Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-10390252-20141218201832/@comment-73.42.187.52-20150111004628

Shadow at Morning wrote: Depends on the White Fang's training methods. Since they seem fairly close, they've been together for a few years, and if Adam were merely a year older, then he'd be learning while attempting to teach her his craft. Surely a recipe for disaster. Therefore, I assume that he's several years older, because he needs to be an established operative in order to properly instruct an apprentice. that is the thing that I don't feel should be assumed, you are looking at this like Adam is her Sensei, or "master" I don't think he is. He has been stated by Monty to be her "mentor", and I think that means he is more like the senior operative of their squad, rather than where she got ALL her moves, I believe the White Fang has a select few very powerful Hunters who actually train operatives, and that these hunters are so valuable to them that they don't send them on jobs like the train.

Shadow at Morning wrote: The White Fang is a terrorist organization, yes, but I don't see why we can't judge the quality of their elites. Adam, at least, is part of their direct action group, and is thus expected to be able to perform operations like the train job, like assassinations, and like sabotage, all of which might require nontrivial individual combat skill. Plus, we do have a definite data point for their high-level operatives. Her name is Blake Belladonna. Given that she was Adam's apprentice, and she was admitted into Beacon, then her White Fang training was equivalent to a combat school, and she got that training from Adam. And why do you make a distinction between a terrorist organization and a criminal organizaition? again, Direct action to me hints that he is not her highest master, just the one she trained with in the field, her direct superior. Like Ozpin hasn't been shown training the girls, Oobleck was.

the distinction to me is that a criminal organization sets itself up to succeed in criminal enterprise. A terrorist organization that converted from a civil defense organization has had to adapt its command structure, and likely has many members that are unnecessary, or do not fit the chain of command structure you are looking at this from.

for example, the likely setup when they were peaceful was something like dojo's everywhere for self defense classes, and maybe 1 special class somewhere for those who became the teachers, I imagine that once they militarized, the White fang could no longer simply meet anywhere, so their trainers(the ones with the most advanced classes) would need to be mobile(like Adam), with their most powerful teaching at a distant compound the mobile teachers take students to every so many missions to learn the really advanced stuff.