The top deck is clear. I make sure of it with the door jammed below. It is a perfect night: cool and brisk No one would believe that the Penny Plunderer was capable of this. Thwarting Batman and now about to do more unspeakable deeds with no one to stop me. I drag my bags of pennies to the top of the observation deck of the highest building in Gotham and I look out into the city. It stares right back at me.

I look at my watch. 9:23 AM. It should be rush hour soon. I sit down and open up my bags. I stare at the pennies in front of me and they stare back into my life. Each one of no value but together they add up.

9:33AM, I take the pennies out and toss them off the side.

"PENNIES! PENNIES FROM HEAVEN!" I shout.

I see them fall…down…down…all the way to the street. I hear the screams in the distance. I toss more pennies over each side of the building. I still cannot hear the screams very clearly. I toss more and more till my sacks deplete of coins. My orchestra of agony goes on below as sirens scream louder and louder. At this point I realize I have nowhere to go. So, I sit, and contemplate what brought me here today.

I was a kid once. Just like the rest of the rogues out there. I had dreams and aspirations, sure, but they never amounted to anything. My parents saw no value in being a musician. They only saw me as a bank teller, just like my dad. He never came home until late in the evening but every year he would bring me a newly minted penny and lay it by my bed as I slept. I would wake up every morning on that special penny day and add it to my collection. He once left me a note saying, "A penny saved is a penny earned." I keep that note in my wallet till today. Then, one day, the penny didn't come. I checked with my mother to see her in bed. I heard some bumping the bathroom and I walked over to my dad swinging on a noose. A chair dislodged underneath him as he sprawled on the bathroom mirror with toothpaste "Bankrupt." Apparently my father was fired from the bank the previous day for being a part of an inside job to swindle money from it. In the police report, they said it was in a fit of insanity that he did this.

My mother remarried soon after that to a man named Tellson. He and my mother were deeply in love. I wouldn't have been surprised if they were seeing each other as my dad busted his ass every week for feed money. With her "new" love, my mother did not have time for me anymore. Neither did Tellson. I would go home to an empty house everyday and stare at the pennies my father gave me. Then one day they did not come home. I never found out what happened to them. I stared deeper into the pennies…they must be worth something. I tell myself this over and over again. In school, they called me crazy because of my obsession. I ignored them. Pennies were all that was left.

I lived in that house without anyone realizing I lived there. I was a ghost in the city. Years past without anyone saying a word about the boy living alone in his parent's house. If they did, they just said I was crazy. It was enough to scare anyone away. I tried my luck in being a musician but it never worked out. I could never afford an instrument. Everyday I was in an empty house…alone. Only me and my pennies. I was the only one who saw the value in them.

It was easier in those days to become a criminal. I first did it because I needed to eat but then it became a habit. Back then I didn't kill anyone. It was simpler and fancy free. I came up with the penny gimmick as everyone seemed to just challenge Batman from moths to erasers. Mine would be pennies. My obsession. My calling card. I was going to make a name for myself in this town right up next to Two Face and Joker. A penny was going to be worth something in Gotham City.

And each time I fought with Batman, I lost. Just like all the other rogues. However, like the other rogues, I listened about what Batman was up to next. When I heard he was collecting things from crime scenes, I used my life savings to make a giant penny with a microscopic camera in one of the eyes. When I was defeated by Batman, like always, I went back to Arkham to await the live feed from where Batman lives. I saw it. I saw it all. And like a child that knows what his presents will be for Christmas, I was disappointed. Bruce Wayne? A petty playboy defeating the Joker and me on every occasion? It took all the fun out of being a villain. I cut the feed and decided, this time, to stay in Arkham, locked up in frozen time. I forgot I even had the tapes.

And through time, Batman forgot about me too. I took this as a step to reform. I got out of Arkham but it took a long time to settle down. I did odd jobs for a while and lived in a halfway house. It isn't very easy to find a job with Arkham on your resume.

On one cold night looking for a job in Gotham, I found a beautiful girl named Tesa and we got hitched a few months later. I still do not know how lucky I was that night. She was a beautiful woman with all the right curves and all the right things to say. We had the best times together. I remember one time we walked the Gotham bridge in order to catch a bus on the other side. We missed the bus but we still managed to make it to the restaurant but by the time we made it there, we had already had all the laughs in the world. And then there was me, a puckish little oaf that could have played Mr. Mxptlyk in a stage show. I will never know how I found her. With her contacts, I managed to find a job at the GCPD and everything was fine for a while.

That was until my old habits came back but much, much worse. In my moments of frustration, I shot homeless people on the street. Each one like a penny, worthless. I managed to make sure these bodies were never investigated by having GCPD deputies forwarding them to the dump. I don't know why I felt the urge to murder but it came like an instinct. Something I had to do just like going to the bathroom. I would come home every night depleted and would find little time for Tesa. I would stare at the pennies my father gave me…and sink into the abyss.

That was when I could no longer please Tesa. Everyday I would feel a distance between us. I knew she was seeing other people but I could never go up and confront her about it. I just stood in the background in my house and sat at my corner cubicle at work. Then one day Tesa too was gone. No word. Just loneliness and an empty house were the only things she left. I started killing more and more homeless. I did not know what compelled me. It felt very cathartic. Was it just my madness acting up again or was it an insanity that I inherited from Arkham?

Then one day, I came up with the idea. I found all my contacts, my old rogues. I made the explosives, I plotted and planned, and I made a list. I made plots and plans with no one knowing I existed. It was the perfect cover to the perfect plan to rid Gotham of its worthless inhabitants. I even tinkered with killing Bruce Wayne. One day, I took a high powered sniper rifle and aimed it right at Wayne's office with him in it. He would never suspect a thing. And before I pulled the trigger I realized that I could never kill Bruce Wayne-to do so would be to kill Batman, the worthiness man in Gotham. There would probably be others to follow him but none that could do what he does for this city. Bruce Wayne built most this city and Batman cleans it up. I realized what they couldn't: no one can defeat Batman. Even with a broken back and most of his city in ruins, he will never give up.

And then I tried to go through with the rest of my plan and I failed again. Just like in life. Now I sit here, waiting for the inevitable Batman to come here and send me away. They all said I was crazy when I tried this. To clean up Gotham. To clean up my life. To make sure I am worth a damn here. I don't see that Rosebud, the thing that made my life all the more worthwhile.

I remember when a penny was worth more in this town and then I realize it was always a penny. He arrives like a shadow in the night. This is the end for me. I stare at Gotham again… and I remember that all this time…a penny was worth nothing at all.

"Just lock me up in Arkham, Batman... with the rest of the crazy people."