Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-71.84.15.225-20150807131522/@comment-26397825-20150909091353

The only problem with Cinder being Summer's trainee is that Summer died at least ten years ago (Yang was about 5-7 in the flashback by my reckoning) and Cinder is only a few years older than the main characters, ie early twenties. She may be mid twenties at best. That means she was Ruby's age or younger when Summer died, and unless Cinder was also a prodegy and got moved up to Beacon level at fifteen, and then somehow managed to get bumped up even further to private one on one training with Summer. During this time, Summer would have had to also be running missions for the government, going to home to look after her very young daughter and step-daughter, and according to this theory, training Cinder in being a Hunter.

My main hassles: Cinder's age does not line up adequately for her to be a plausible protege of Summer's, as Summer so far has not been stated to be a teacher like Qrow was.

Summer was busy running missions and raising two daughters, which eats into time a lot, and would not allow her to focus on all three different jobs effectively. She'd end up neglecting something.

If Cinder was Summer's protege, why do Ruby and Yang not remember her? Ruby was old enough to remember her mother, even if she was young enough not to understand the death properly, and Yang was definitely old enough to remember her. I cannot believe that Summer would have a protege and never take them home to introduce them to her family, which means the two girls would know who Cinder was, or at least make some mentions of her being vaguely familiar. Instead we get Ruby, who obviously doesn't recognise her at all, even when she ran into her in the corridor, and Yang, who has never once mentioned a protege of Summer's. I think that would have been included as a throwaway sentence when she was explaining her situation to Blake.