One year before the Pizza Shop incident...
It was cloudy under a setting sun, looking at the ground from the sky, Ram could see a large line of ragged looking folk winding around an entire city block. One would have guessed it to be another one of those iFailure releases, though the people in this line didn't exactly look like your typical apple fanatics.
After zooming in for a closer inspection Ram noticed the line was filled with homeless people eagerly chattering away and patiently waiting. It took some time to figure out where the line began. It began inside the foyer of a very posh looking building, it was the building of a successful and very influential marketing company. At the forefront stood a stylish bearded man in a suit staring out at the line with timeless eyes. He was handing out packages that looked to contain a variety of things, one of which being a wad of cash that if Ram was to guess was about 10 G's. The bloody Tom Hanks' Cast Away lookalike was giving away money to the homeless for nothing, and he couldn't have looked happier!
Ram took note of King Leonidis' face and decided he would keep an eye out for him during his everyday travels around the city.
It had been one year since the unfortunate events of, well, last year. Matthew's life hadn't gotten any better, nor had his relationship with Ram. During that time, Ram had decided not to test his visions again until he figured out what went wrong. He wasnt even slightly nudging people. He was becoming depressed.
One lazy day after the bearded charity dream Ram was busy ignoring everyone on Sydney's footpaths (because that's what you do in Sydney) when he accidentally caught someones eye. Someones timeless friggen eye. It was Gandalf the Generous, sitting on the steps of a building, one hand patting a scraggly dog, the other holding a cardboard sign saying 'I need a dollar, dollar, a dollar is what I need'. Now that recognition of the man had occurred Ram realised the man had occupied this very spot for months, he had always just ignored him.
Ram had stopped dead in his tracks, then modified his direction, walked and sat beside the Nighthawk. What was he thinking, he can't risk ruining anothers life, he hadn't yet figured out why Matthews vision didn't work out. But, he was depressed, he needed some excitement in his life again, he needed to feel like his life meant something, that he wasn't just another animal roaming the earth for a short period. Anyway, what could this man possibly have to lose? His cardboard sign?
Within a lickity split of time (the time it takes to sit down and gather up the courage to speak to a stranger) Ram had talked himself into putting his visions into motion once more.
And talk he did, through the spiel he went once more, explaining his talent, and the specifics of the vision. As it turned out, Conan the Barbarian was quite business savvy and if not for a turn of unfortunate events may well have reached his true vision on his own. Not only that, but he also possessed an understanding of one potential market that remained untouched, the homeless. Ram was confident. He handed Beardface $100 dollars and a number to contact him on so they could catch up and see if anything had changed.
Ram never saw the man again for over a month when his mobile rang from a private number (ugh private numbers). It was Beardface, wanting to catch up to thank Ram for his advice. When Ram walked into their meetingplace he found a healthy looking beard with a very smug looking face behind it.
Turns out Beardface had indeed created for himself a very succesful business. Hiring his employees/thugs out to clients to complete their dirtywork for them. Not exactly what Ram had in mind for such an industrious character, but it seemed to Ram that he had given The Beard a chance of success when he was still too bitter with the world to be grateful. It hadn't exactly backfired, but he had just inadvertantly created a new mafia figure in Sydney, with the business creative mind of a CEO and the street smarts of John Gotti...
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