To be honest, in Vela's view, the mess in Frankfurt wasn't really Arthur Jenkins' fault—the head of Arasaka's Counter-Intelligence Division was simply the scapegoat.
And V was just the one forced to clean up after the scapegoat.
Although the "Frankfurt Incident" didn't fall directly under Vela's North American jurisdiction, as a board member competing with Yorinobu Arasaka for power, there was no classified document in Arasaka that she couldn't access—except those personally sealed by Saburo Arasaka himself.
In short, the cause and effect of the incident were as follows—
A bunch of Militech's lunatics and bastards, while spying on Arasaka's Sea of Clouds Base on the Moon, detected abnormal geological readings. They sent a covert ops team to investigate and discovered that Arasaka was secretly constructing a mass accelerator. Immediately, they leaked this to other powers.
A "mass accelerator," in simple terms, was a massive multi-stage railgun, or Gauss cannon—capable of using electromagnetic force to accelerate spacecraft to escape velocity from Earth, where orbital personnel could then retrieve them.
Compared to traditional rocket launch systems, it was not only more efficient but also much cheaper.
Building a mass accelerator on the Moon would dramatically accelerate Arasaka's lunar colonization project and further free the corporation from the grip of EuroBank. At the same time, the mass accelerator's payloads could either be returning spacecraft or enormous lunar soil chunks rich in Helium-3.
If it were the latter, the impact would be equivalent to—or greater than—a large-scale nuclear strike.
Thus, constructing a mass accelerator without authorization was strictly prohibited by the European Space Assembly (ESA).
Unfortunately, the timing of the exposure couldn't have been worse—it happened right when Arasaka's lunar development contract was up for renewal, and the ESA was holding a conference in Frankfurt to discuss Arasaka's licensing extension for Sea of Clouds Base.
Left unchecked, the scandal could have completely destroyed Arasaka's lunar program.
And just as Arasaka began mobilizing personnel and resources to suppress the incident, disaster struck again in Frankfurt. Due to an internal data leak—or perhaps defection—multiple Arasaka intelligence cells operating under the Paris Arasaka Tower were compromised, and several agents exposed.
The confirmed perpetrators were Militech operatives and agents from the Federal Intelligence Agency.
As a result, the Night City Arasaka Tower was forced to intervene.
Then, Susan Abernathy—Director of Special Operations, who oversaw Arasaka's intelligence system in Night City—dumped the blame on Jenkins, forcing Counter-Intelligence to handle the cleanup.
Even though the two had always been rivals, constantly badmouthing each other before upper management and making their feud painfully obvious, Arasaka had rules. And the rule was simple: when a superior issued an order, subordinates obeyed.
Arasaka Employee Code, Rule Number One—subordinates must strictly comply with orders from their superiors.
Sitting in Night City, with the blame falling from above, Jenkins had no choice but to grit his teeth and clean up the Frankfurt mess.
At that time, the Sea of Clouds Base's mass accelerator had already been discovered by the ESA. Negotiations in Frankfurt had failed, black-ops cover arrangements were sabotaged by rival corps, and the situation had become untenable. No matter which department received the assignment, it was a burning grenade.
Faced with an escalating crisis, Jenkins was ultimately forced to take the most brutal route—silencing witnesses.
But credit where it's due—Jenkins did solve the problem. He stopped the vote and even bought Arasaka an extra week.
Rough as his methods were, questionable as his approach might've been, Arasaka didn't lose the contract.
If responsibility were truly to be assigned afterward, then Paris Arasaka Tower, the European headquarters, the Moon's Sea of Clouds Base, Tokyo Arasaka Tower's Aerospace Division, Arasaka Central Intelligence, and even Abernathy herself—all of them shared the blame.
Meanwhile, Vela, apart from holding both sides in check and demanding cooperation, was too occupied reorganizing Arasaka's Night City Tower, the Free States Alliance, and related military-political affairs to get her hands dirty.
Yorinobu wanted power but refused accountability.
Michiko didn't give a damn.
Hanako stayed home praying…
In the end, it was Saburo Arasaka himself—recovered and back in control—who personally managed the aftermath. After who knows how many rounds of political swordplay and power games, Arasaka successfully renewed its lunar development contract.
