okay the short they showed was adam’s rise to power. so he always had this penchant for violence and manipulation - it wasn’t like something HAPPENED to him that other faunus hadn’t faced. he was always power-hungry. it started off with a group of faunus trying to break into a warehouse or something, and he walks over with the grimm mask in his hand, puts it on, and the other faunus are like wtf and he leads them in the break in (so basically it’s the first hint of his true nature on an early mission).

then we were shown him with ilia ghira and sienna and they were trying to travel somewhere and there were a bunch of humans shooting at them and ghira was trying to resolve the situation peacefully. but sienna, who is obviously trying to take power from ghira, has adam attack the humans and he ends up killing one of them pretty brutally. ghira says it didn’t need to end like that and sienna says “he just saved your life,” giving him this clearly victorious look.

then there’s a scene of him talking to blake and he was like IT WAS AN ACCIDENT and she was like how many accidents are there going to be and he was like i don’t know in war there are casualties (or something like that i think)…are you going to abandon our cause like your parents?! and she was like NO all upset and he goes (SUPER MANIPULATIVE IT WAS THE OBVIOUS INTENT) “im sorry it just hurts to think that you don’t believe in me anymore” or something and she was like no….i do…and like touched his face but it was SUPER fucked up the whole audience groaned. and then it was just various shots of adam getting worse and worse like, on another mission with sienna and ilia (ilia was looking hesitant) but both adam and sienna were ruthless. he almost killed some other guy clearly for fun and she stopped him only because they needed to keep moving. and then it transitioned to sienna taking the throne and she was like im assigning you to the vale brotherhood…if you keep this up you might be standing beside my throne one day. and then it shifted to ADAM on the throne being told about haven going awry and him being like an arrogant asshole thinking it’ll be fine. then the last shot was him walking off after haven, his mask in his hand.

to be continued in volume 6….