"No need to worry, you are the DigiDestined, chosen children of destiny. There is no doubt that you will prevail."
The voice echoed across the empty wooden pews of the church, melodic and impossibly calm, yet carrying a weight that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. My hand immediately dropped to my utility belt, fingers curling around a batarang as I swept my gaze across the shadows of the sanctuary. Conner squared his shoulders, his jaw tight, while Kaldur shifted his weight into a combat stance.
"Who's there?" I called out, letting the natural acoustic reverberations of the church amplify my voice. "It's rude to listen to other people's conversations, you know. How about you show yourself?"
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Wally throw me a look of absolute, incredulous disbelief. It was a look that practically screamed, *Do you really have the right to say that to someone else? You're literally Batman's sidekick.* I ignored him completely, keeping my eyes peeled for any shift in the dust motes floating in the stained glass light.
A soft, musical laugh rippled through the air. "Sorry. You are correct. I will show myself now."
A bright flash of pure, concentrated light erupted next to the wooden podium. It was so intense that my lenses automatically polarized, and I still had to throw an arm over my face. When the spots finally cleared from my vision, the being standing at the front of the church left all of us in stunned silence.
It was unquestionably an angel Digimon, but unlike any we had seen or heard about. She was a blonde holy warrior clad in jade-green armor that seemed to shimmer with an inner luminescence. Eight pristine, feathered wings cascaded from her back, folding delicately against the stone floor. In one hand she loosely held a magnificent javelin, and in the other, a shield that radiated a subtle, protective warmth. Just looking at her made the sanctuary's passive aura of safety spike into something tangible, like a physical barrier against all harm.
"My goodness!" Piximon gasped, dropping completely out of the air. "Lady Ophanimon! What are you doing here? No, what happened? Where have you and the others gone to for all these years? Are you okay?"
Piximon was firing off questions at a machine-gun pace, but what truly shocked me was his posture. The tiny, battle-hardened Ultimate-level trainer who had mercilessly beaten us into the dirt just a few days ago had dropped to his knees. He was bowing so deeply that his snout practically touched the floorboards, completely ignoring the painful stretching of his fresh bandages.
We all exchanged bewildered glances. Piximon hadn't even acted a fraction this respectful toward Ikaris, and Ikaris was the literal messenger of God. Who exactly was this angel?
To our growing shock and confusion, instead of answering the armored angel held up her hand, her expression softening behind her visor, silently asking for silence. Our shock only compounded when the manic, stubborn Piximon immediately clamped his mouth shut and did exactly as asked without a single argument.
"Piximon, please," Ophanimon said, her voice carrying that same extremely gentle, soothing quality. It washed over us, making my tense muscles involuntarily relax. It felt as though danger simply could not exist in the same zip code as her. "I have told you more than once, there is no need to bow every single time you see me or the others. You never act like this for Ikaris. You are going to make me jealous at this rate."
Piximon kept his head bowed, trembling slightly.
"Oh, never mind, you will never change," Ophanimon sighed affectionately. "Just please, properly introduce me to the chosen children."
Piximon immediately scrambled up to do as asked, though he kept his posture rigidly deferential. "Everyone, this is Lady Ophanimon. She is one of the Three Great Angels of the Digital World, representing the absolute love and mercy of God. Her role is the protector of the Kernel, the very core of the Digital World, alongside Seraphimon and Cherubimon. She is specifically tasked with imparting love and light to all creation."
Piximon was doing everything he can to make sure we understood just how important the angel standing in front of us was, and he more than thankfully succeeded. My analytical mind spun into overdrive. This wasn't just a standard holy Digimon or a local priest. We were standing in front of one of the top three most important beings in the entire Digital World hierarchy. I had been hoping for someone important and knowledgeable to answer my questions about Lord Amir and the grand tactical board of this ten year war. I guess I had gotten exactly what I wished for.