As for the under-construction mass accelerator—it was, of course, halted under pressure.
Arasaka wasn't ready to go head-to-head with the world's number one financial power—EuroBank.
At least, not yet.
From what Vela had gathered while playing strategic chess with Saburo Arasaka himself, the project wasn't truly dismantled—only disassembled in a modular fashion, with its components repurposed as construction material for the Sea of Clouds Base.
Now, the incident had finally settled.
The storm had passed, the scandal buried, and foreign enemies withdrawn. With the pressure gone, Vela no longer needed to suppress Arasaka's favorite corporate tradition—internal warfare.
In moments like this, beyond the surface-level hierarchy that was already one of the most rigid in the corporate world, there existed another system within Arasaka—a shadow rule born naturally under such strict vertical order: permitted insubordination.
Sometimes, legitimate, procedural promotions were simply too slow.
Like a circulatory system, the company needed to purge its weak cells to remain healthy. The unfit and unproductive had to be "optimized."
When employees in a department lost faith in their superior, and if someone could prove they were capable of creating greater value for the company, a little "uprising" was tolerated—encouraged, even. Executives like James Thomas knew this all too well and turned a blind eye to the feud between Jenkins and Abernathy.
Let them fight.
Whoever lost would carry the blame for the "Frankfurt Incident."
The loser would lose everything.
And the two of them wouldn't be the only ones.
It was foreseeable that this period would bring a wave of "suicides" within Arasaka—depressed, disgraced failures purged from the ranks.
Thus, the company preserved its strict outward hierarchy while efficiently eliminating internal dead weight. For those replaced through "natural selection" in corporate competition—unless they were battlefield heroes—Arasaka owed them nothing. No severance, no benefits. All assets seized.
Of course, these rules didn't apply to the Arasaka family itself.
"What's got you so fascinated?"
At the Arasaka Coast Reception Center, Michiko set down her utensils, wiped her mouth with a napkin, and looked at Vela.
Vela's eyes glowed faintly orange as she lifted her fork, speared a piece of flank steak, and slipped it into her mouth. It wasn't like she was dining before Saburo's old man anyway—playing with a VR interface during a meal was fine. After chewing slowly, she asked Michiko:
"Personnel files. Guess what kind? If you're right, I'll gift you one of my custom-made miniature dinosaur pets."
Michiko raised a brow. Normally, she wouldn't have entertained such a childish challenge—but the thought of one of Vela's handcrafted dinosaur pets was too tempting. "A purge list?" she guessed.
"Cough, no. I'm not that bored, staring at the files of the soon-to-be-dead."
Vela chuckled dryly, took a sip of coconut milk, and explained, "Quite the opposite, actually—it's a list of potential promotions."
People worth investing in.
On the virtual grid inside her cybernetic vision, files from the Security Division and North America's Secret Operative Society (the successor to Kei Arasaka's network) spread open:
Jimmy [Security Division] — Deputy Director of the Security Bureau (Vela's former adjutant)
Bryan [Security Division] — Section Chief, Security Bureau 3rd Division (former bodyguard, African descent)
Laurie [Security Division] — Section Chief, Security Bureau 4th Division (former bodyguard, Caucasian)
Shuntaro Matsumura [Security Division] — Head of the Cyber-Attack Countermeasures Center
Valerie (V) [Counter-Intelligence Division] — Senior Agent and Assistant Director
...
Vela was indeed reviewing the list of candidates for promotion.
The Security Division was, naturally, her direct lineage—the most loyal of loyalists.
As for Valerie—V—Vela was fully aware of her untapped potential. Bringing her under her wing would be a strategic win. The only complication was her mentor and initial political sponsor, Jenkins. But that wasn't an issue—Vela intended to make herself the new anchor of loyalty.
Another document.
A freshly encrypted file had just been delivered.
Jackie Welles — Heywood native, Hispanic, single-parent family. Mother: Guadalupe Alejandra Welles, owner of the "El Coyote Cojo" bar. Former Valentinos gang member, now freelance mercenary and fixer.
Maine — From Maine, USA. Single-parent family. Former NUSA Special Operations Unit member, retired. Veteran cyberpunk, current merc team leader.
