Rohan136

Hyoue Kuroda - Just a police guy. Maybe, he'll provide a helping hand to Shinichi in the future, but definitely a good guy. Reason: Gosho worked too hard to make him look suspicious and a bad guy. And following the patterns of previous arcs, the characters portrayed as being helpful are the villains, the ones who are shown to act suspiciously, are the helpful ones. Sakurako Yonehara - Just another recurring character. No biggie... She realises a split personality, so what? Kobayashi Sensei noticed how smart Conan was, the Detective Boys noticed Conan's split personality, the list of characters (recurring and non-recurring) who noticed Conan's intellect is long, so we consider them all to be suspects? I think not. Wakasa Rumi - This is an interesting character. She wants to be helping Conan stay out of danger, but doesn't want them to know about it, meaning she isn't looking to gain his trust. She was deeply interested in solving the mystery of the school (seriously, why can't she take lime from elsewhere), and is smart as well as skilled. I have a hunch it's Vermouth, but her purpose isn't quite clear yet. Maybe asaka and rum being in her name is so she can see what all Conan knows, but she's doing this outside BO orders. It's just a hunch. It's not Rum though, coz as Heliotropic too pointed out, it was too obvious. Mary - With every single of her family member being connected to the good side, I don't think she could be Rum. In any case, she knows about Conan, and is curious about Ai, maybe she thinks Ai is her sister who's shrunken, but given how cautious she is, she won't approach her directly. She and Sera left a trail of breadcrumbs for Conan to follow - Sera had in one case (can't remember the number) inquired about Ai, but something happened and that thread was lost. Her interest is in Ai, getting back to regular shape and size, and probably BO, coz they killed her sister, or coz they are related to her husband somehow. Her skills seem to be a part of the Akai family skills pack, but I'm still skeptical about her being an undercover agent - now or earlier. She's conducting her own investigation and may join hands with Ai and Conan later (later = 1000 chapters later, seeing the current pace :P) As far as theories about shrinking go - an earlier version of the drug that her sister developed. Her coinciding words with Gin could be words of her late husband, who got into BO and close to Gin before getting eliminated. Asaca - Regardless of what Conan and Akai think, ASACA is not RUM. They were countering whatever plan Rum had maybe and are the reason behind Rum's eye thing, but that's it. It's a completely new character. Not Rum. Then, who is Rum? Not introduced yet, but will be soon, in the next 10 chapters

Amuro most definitely is aware that Conan is the master mind behind Akai's fake death. Because, when he goes to meet Okiya at his house, he says that what Akai said was, "Who ... would have thought that it would come to this." and he points out to Okiya, that what Akai meant to say was, "Who, but him, would have thought that it would come to this. Those were words of admiration for that boy, the one who put it together" and he thinks about Conan. So, yes he knows about Conan's intellect, but no, Amuro isn't being too irrational in his resentment. He feels that since Akai knew about Scotch's real identity, he could have really tried to save him - to stop him from taking his own life, but even standing right in front of him, he is unable to do much about it. He probably doesn't realise that the sound of his footsteps could have triggered Scotch's reaction. Hopefully, in the next 50 chapters somewhere, we will see the talk between Conan and Okiya occurring about Conan's identity and Akai's dad. And hopefully about his mom too. Wonder though if Akai and Sera will talk. Seems like he wants to hide it from even them that he's alive.

Finally, English translation is here! Okay, in chapter 955, page 13, doesn't Takagi's behaviour seem a little odd? Why does he need handwriting samples from Amuro? Amuro had just arrived at the scene, and also is not even on their suspect list. Yet, Takagi starts with Amuro. Then, there's the bubble with "......" over Conan during this scene. Meaning that he senses something odd with this as well... Dunno, maybe I'm just thinking too much about a little detail

Yeah, that's the reason given in the manga, but don't you find it a little suspicious?

Okay, this is very improbable, but could the reason behind Kuroda's sudden aging be an antidote to the Silver Bullet, or maybe the effects of the drug wearing off?

Regarding the Vermouth/Ran clash, it probably won't lead to much immediately, but seeing as how her suspicion on Conan built up over a veeeeery long time (though her suspicion was thwarted several times by Conan), maybe she will in the far far future come to realise (through Shinichi's mom maybe or more slip-ups by Vermouth?) that she is in fact Sharon. The theory that Akai would give the gun to Scotch to shoot himself has a few flaws - first off, Scotch definitely knew Akai's identity, else he could have asked Amuro to take the blame (coz what's the point of getting a random BO member to go up the ranks) It has been made clear that Akai did not know who he killed - as he says it almost seemed like killing a ghost and his expression says the same, and it is highly unlikely that Akai would kill someone (or allow someone to die) without full knowledge about that person. There is really no reason that Akai could give to Scotch to, in any manner, persuade him to kill himself.

Shit! Ran actually remembered her face!!!!! And info about Scotch and Akai showdown as well!!! The english translation can't come soon enough.