"Lady Ophanimon, these are the DigiDestined," Piximon continued, his breathing slightly heavier as the exertion of bowing and speaking agitated his injuries. "Wally, Kaldur, Dick, and Conner. And their partners: Gabumon, Biyomon, Agumon, Palmon, Tentomon, Gomamon, Patamon, and Gatomon."
Ophanimon noticed his labored breathing in an instant. She stepped forward, her armor clinking softly, and bent down. She placed a gentle, gauntleted hand on top of Piximon's head. A wave of golden light washed over the tiny Digimon. When the light faded, his bandages crumbled to dust and fell away. We could all clearly see that not a single scratch was left on him.
Piximon immediately bowed again, thanking Ophanimon profusely for healing him. She waved him off casually, acting as though mending an Ultimate-level Digimon's battle wounds was as trivial as sweeping dust off a table.
***
From my throne in the Divine Space, I watched the holographic projection of the sanctuary with a deeply satisfied smirk. Deploying Ophanimon directly into the church was a calculated risk, but the payout was already proving astronomical.
I had realized during their trek to the village that Dick Grayson was entirely too smart for his own good. His detective training under Batman meant he was constantly looking for the seams in the reality I had constructed. He was questioning the timeline, questioning the absence of the angelic armies, and questioning my own divine motivations. If I left him in the dark too long, his suspicion would turn inward, and he even no matter how low the chances of it are start realizing that this entire world was an artificial dungeon designed to improve his combat ability and harvest divine energy for me.
I could not send Ikaris to give them the lore. I had specifically established the rule that the Eternals could not directly interfere or dispense certain restricted knowledge. If Ikaris suddenly showed up to dump a history lesson, Dick would instantly flag the inconsistency. But Ophanimon? She was a Great Angel. She existed outside the rules the Eternal's were subject to. By manifesting her here, I could feed the Young Justice team the exact narrative I needed them to believe, wrapping the game mechanics of my dungeon in a beautiful, tragic mythology.
I leaned back against the cold cousins of my marble throne, watching Ophanimon play her part perfectly. The aura of peace she projected was just her borrowing a localized manipulation of the Divine Space's environmental parameters, but to the teenage heroes, it felt like the warmth of a loving God. I was manipulating their faith, giving them a grand, terrifying history to justify why they had to fight Etemon and the Dark Masters without heavy artillery backing them up. All though after this he might just make her and the other two great Angels real Digimon like the others as having a real angelic military isn't a bad idea.
***
Standing in the sanctuary, I watched the celestial being turn her attention away from Piximon and toward us.
"Hello to you all," Ophanimon said, her green eyes crinkling warmly behind her helmet even if no one saw it. "As Piximon said, I am Ophanimon. It is a pleasure to meet you in person. Now, I do not have a lot of time. The only reason I knew you were free to be approached now was because I sensed your crests' power resonating with the church."
I instinctively touched the Crest of Knowledge hanging against my chest. It felt slightly more warm then usual to the touch.
"Now, I am sure you have a lot of questions, some of which Ikaris cannot answer without breaking the non-interference rules that bind the Eternals," Ophanimon continued, resting her hands on the hilt of her javelin. "So go ahead. Ask anything, and I will answer to the best of my ability. This I swear, as I and my kind am not bound by such a rule."
The team exchanged rapid glances. We all implicitly understood that whatever cosmic duty or danger was keeping all the holy Digimon from helping in the war, she had put it on hold just to take some of her obviously very important time to answer our questions. We couldn't waste this opportunity.
Kaldur stepped forward with his usual calm authority. "Lady Ophanimon, we have many questions, but we will try and be quick. The first one is... why us specifically? There are so many heroes where we come from. Heroes far stronger and more experienced than we are. Why were we chosen?"
It was the question that had been eating at all of us since we woke up on the beach. Why not Superman? Why not Batman, or Wonder Woman, or the Flash?
