Where do you think the plot is going?

[Chekhov MacGuffin]

•In the Vermouth arc we didn’t see any previous hint to the planning of “Heiji plays Shinichi-Conan plays Haibara-Yukiko’s involvement in team up with conan Vs the BO” move. Hell, even Jodie who intended to ambush Vermouth couldn’t have possibly thought Ai was indeed Conan in disguise.
•In the Black Vs Red arc we didn’t see any previous hint to the planning of “Fake Akais’ death so the BO backs off and Kir’s position isn’t compromised” (Checkhov deduced that later but there’s no way we could have anticipated that BEFORE it happened)
•In the Mystery Train case we didn’t see any previous hint to Yukiko’s involvement once more and even less about her teaming up with Okiya.

Being a nitpick here, but we were treated to the mystery of figuring who might be staying in and spying from Shinichi's house before the final clash of the Vermouth arc. Conan even went to check it out. Yukiko's involvement in the mystery train case was foreshadowed in Yuusaku's cold case with Okiya's woman. There were no hints about faking Akai's death ahead of time because it wasn't planned ahead of time.

Conan may have a plan, but honestly I think Conan's current problem is that most plans he can come up with will be ineffective. He can't have the police or FBI apprehend Bourbon because that would beg the question who figured out Bourbon's identity; Kogoro might be suspected again. Even plans that create an "accident" to trap Bourbon might be too risky. Shooing Bourbon out without the help of the police or FBI is difficult because Conan doesn't want to draw attention to himself. (Conan doesn't know what Bourbon's current interest is or how much he knows). As long as Bourbon is not prying into dangerous intel, it might be best to use the situation to watch him and hope he loses interest eventually.

CIA’s agenda beats FBI’s agenda hands down.

This honestly depends on the particular mission.

On a sidenote, they were investigating the BO years ahead the FBI started.

Jodie's FBI father was investigating something that triggered Vermouth to kill him 20 years ago. For reference Shuuichi began infiltrating five years ago, and Ethan Hondou sacrificed his life 4 years ago.

Speaking of the CIA, am I the only one who thinks Akai is too pro for a mere FBI agent?

The FBI has some elite sections like Hostage Rescue and their SWAT. Remember they get dispatched when the police SWATs and such can't handle an extreme situation. The FBI also does infiltration missions, although they normally domestic groups.

Also, Amuro and Vermouth have Anokata’s sympathy which seems to deem them untouchable by Gin/Chianti etc.

Amuro got the okay from the boss for his Scar Akai mission, and hanging around with Vermouth might offer him some protection, but only Vermouth has status as the boss's favorite.

I get the feeling Amuro already knows […]

I think the mere fact that he says “terrifying man” and not “kid” is proof enough he’s figured out who Conan is. If anything, he might be searching for conclusive evidence or also planning ahead for a future confrontation.

I agree that line is very suspicious, but I am concerned about the lack of Shinichi in Amuro's investigation. I think it's still too early to call Amuro knows Conan is Shinichi without Amuro poking into Shinichi's affairs or past or acknowledging he has heard of the teen detective.

And by the way... you showered us with questions, Chekhov, but didn't grace us with your predictions!

Totally agree!!! tell us what you think please! (assuming you haven’t posted it yet somewhere else).

I don't have any predictions that are up to date at the moment. A lot of them hinged on Amuro (or Conan or Masumi) making a move sooner rather than having Amuro stick around to be Conan's newest stalker fanboy. With the middle brother and the chibi Akai delaying things, I don't know what's going to happen next. There are simply too many gambits careening about to be able to predict the outcome of their collision.

Speaking of 20th anniversaries what if Gosho’s plans are to prolong the series to the 25th anniversary? Think about it, what’s it called when two people have been married for 25 years? Silver-wedding. Wouldn’t it be a major trolling from Gosho to unleash the Silver bullet on the Silver anniversary of the series? I think it would be both painful (for the wait) and hysterical to make such a pun (Food for thought).

If Gosho is in good health and thus doesn't rush the series I would be surprised if the boss arc is shorter than five years long.

Why isn’t Yusaku more involved in the fight against the BO.