I thought that Ran suspecting Azusa was just another irrelevant thing when it happened in the first time, but when she progressively narrowed down on the fact that the woman who attacked Ai called her Angel as well in such a short while (it took her several cases to narrow down on Conan=Shinichi) I think that Gosho wants to somehow develop this into a confrontation between Ran and Vermouth, at the end of which Vermouth may narrowly escape or Ran may get injured. But this definitely is something he wants to develop upon. I guess I won't be surprised if this turns out to be the prologue of a BO focused 7-8 chapter series, like Scarlet Prologue I read this at DCTP - So, Vermouth does know that Shinichi shrunk due to the drug! That kind of confirms that she has been exposed to the anti-aging effects of the drug. This might seem irrelevant, but till now Gosho had not confirmed that she had been exposed to a variant of the drug, other than reading between the lines

If I'm not wrong, Gosho has confirmed that BO isn't after immortality. In any case, Vermouth does not at all want immortality, as she thinks that the research that the Miyanos were doing was foolish. She won't think that if she wanted the drug. She more likely detests the drug for some reason Also, Akai nicknamed Vermouth "Rotten Apple", which gravely affected her and angered her. Now, this means that either he knows the deaging efffects of the drug (bcoz of Shiho,duh!) and says that her mind is rotten, or that she was once a good person that he knew from before she joined the BO and haas now turned into a bad person, that would explain her anger - he reminded her of a life where she faced a lot of hardships...

Okay, I did have my doubt's regarding this till now, thinking that Gosho won't just reveal such a piece of information as Mary being Sera's mom that easily,(he generally stretches the suspicion for a much longer time than he did this time) but this does convince me. Thanks, for the link on tricks. I had a general sort of a vague idea about his style of writing, but didn't really have it in the form of clear words, so that helped. I do not feel that Okiya is WORRIED about the presence of someone called Asaca around Sera, If he thought Asaca was a bad person, he won't have asked Ran or Sonoko or expected them to know if there was someone who IDENTIFIED themselves as Asaca. Personally, I feel that Asaca seems to have an allegiance on the good side. Moreover, even though we have seen Conan's thoughts, and know that he thinks that Asaca is none other than Rum, Okiya seems to have a different take on Asaca=Rum, or he won't have expected a member of the BO more important in the BO than Gin, who Okiya says is "very careful" to go around getting noticed by a pair of college girls and even make the mistake of identifying to them as Asaca. I think Asaca is Mary. and Asaca=Rum means Asaca has some crucial info regarding Rum's identity. Also, seeing as how that seems too obvious, and that the hint was revealed too soon in the Rum arc, it may be misleading clue that U MASCARA means ASACA or RUM... Maybe, I'll reread those files and try to find the extremely cryptic clues that generally appear at the beginning of an arc.

Since Vermouth said, "The one whose insights are second to none in the organisation, Bourbon", then Rum's specialty isn't insight or thinking like a detective? Then, Rum must have a specific skill set that is above even Vermouth's disguise-ability? Can such a thing even exist? Some combat skills? Also, this statement can help to declassify Mary as a Rum possibility, if she ever was a candidate for Rum.

I think that given the resemblance to Haibara is more than that to Sera, it won't be too wrong to assume that she may be Haibara's mother, i.e., Elena Miyano. She may have faked her death in the accident, and actually took a more developed version of the pill which was sure to turn her into a child. This would also explain why she said in File 903 (to Sera), "You didn't forget to tell him to come alone, did you?" to which Sera replies, "I made sure to tell him not to ring the kids along." Sera's reply means that she (the mystery girl) does not want the children as an audience, though she forgot about, which was a more obvious person to come along with Conan to meet Sera. Then, there's this moment in File 775, where Sera seems to show a keen interest in "the well-mannered short haired girl", meaning their interest is not so much in Conan as it is in Ai. But they aren't sure about her (the mystery girl seems to be very cautious), though Sera is confident about Shinichi/Conan. Thus, instead of approaching Ai, they approach Conan. Another reason for my thinking that she is Elena is her cautious attitude, she views Conan from a safe distance and at once finds the bug he planted and destroys it, also saying that it was a type she hadn't seen before. This reminds me of the BO and their cautious methods, and Elena was a member of the BO, though it seems that her invention was too dangerous, so she wanted to leave. Another minor thing is the hair colour and the manner of speaking being similar to the Elena shown in Zero's flashback and to the Elena in Ai's tape recorder and to Ai herself. Elena (in the tape for Ai) said, "Your father and I will have to go away from you for a while. I hope you understand." This means that their disappearance was a planned one. Maybe Elena and intercepted that the BO would try to kill her and thus she faked her death along with Atsushi. Okay, there was this another piece that seemed to not fit much anywhere, in File 897, Conan says that Yukiko is pretty good in making disguises of ppl close to her, then thinks about how the last Haibara disguise she made for him was pretty good. Could it be that Yukiko is disguising someone to look like the mysterious girl...? The reason I kept this last paragraph a little separate is because it changes the theories I had so far put forward...

Now that Conan has realised that he was the first subject on whom the drug was administered, could this mean that the person who grouped the names on the list knew about the existence of the drug that Shiho's parents made and that it had the potential to kill ppl... And the fact that they continued to try to make the same drug again means that the drug had shown some signs of actually fulfilling its true purpose. Meaning someone (Shiho's parents most likely) destroyed the info on the drug on purpose to hide it from BO.

Given that Akai's father was connected to Kouji so strongly that Akai felt compelled to join the FBI, I dont think it would be much of a surprise that their father had the details of the case, which he shared with both Akai and Shuukichi. That could explain how both of them knew about it. Initially, Akai was searching for Kouji. But, after Akai went missing, Shuukichi thought of using the information he had to carry out some investigations. When he could not proceed any further, he decided to post the information online asking someone for help... Although Akai could have known about the case after reading the details he saw online, but I think that that's unlikely considering as how he had joined the FBI because of Kouji's case.