Alexis's reaction upon seeing Mokuba Kaiba was incompatible with her typical collected dignity. She let out a guttural scream and grabbed him by the collar, her eyes wild with rage.

"You sick bastard," she hissed. "Why do you need to do this? You've already ruined enough people's lives with your stupid wars and your stupid duels!" She gestured at the four boys, who were already seated. "They don't deserve this! Nobody deserves this! You can't…you can't…YOU HAVE NO RIGHT, you bastard! You have no right to throw children into bloodbaths!" She was screaming now, and her voice echoed eerily through the chancellor's office. With a surprising amount of strength, she picked Kaiba up and threw him onto the floor. She took a hand grenade out of her backpack. "Leave now and don't come back, or you'll taste the results of your cruel machinations."

Kaiba looked up at her with steely eyes. "I had no choice, young lady. If I had failed to recruit even one of our child duelists, then our cause would be lost and our planet eternally damned. They were very skilled, every one of them. They all knew the risks." His voice changed, becoming softer and more apologetic. "Even your brother knew what he was getting into. However, I am sorry for your loss, Alexis Rhodes. Atticus would have been a fine young man."

She snarled. "That doesn't change a thing. Now get out of here, now." Her fingers moved to the grenade's safety pin.

She was interrupted when she felt a cool pressure on the back of her head.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Miss Rhodes," said Syrus coolly as he cocked his gun. The girl grimaced and lowered the grenade. Syrus led her to a seat as Kaiba stood up and brushed himself off. He looked at Alexis again. "You would do well to remember that I was barely older than your brother when it started," he said. He clapped his hands together. "Alright. The five of you are all gathered here because you all share something. You all know something about the true nature of the first international dueling tournaments—Duelist Kingdom, Battle City, and so on. Bastion Misawa, since you had the gall to hack into KaibaCorp's servers to get this information, why don't you tell us about what happened all those years ago?"

Bastion gulped, and was visibly sweating. "What, did you think we'd not notice?" Mokuba asked with a sneer. "Come on. The only reason we let you go is because your intelligence would be valuable later, and we needed a blackmail tool. Continue."

Bastion took a deep breath and began to speak. "The force of order and the force of chaos have been battling each other since time immemorial. These forces would have wars periodically in different regions in the world; the victor would be able to control world until the next conflict. The precursor to today's Duel Monsters was created in an attempt to minimize the collateral damage and loss of innocents in these conflicts. The idea was that only a few people—exceptionally strong magicians who summoned spirits—would act as combatants for both sides, leaving bystanders and the surrounding landscape relatively untouched.

It worked, but at a price: combatants experienced extreme emotional trauma due to the stress of the war, and several combatants committed suicide the first time this method was used. In addition, both sides began extracting innocent souls to use as spirits in battle, which defeated the purpose of this combat system in the first place. After its first use five thousand years ago, the system was buried and stored away until Maximilian Pegasus unearthed tablets containing spirits in the Egyptian desert. He used these tablets to create our modern version of Duel Monsters and reinstating the Egyptian's combat system."

He looked up at Kaiba. "Do you have any water?" The older man nodded and handed him a bottle, which Bastion drank from greedily. Wiping his chin, he continued:

"The last war between order and chaos occurred around ten years ago; Duelist Kingdom and Battle City were both fronts for most of the key battles. It's unclear as to what happened during the final climactic battles, but almost every duelist in the professional leagues and most high-performing duelists in the junior leagues were recruited to participate in them. There appear to have been a lot of deceased and missing duelists after this battle, but I can't find exact statistics."

Finished, Bastion sighed and sunk into his chair.

Kaiba grinned. "Thank you, Bastion. Now," he said, addressing the whole group, "the next war between order and chaos is going to occur in about two months on this very island. You all have been chosen to participate. And none of you have a choice in the matter. Try to run and you'll have KaibaCorp and all its resources on your back. You're the most capable people we have and I can't afford to lose any of you."

"This war consists of seven one-on-one matches between you and the agents of chaos. I'll give you more details as the situation progresses. Jaden, you can use magic, correct?"

"U-um, yes. I only know a couple spells, though…"

"That's fine. I know something about the craft, so I'll be teaching you myself. Oh, and for the rest of you…"

An evil grin spread across his face.

"Sparring sessions start tomorrow. I hope you're ready."

A/N: Hey, everyone! Unique Chimera here! Thank you so much to iloveyugiohGX93 and TheHero15 for reviewing!

I hope this chapter cleared up some confusion with the info-dumps. If it didn't and you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to PM me!

Sorry to disappoint anybody who was expecting a lot of action in this chapter, but there will be some fight sequences next chapter. There will be very little actual dueling in this series; most of the action comes from actual fights, but spirits will be summoned often during the story.

Alexis is one of many characters in the series who have been psychologically affected by the previous war; I wanted to portray the kinds of consequences throwing children at the essence of evil could have. Not every character from the original series survived; both Kaiba brothers and Yugi are definitely alive.

Mokuba is around 23 right now, and is the head of Ra Yellow. However, he disappeared from the public eye after the events of the original Yu-Gi-Oh!, so few know what he looks like.

PLEASE review this and tell me if I'm doing a decent job! Thank you all so much for reading this!