Ophanimon's expression turned somber. "That is a difficult one to answer perfectly, as I was not by the Creator's side when he chose you, nor have I heard directly from him since the darkness came. But one thing I can assure you of is this... it was because out of all the heroes in your world, you were the ones he had the most faith in to actually succeed in saving our world. Otherwise, they would have been picked."
I felt a strange tightness in my chest. Beside me, Conner looked down at the floor, his fists clenching and unclenching unsure how to react. Wally rubbed the back of his neck, looking uncharacteristically humbled. To hear that a literal God had looked across our entire planet, bypassed the Justice League, and chosen us because he believed in our potential over theirs... it was a staggering amount of validation. I was still incredibly curious about the exact tactical metrics Amir had used, but like Ophanimon said, she wasn't there. Until we met the Creator himself, the specifics would have to remain a mystery.
"Thank you," Kaldur said softly, bowing his head slightly in respect. "Our next question is regarding the timeline. Why have all the holy Digimon disappeared from the world on the exact day the darkness appeared?"
It was the most pressing tactical question we had. As Kaldur asked it, I saw Ophanimon openly sigh in exhaustion. The conversation had barely started, and she already appeared incredibly tired, the weight of centuries pressing down on her armored shoulders.
"For you to understand this, you need to know a bit of the Digital World's ancient history. History that many no longer know, or choose not to remember," Ophanimon began, her voice echoing mournfully in the quiet church. "During the first age, when the Creator still walked the world over three hundred thousand years ago, there was a great catastrophe."
I pulled up my holographic notepad from my wrist computer, my thumbs flying over the keys to record every single word.
"Some of the original and strongest angel Digimon betrayed the Creator and fell to darkness," Ophanimon explained, her grip tightening on her shield. "They embraced the seven deadly sins and became known ever since as The Seven Great Demon Lords. I will not say their names, as names have power in this dimension, and I do not want them to be aware of you if you mistakenly say one aloud. But to save you from a long, tragic story, there was a great battle."
She looked up at the stained glass windows, though I could tell she was looking at memories from a millennia ago. "They fought against the Four Holy Beasts and their leader Huanglongmon, the entire angel army led by us Great Angels, and even the ten Eternals of the Creator. The war lasted for a hundred years, tearing the digital fabric of reality apart, just to be able to seal them away in the deepest void. Not many are aware of this but we even lost Huanglongmon who sacrificed himself to be sealed alongside them so we could pull it off which is why no one has seen him since the end of the first age."
Ophanimon brought her gaze back down to us, the sorrow in her voice replaced by a hardened, terrible resolve. "When the new darkness—Devimon, Etemon, and their masters—attacked, it was not just a conquest. It was a coordinated strike against those ancient seals. We stopped them from shattering the locks, but doing so required an immense amount of holy power. We have been stuck guarding them ever since as they have tried many more times to open them. Every single holy Digimon of sufficient power is currently locked in a metaphysical stalemate beneath the world, physically holding the gates of hell shut. Not to mention we three great Angels cannot just leave the Kernel undefended so we can not guard the seals at all times so must leave it to the lower ranked angel Digimon."
The sanctuary was dead silent. I stopped typing. The scale of the tactical board had just expanded so massively that my previous calculations felt like child's play.
The source of the darkness and the Dark Masters hadn't just taken over the world; they had executed a perfect first strike. They forced the entire angelic military into a defensive bottleneck, rendering them completely incapable of intervening on the surface. If Ophanimon or any of the others left the Kernel or seals to fight Etemon or the other generals, the Seven Great Demon Lords would break free, and the world would instantly end from the restarting of the first war. Or worse they get the core of the Digital World in their hands and who knows what they can do with it.
That was why we were here. Lord Amir hadn't abandoned his world; his primary forces were pinned down in a siege that had lasted ten years. He needed an outside strike force to operate on the surface, cut off the Dark Network, and dismantle the enemy generals while his angels held the line. We weren't just a random rescue team anymore like we first thought. We were the only offensive maneuver God had left to play.