"I had a hard time taking the 'monster' thing seriously," said Zouichi. "I am what I was created to be: a product of years of scientific research. There's nothing particularly monstrous about that. It might have been different had I been raised in a less isolated environment, but I mostly only had contact with others like me... and the R&D division. I'm fairly sure anyone who was that superstitious would never been allowed to work on the project in the first place."

He raised an eyebrow. "What kind of something else are we talking about?"