“I’d suspect someone of deliberately screwing with us, but to get the fuckery that fine-grained you’d need ridiculous amounts of magic, or you’d need to be specifically trying to block out Ruwien mages... I can try the scarf, now.”

He spends a moment laying out his parameters - it needs to not transmit various vision-based weirdness, if applicable, it doesn’t need to be in color, it doesn’t need anything other than a still frame, providing an overhead view of the guy, it needs to location-trace the scarf and use that to narrow its search-area, it needs to do a thousand other little things and it needs to be as brutally minimalistic as possible -

He casts.

His magic is not positive that scarf exists. His magic is not positive that thing in his hands is a scarf. 

It's miles long, stretching into the sky, crossing a gap between worlds - a river of red hooked to a star (the red is very insistent on showing up against the grey-scale) - wrapped in a brief flash around a strange woman's neck - 

At the end, or at least not too far from it, is a man on a couch with a wire in his head. He's looking at something out of the picture.

He decides not to panic.

He doesn’t even need to spend mana, in order to transcribe the river of red, the scene with the woman, and the scene with the man, onto conjured pieces of paper; he does so, presenting the papers to Bina.

“The scarf is magical in unclear ways; it showed up as red, even though the scry as a whole was firmly monochrome, and it may or may not actually be a scarf. This paper shows the missing man, this one shows a woman that the scry inexplicably pointed at, this one shows the scarf being bizarre... do you recognize the woman?”

"I had a dream with her, maybe? She was very confused at me appearing in her office. She seemed perfectly normal at the time, other than being in a dream. She's fuzzy in my head, though, so I'm not sure that's the same woman."

“Okay, so. Now that I’ve managed it once, I’m confident that I can view the dreamplace again, widen the overhead view, see whatever that guy is staring at, but I’m concerned that whatever this guy is staring at is - somehow infohazardous or hypnotic - and I don’t, really, want to take any substantial risk of going mad. Are you absolutely sure that you don’t want to go to the authorities on this, and do you have any less risky ideas.”

"I'm less sure than I was, but - I really don't think I trust them. For ideas... I tend to be safe from infohazards in my dreams. That's about it, and, yeah, it's getting to the point where I think we might just need to call in someone with better resources..."

“I guess I shouldn’t rule out the idea that the government’s been somehow infiltrated... do you have anyone in mind?”

"I don't actually know anyone? I'm kind of new-ish to the city. I think going somewhere not around here might be a good idea, my roommate keeps insisting this part of town is run by the mob? There's definitely some level of corruption, though honestly the mob probably wants whatever handled, too."

“I moved here a couple of days ago... I think that I want to try out ‘spying as a fly on the wall’ before I try ‘going to the mob’, strategically.”

"There might also be a time concern, if he's actively going after people..."

“It seems unlikely, prima facie, but we can’t rule it out. And the ‘mob’ option wouldn’t be fast, either, they’d want evidence and confirmation and internal debate and everything, and they might not have more of an idea what to do than us. And they could be compromised. If we think this is really urgent I can try to tie him down, read his mind, and erase the memory...”

"No. No. I... Don't think we can say it's that urgent, not yet."

“Thought so.”

Nod.

"Do you want me to go with you to the laundromat?"

“... no, probably not. I don’t think that you’d be worth more there, as one more potential victim, instead of - out, looking up people we might be able to contact for help, brainstorming, researching explanations, asking for information around town.”

"Right. I'll put on my investigative journalist hat, then."

”If it works,” he says.

And then they can head their separate ways.

And he can flit into the laundromat as a small, inconspicuous little gnat. 

The laundromat is mostly incredibly boring. The big guy Binamir identified as Gregari paces around some, acts a bit shifty and nervous a lot, and as it gets properly into 'nighttime' (having already been deep into evening) the laundromat empties, he seems to hear something, and goes out back. He'd put some of his own clothes into one of the smaller washers a bit back - horribly muddy things, that smelled odd, primarily like brick dust but faintly of ozone. It's still humming along, the old magic struggling.

He's muttering to himself as he walks off.

He updates slightly towards ‘magically influenced’ and ‘willing cooperator’, slightly away from ‘outright possessed’.

Being a gnat for any extended period of time is kind of horrible, and he’ll need hands, to do anything sophisticated. He turns back into a humanoid, peers around for anything obviously suspicious or anyone quietly shouting ‘help me! help me!’, and takes a closer look at the washer.

It's really going, rocking back and forth slightly now. The settings are odd, but Gregari seems to have used some kind of employee by-pass on it, so it's hard to tell if that's normal.

It’s a little weird, but unlikely to involve horrible conspiracy...

He spends a little while staring at it. The rocking motion is mildly hypnotic, and he’s mildly suspicious about the brick dust and ozone. 

It goes still, and remains such for a short while -

Then there's a loud thump as it rocks to the side.

He takes several, careful steps backwards.

(It’s probably just a faulty enchantment, it’s probably just a faulty enchantment, it’s - hopefully just a faulty enchantment -)

Thump! Thump!

It teeters, falls - 

And a white arm stretches out, followed by a dog-like skull and then a body. The creature looks sketched into reality, and like someone forgot to color it in. It pulses with static, and moves oddly, jittery like an insect in shutter stop motion.

It looks right at him.

... this is deeply concerning.

He could turn into a fly, hang out on the ceiling - but he’s not sure what sort of senses spontaneously teleporting pseudo-dogs work with, could just make him easier to squish - and it takes time to cast spells - none of his other contingencies really apply -

He’s just going to edge towards the door.