"Hey Payton! Listen up, man! I think they're building a box for you!"
"I'll open it."
- Viper
Mipha was like a frog on a lily pad. Piloting Vah Ruta came as second nature to her. Fleets of Moblins, Octoroks, and Lizalfos were crushed by the Divine Beast's might like shrimp falling into the maw of an orca.
The screen on Mipha's Sheikah Slate showed Ganon's forces thinning by the second as they were sent to sleep with the fishes. Even she had gone into this battle nervously doubting what kind of warrior she'd play with her sheltered personality and her pampered royal upbringing. Now she knew the watery confines of Vah Ruta's spring-filled cockpit was where she truly belonged. Revali and Urbosa were just button mashers compared to her.
A five-bar signal twinkled on the Slate's Shi-fi receiver.
"Ayyye, Mi-bo! Work them rutters, girl! These ones be lookin' to snag a mean net 'roun'chu!"
Daruk communicated with her from inside his own Vah Rudania. In friendly customary Goron-speak, he was alerting Mipha to a school of Gyorgs attempting to envelope Vah Ruta's starboard flank and suggesting she should steer the machine away in a defensive maneuver.
Mipha already had another plan in mind.
"Ruta will just have to break out her clippers." A single bubble floated out of the corner of Mipha's mouth as it curled into a smirk. She grasped her webbed thumbs around the Slate's corner triggers and armed the Divine Beast's long range hydro-cannons.
"Okay-bo, bo-bay-bo."
Daruk signed off from the connection. Had he stayed on another few seconds, Mipha would have heard static-laced sounds of horror as Vah Rudania's cockpit filled with fire and its pilot burned in unimaginable agony. The way Daruk's life ended that day was certainly not bo-dacious.
Vah Ruta vaporized the mob of carnivorous clownfish in two sweeps of blue lasers, blaring her long trumpet over her head as she fired away. With Vah Ruta's help, nothing could hold back Mipha back now. She and the other Champions were going to be the victors in this war. She was going to be celebrated as a hero to the Zoras, her father and brother were going to honor her as family, and she was finally going to have the courage to tell Link all the feelings she had been hiding from him. This plan had worked for her ancestor 10,000 years ago. There was no reason it couldn't work again. Beating Ganon down was just a matter of rinse and repeat.
In all the commotion, Mipha didn't notice that the pin for Vah Rudania had mysteriously disappeared from her mini-map. The entire mountain range was covered in silence.
"Hey, Daruk. What's with the invisibility trick? You better not be cooling off over there!"
No response came.
Mipha's Sheikah Slate angrily chimed at her, and it wasn't because she forgot to recharge the control sticks. She steered the Divine Beast toward Death Mountain, but instead the crosshairs moved toward Hyrule Castle. She desperately tried every combination for Turn, Reverse, and Shut Down, but nothing happened.
Vah Ruta wasn't following her commands!
Mipha gagged softly. Her natural senses told her the temperature and oxygen density in the cockpit water were both dropping, creating harsh living conditions for any Zora. Coughing out a swarm of bubbles, she scrambled through her screen to identify the source of this blight in the water.
The signal was coming from all over the control cradle. It spread like a disease permeating every inch of Vah Ruta's armor.
Mipha grasped her neck as the water became unbearable. A cloud of bubbles slowly rose up behind her.
Mipha's entire body violently flopped forward. A tentacle made of barbed purple reeds stabbed through her back and exploded from her chest. Thick black ink seeped out of her mouth as she gasped for fresh water.
Tonight's menu: Poached mereprincess.
Drowning in terror, Mipha watched as the appendage elongated and twisted into a more solid form, dragging itself through her ruptured body inch by agonizing inch. She cringed each second the quivering mass squeezed against her collapsing lung or brushed one of her shattered ribs during its torturous and gruesome journey. The end of the tentacle curled backward and locked its face on hers, revealing its glowing blue nucleus covered under a pulsing red mane.
Mipha could feel her very soul being pulled through the monster's veins and becoming imprisoned under its ruthless glare. A Wizzrobe would have at least waved goodbye to her. This hideous new thing born from Ganon's phantasmic power taunted her with the destruction of her world and everything she held dear with only scheming silence.
Mipha's eyelids fell like weightless Megaton Hammers. Her killer was still grotesquely taking shape as her body succumbed. She could only make out the basic features as her vision blurred from weakness and the sting of heartbroken tears. It was vaguely humanoid with long flailing arms, one of which was still slithering its way through her torso. Its nucleus sat on top of its blob-like shoulders to function as its head. It staggered on hideously misshapen and uneven legs in the fading light, a festering impersonation of Vah Ruta's rightful pilot made from jellyfish innards.
Mipha's world changed to red, quickly followed by reddish black. The pain went away, then everything was darkness.
Author's note: Your Gorons might not talk like this, but mine do.
Author's note 2: Hey did you guys ever hear about that crazy "Morpha killed Ruto" theory? How about the "Morpha killed Ruto" theory?