The Black Dragon of the East rears its ugly head everywhere. And, as usual, the great minds at Arasaka are slightly more visionary than those of most of the other corporations.
Saburo Arasaka, still miraculously holding on at 108 (much to the annoyance of his son Kei), realizes that with the change that is being wrought among the children, the corporate agenda should not be to try to stop or control the disease, but to gain control of the children themselves. He views the Carbon Plague as a giant tsunami, and if he and his corporation play their cards right, the wave will carry them forward to a golden future, instead of washing over them and crushing them beneath its inexorable might.
Saburo has heard that the affected children have unusual abilities, powers beyond even those obtained by the most advanced hardware available. This means that if they are properly indoctrinated, they will be the finest and least expensive Arasaka operatives ever obtained. Ten years from now, were Arasaka to field an army of adults with these powers, the corporation would be unstoppable.
To this end, Arasaka is attempting to abduct as many affected children as possible, preferably kids who have had a hard time and would therefore be more susceptible to the lures of a corporate-controlled ‘harmonious family’ situation. The Arasaka corporation has already built (in an incredibly short time) a new facility at their secure R&D site in northern Honshu to house these children, complete with corporate parent-figures carefully screened and trained for maximum appeal. With this facility, Arasaka hopes to make itself the generous corporate parents and family of a new wave of CyberEvolved children, and then give them the training and indoctrination they need to become the vanguard of Arasaka’s future domination.
To this end, the Arasaka field operatives monitor all developments across the world. Through CorpSec, they know when a raid is going down, where the trouble spots are, and what the latest developments in the plague may be. Through the ISA they have access to a lot of information on American children, which allows them to target the lower-income and underprivileged children. (Arasaka will almost never abduct a Glitterkid or Goldenkid unless the psyanal lab can find an excellent reason.)
In an abduction, Arasaka generally waits until another faction is pursuing or has captured the child, allowing them to drop in like saviors and spirit the child away from pursuit. This is just the first step in their planned campaign to make themselves out to be the children’s friend. To further their ability to relate to the children, all Arasaka operatives are trained in the latest streetslang and subculture.
This claim-jumping tactic, of course, is of extreme annoyance to everyone, but as Arasaka takes pains to cover its tracks and camouflages their abduction vans as any of a number of things from derelict vehicles to television mobile units, no one has yet clued in to the depth of Arasaka’s involvement.
Of all the forces pursuing the Evolved, Arasaka is perhaps the most dangerous, because they know the kids, they know what the kids really want, and they play on this knowledge to coax the kids to cooperate willingly.