Being stepped on by a heavy dinosaur is one of the most painful deaths imaginable. Any kind of crushing, in fact, is unpleasant (to put it mildly), but it's worse for Katashi because it was his goddamn job to capture the escaped asset in the first place. Normally, he'd be able to neutralize his target within minutes. He'd simply tranquilize the asset and bring it back to its enclosure without much difficulty. This mission should have been the same. Instead, he found himself being grabbed by a giant paw and flung to the ground. The sensation that followed was unpleasant, to say the least. Here's what happened.

Katashi falls. Gravity has become his worst enemy. He feels like a sack of potatoes, and wishes that he could reduce the speed of his plummet. He lands in the water and feels two things. First, he is wet and cold from the puddle. Second, he is rattled by the impact. The water he lands in is rather cool, partly from being in a shady part of the jungle, but also because Katashi has been sweating for a long time, so the perceived temperature of his body is high in comparison. He can feel the liquid soaking his clothing, seeping between the cracks in his armor. It is grainy, and a little bit slimy where the muck gets thick. It has a strange texture to it, and it feels uncomfortable. Obviously, he has bigger problems to worry about.

Although the mud beneath the water is soft, when Katashi hits it, it's like being slammed into a solid wall. It knocks the wind out of him, and he gasps for air. He soon realizes that inhaling is a bad idea, because his face is underwater. He coughs quickly and pushes himself upwards with his palms. Thankfully, he didn't swallow any liquid while he was submerged. He can still taste the mud on his tongue, however, and promptly spits out the remaining sludge. He arches his back, gasping loudly, his hands slipping in the puddle pathetically. For a moment, he thinks that he will make it out alive.

Something presses on his back.

It pushes him down, and he is back in the water. He chokes, but not for long. Whatever is touching his spine squeezes the air out of him. His last breath comes out in bubbles. As the pressure increases, Katashi feels a pain unlike anything he's ever experienced. It's like having a ton of bricks dropped on his back.

His body sinks into the mud. Although it sounds foolish in hindsight, he hopes that he will sink far enough to avoid being injured. The jungle pool, unfortunately, has a solid bottom. His situation is hopeless.

By now, Katashi knows that he is being stepped on. He can't feel the individual scales of the Indominus' foot, nor can he feel the sharp claws at the end of each toe, but there is no doubt that that is what is about to kill him. It's still pressing down. He wonders if the dinosaur is doing it on purpose. She's smart. She outsmarted him. And now he's going to die.

He can hear his ribs cracking. One of the jagged edges punctures his left lung. He doesn't have time to choke on his own blood, because he is milliseconds away from death. He knows this, but he doesn't want to accept it.

More than anything, Katashi wants to live. He wants to retire early and move back to his old village. He wants to meet a nice lady and settle down. He wants to spend the rest of his days in a quaint cottage by the lake. No more of this dinosaur bullshit. It's become too dangerous.

This is what he would have thought, if he had had the time to complete his reflection. He is cut short by the final blow. His ribcage shatters completely, poking into god knows what other vital organs. He's broken beyond repair. No doctor alive can fix this. He is going to die.

The end comes quickly. Too quickly. He does not see a dazzling light, he does not experience a comforting sensation, and he does not encounter lost loved ones. He just dies, plain and simple. It's not glorious, it's not heroic, and truth be told, it is severely underwhelming. After years and years of committing himself to a cause, his life is ending abruptly: no fanfare, no dramatics. Will he be remembered? Who knows. Certainly not Katashi. He's not going to be around for his funeral, obviously.

How many more people will die this day? Will their lives mean less than his? There's no doubt that the Indominus will kill again. Katashi was sure of this before he died. The first to go would be his coworkers. His friends. Highly trained individuals who would fall prey to an asset unlike anything they'd ever encountered. A killing machine.

There's always a chance that they'll stop it before it reaches the actual park. Perhaps Katashi is just unlucky. He hadn't been expecting it to camouflage itself. He had learned from a very young age that it was unwise to assume that there was more to the world than what was objectively there. He had no reason to assume that the Indominus Rex could change the color of its scales, so naturally, he didn't. Perhaps a dreamer might have speculated this fact. After all, the asset in question had seemingly disappeared when it was in its paddock. Unfortunately, Katashi hadn't allowed himself to believe that the creature was anything more than a simple dinosaur. He feels very foolish now. Well, he would feel foolish, if he were still alive.

He would also feel something else: regret. Not the aforementioned regret of leaving the Earth unceremoniously, but another regret. A deeper regret. A regret that stems from an experience in his childhood. This regret is the worst of all.

He regrets not allowing himself to dream.