He would outshine Conan and thus he is forbidden, except for the occasional troll.

[Patrick]

Being a nitpick here, but we were treated to the mystery of figuring who might be staying in and spying from Shinichi's house before the final clash of the Vermouth arc. Conan even went to check it out. Yukiko's involvement in the mystery train case was foreshadowed in Yuusaku's cold case with Okiya's woman. There were no hints about faking Akai's death ahead of time because it wasn't planned ahead of time.

About Vermouth's arc I guess I wasn't around the forums at the time, my bad.
About Akai's fake death I believe it was planned when Conan and Akai spoke on the roof of the hospital but we had no chance to guess anything since the whole conversation was left out. I guess the point I wanted to make was that we still can be surprised by the outcome. At least that is one of the reasons why I love DC.

CIA’s agenda beats FBI’s agenda hands down.

This honestly depends on the particular mission.

Yeah, but again I think Gosho brought up the CIA into the series for some reason, as if there was a bigger agenda still to be revealed. Remember Ai's words to introduce the CIA stated the Agency is under the direct control of the president of the United States (which is true). That's why I personally give them more importance.

Jodie's FBI father was investigating something that triggered Vermouth to kill him 20 years ago. For reference Shuuichi began infiltrating five years ago, and Ethan Hondou sacrificed his life 4 years ago. On a sidenote, they were investigating the BO years ahead the FBI started.

Good point. It would be nice to work on a "thoroughly" detailed timeline of Detective Conan's universe (if that's even possible) and actually see the time that has passed since Shinichi shrunk. I'm reading again from the scratch and up to Haibara's first appearance it's been 1 month-ish, but the info's really vague. I mean, in ch.26 page 2 Ran says it's been 1 month since the boat case, but other than that... Guess we could count school days and stuff one by one and add them all up, but reading all the fillers makes the whole task a bit tedious :/

Why isn’t Yusaku more involved in the fight against the BO.

He would outshine Conan and thus he is forbidden, except for the occasional troll.

Gotta miss some good troll more often though
I enjoyed Yukiko vs Vermouth scene a lot, hope we get to see more of that too!

[Chekhov MacGuffin]

Good point. It would be nice to work on a "thoroughly" detailed timeline of Detective Conan's universe (if that's even possible) and actually see the time that has passed since Shinichi shrunk. I'm reading again from the scratch and up to Haibara's first appearance it's been 1 month-ish, but the info's really vague. I mean, in ch.26 page 2 Ran says it's been 1 month since the boat case, but other than that... Guess we could count school days and stuff one by one and add them all up, but reading all the fillers makes the whole task a bit tedious :/

For everything before Conan's big shrink I cheat. After that it's next to impossible to timeline because Gosho is inconsistent. Conan soon becomes very vague about how much time has passed except that it has been less than a year so far. The dates and holidays jump around making it impossible to tell.

[Patrick]

Yeah it's indeed very vague. I try to catch some time references in conversations but it's too easy to skip some unnoticed, one would have to check every single bubble through now nearly 900 files...
As someone stated before this could be the kind of series where the main characters don't age, but if that's not the case, the kids not growing would become an issue when someone noticed. I'd say we still lack information on APTX like, does it also prevent growth after deaging? Most likely the key to that is Vermouth and/or The Boss. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

[M1313]

Thinking about the route the plot is going to take... well, I admit that my ideas changed a lot after some cases that took place after the Mystery Train. When the Mystery Train ended, I saw Amuro pretty clueless and far away from discovering that Akai is alive and what his disguise is (if he is Okiya, even if this is now 99.99% sure): he saw someone who looked like Akai bombing him, but he couldn't even understand what was going on since he was practically sure that Akai was dead; but then, my thoughts radically changed since Gosho let Bourbon know about Rikumichi's fingerprints on Conan's phone that might have been used to trick everyone into thinking that Akai had died (File 851). There's no way that Gosho can have Bourbon reach such an information without it being actually very important... and the only reason I can think of is Amuro using this info to understand how Akai tricked everyone into thinking he was killed, while he's instead alive. Plus, he already suspected that someone had helped Akai in faking his own death, so this is why he wandered among the people who knew him disguised as Akai testing their reactions (File 824): but he got nothing from that... yet he never directly tested Conan with his disguise, and he started suspecting him directly after the Mystery Train (File 827). Plus, he even reached Agasa's house (File 843).

