to remove their own damn staples when they tear down a poster, I’ll stop. But until then, deal with it.” The Midnight Staple Remover went back to obsessively removing staples from the board. Maxwell ran towards her and grabbed the arm holding the staple remover. This landed him a punch in the gut. He would have gotten a kick to the head too but this time he was waiting for it and managed to block her foot with his arms. He failed to account for the fact that there was Force behind her foot. The impact from her foot sent him flying into the message board.