Dorio Gunnarsdóttir — Icelandic, from an athletic family. Maine's partner.
Pilar and Rebecca — Locals, siblings, single-parent family, abandoned as children. Offspring of the late Night City legend and cyberpunk, "Papa Sunrise."
Falco — Republic of Texas, from a farming family. Former professional racer.
Kiwi — Orphan, former doll, now veteran netrunner.
Panam Palmer — Former Aldecaldo Nomad, now freelance mercenary.
...
After the Frankfurt Incident, there was no way Vela would continue ignoring the Counter-Intelligence Division.
This intel came from operatives belonging to the secret agency founded over half a century ago by Kei Arasaka himself—a group that had since split off and operated independently under her command.
Having cultivated deep roots along the West Coast for decades, their information network was, in some respects, far more comprehensive than that of the "new" Arasaka Tower, which had only returned to Night City in 2069.
Some of their intelligence covered matters Vela had previously overlooked or only understood partially.
She scrolled through the files from top to bottom.
As expected—classic cyberpunk. Almost none of them had normal families or complete childhoods.
Still, if V had already reached out to Jackie, that meant Jenkins was moving against Abernathy.
Such a rare opportunity couldn't go to waste.
It was time to add fuel to the fire.
Whether Jenkins or Abernathy ended up dead—or both—it didn't matter. What mattered was this: internal strife within Arasaka. Jenkins would call on V, V would pull in Jackie, Jackie would involve Maine…
Vela was already scheming whether she could use this to set a larger trap, one that would kill multiple birds with a single stone: lure out the Federal Intelligence Agency, deliver a blow to Myers, and eliminate the NUSA's top infiltrator in Night City—Solomon Reed.
That man was infuriatingly cautious and hard to corner, never engaging her forces head-on. Kurt Hansen had tried multiple times and failed. Vela doubted the ongoing Dogtown sweep would succeed either.
But—Maine had once served alongside Solomon Reed in the NUSA Special Operations Unit…
That was a potential lead. Whether it worked or not, it was too valuable not to exploit.
Pondering this, Vela turned her attention to a single name highlighted in bold in the agency's file.
Lucy — Suspected escapee from the Arasaka Cybernetics Division's Deep-Dive Training Program.
Cross-reference match: Lucyna Kushinada — Missing Person.
Father: Takeshi Kushinada — [Paris Arasaka Tower, Warsaw Branch]
Mother: Noemiel Kushinada — [Polish Hacker Syndicate "Squad 404"]
[Notify the target's parents?]
[No.]
Beep.
Message sent.
Expression unreadable, Vela rejected the notification proposal.
Her family background was somewhat similar to Lucy's—but how had the girl fallen so far, cutting ties with her parents to become a fugitive?
Perhaps just a matter of character. Uninterested in prying into another's childhood drama, Vela dismissed the thought.
Soon after finishing her meal with Michiko at the reception center, the two went their separate ways.
Michiko returned to Los Angeles.
Vela headed home to Westbrook.
"Don't forget my dinosaur," Michiko called out. "I want a miniature T-Rex."
"Hah, picky as always," Vela replied with a faint smirk.
Waving her off, the orange-red data glow faded from Vela's eyes as she finished the last of her coconut milk.
The North American conflict was drawing ever closer. It was time to reinforce the security defenses of her Westbrook estate.
The assembly of her personal power armor could finally begin.
With sufficient funding and combat data, the internal living Quinque armor tech from the [Tokyo Ghoul] project was stable; the energy shield and flight system from [Code Geass] were ready; and Tanaka's [Cyber Kong Project] third-generation miniaturized framework had been completed. All components could now be integrated into her custom exosuit to further enhance survivability.
When it came to protecting her own life, Vela never hesitated to spend resources or effort.
Money wasn't the problem. Irreplaceable tech was fine—she didn't care for "superweapons," but that didn't mean she couldn't build one for herself.
Add to that the [Jurassic Park Project], the construction oversight of the Arasaka Research District, the covert rearmament operations… the coming months would once again be filled with relentless overwork.
But it didn't matter. She could handle it. After all, there was someone—something—beyond this world that gave her emotional respite.
Picking up the glowing green Arasaka clover brooch from the table, Vela pinned it to her lapel and rose to leave.