So... if Sera weren't around, I'd say that the plot would proceed this way: Amuro suspects that Akai is alive and that Conan helped him in faking his own death; he might have done so, since he was present during the events at the hospital and Amuro knows this as well because Jodie herself revealed it while being bugged. Then, he might think about the place in which he's hiding right now... and thus he might think of Agasa's house: because he had seen a weird guy with glasses back when he was chasing Conan to rescue him from a killer (File 800), and this guy had his hand put inside his jacket as if he were going to take something from a pocket. It's normal to think that Okiya (Akai) was going to use a gun he was hiding in his pocket, and it isn't difficult for Amuro to understand that this is the only thing that a person in that position might be trying to do in such a situation. I think that people aren't allowed to have guns in Japan... if it's so, then while thinking again about that guy it's likely that Amuro might think of him as Akai, who has a gun because he's an FBI agent even if he isn't allowed to stay in Japan. That night he was seen by Amuro coming out of a car that is different from Agasa's car: in fact, Agasa's car had some problems and they had to use Okiya's car, and since Amuro knows what Agasa's car is (File 815) he can tell the difference. But Ran had asked Agasa for help during Conan's kidnapping case (File 798); so, if someone with a different car shows up instead... I think it's safe for Amuro to assume that someone near Agasa's place might be close to him to the point that the professor shared the info about Conan having been kidnapped with him so that he helped in chasing them by sharing his own car to do it, and was present there by himself. And if this person is indeed Akai, this means that Akai is somewhere near Agasa's house: which has a lot of sense to his eyes if he suspects Conan as well as I wrote before, since Agasa is close to Conan too, thus all the pieces would fit together perfectly.

So... once Amuro reaches the certainty that Okiya is Akai and that Conan helped him in faking his own death, I think that it will be Amuro himself to make the first move: if the first moves were taken by Conan and his friends, then we could reasonably be puzzled about the reason why he never acted before. So, I was thinking... what can Amuro do in such a situation? He only wanted two things: to take Sherry back to the Organization, and to kill Akai if he's still alive. Sherry's currently dead to his eyes, but not Akai... since at this point he might be sure of his new identity and whereabouts. But I'm unsure about how he's going to act... randomly entering Agasa's house with guns and bombs to kill Akai seems rather unlikely.

The other opportunity is Amuro being told about Shinichi, understanding that he is Conan and then kidnapping him, so that Okiya shows up to save him, reveals himself as Akai, and has a battle against his mortal enemy... but then where's the point in having had Amuro gather hints pointing at Okiya = Akai if he has to remain clueless about his identity until the very end in which Okiya reveals himself to Amuro's and the readers' surprise? If he knew of it, he can just kidnap Conan without even knowing he is Shinichi, he might just know that he is a smart kid who helped Akai into faking his own death: so he might corner Okiya into revealing his true identity to have a fight with him when he comes to rescue the child.

But it's also true that Jodie is investigating Amuro (File 850), and there's still that thing about Date that has yet to be solved (File 808)... so, given the great load of things that are still mysterious about Amuro (and Sera) and that have to be revealed sooner or later, there are only a few points I'm certain about when it comes to further developments of the plot:
• Bourbon fully understanding Conan's skills and relation with Akai;
• Bourbon's acknowledgment that Okiya = Akai;
• Bourbon does something in secret (this is why a kidnapping seemed to be working) not to have the Organization be exposed, but that forces Okiya to intervene and to expose himself.

As for those questions left about Amuro, or Sera's full role in the plot, I have to think a bit more about them... but this is what I'm almost certain of when it comes to Bourbon.

[k11chi]

In the last chapter of the Mystery Train it mentions how Bourbon is an excellent investigator, the time he took off between after Mystery Train and the next case at the tennis court and during the delivery car case with the DB where he had something to do instead of going to meet Agasa, should tell that he's definitely investigating something and I wouldn't be surprised if he already finished his work.