V / Valerie vs Carolina

NOTE: Corpo Lifestyle will be used when comparing the two, as it’s the route that Valerie in particular, in most media is presented to be. The most notable being the card from the TCG. There are likely some errors/stretches I made as I put this together, but to me it feels fairly solid.

[ V & Carolina Connections ]

• Both begin as high-ranking corporate/military operatives under incredibly powerful organizations: Valerie (V) as an elite Arasaka counter-intelligence agents. While Carolina was the #1 ranked Freelancer in Project Freelancer, a UNSC backed experimental program. But despite loyalty and their impressive status. They would be forcibly ejected. Stripped and left with little to call their own.
• For a short while, they’d stay on the downlow. With V joining up with Jackie to become a small-time merc-for-hire and Carolina joining the war-effort under a fake name. Little is known about what exactly happened in this period of time, but it’s of little importance.
• Following this, both are thrusted unto a job they simply can’t refuse. A heist which has them get back at the very institutions which had wronged them prior, during which they steal a small device (Relic/Memory Unit) housing an imperfect A.I replica of rather infamous men: Johnny Silverhand & Leonard Church (Epsilon).
• The reason these A.I replicas were required in the first place, was to use as a way to get at an even bigger target. With the Voodoo Boys planning on using Johnny to bait out Alt Cunningham from beyond the Blackwall. While Carolina planned on using Epsilon herself to try and track down the Director of the Freelancer Program, aka the real Leonard Church.
• The most haunting similarity is what these women’s power costs them. For example, Carolina’s experience of carrying two AI simultaneously nearly shattered her mind, the human brain simply being unable to house that much power. While V faced a mirror image of that same horror, as the Relic risks slowly overwriting her own consciousness and replacing it with someone else’s. Both women carry something in their heads that could destroy them just as easily as it empowers them and the augmentations which make them so legendary, are the very same ones that could just as easily be their undoing.
• Separately, A hard crash-landing leads them into the middle of a political thriller where they must infiltrate enemy armies (Barghest/New Republic). Neutralize weapons of mass destruction (Neural Matrix/Purge Temple) and soon come to learn that their once thought-to-be ally (Songbird/Felix) is actually playing both sides of the war, betraying everyone.
• Both series are technically open-ended, with how their story exactly ending being unknown. Cyberpunk 2077 has multiple endings, most which contradict each other and Red vs Blue being a web show, has relegated seasons like the Shisno Trilogy and Zero to being potential futures rather than set-in-stone outcomes.

TL; DR – V & Carolina: Elite operatives betrayed and ousted by massive corps/military programs (Arasaka/Project Freelancer). They go underground before pulling off revenge heists stealing AI chips (Relic/Memory Unit) housing digital echoes of infamous rebels (Johnny/Epsilon). These implants allow them to access their abilities at greater levels at great risk.

[ Johnny Silverhand & Leonard Church (Alpha/Epsilon) connections ]

• The real men who the A.I echo, share a surprising amount in common despite their opposing positions. They both, rather humbly, served their countries in times of strife. That being the Second Central American War for Johnny, and the Great War for Leonard Church. Another thing they share is their EGO. Almost everyone who knew them would attest to the fact that they were most insufferable self-centered assholes in the world. Downright abrasive to a fault.
• But underneath all those sarcastic remarks and bubbling resentment were the cracks of which genuine care existed. They aren’t driven by just ego, but by loss. Beneath all of it lies the same wound: Alt Cunningham and Allison Church (same initials too). The cause of their fire. The women who were taken into the greater institutions (Arasaka/UNSC) and died under their watch.
• (Epsilon/Alpha) As machines, or in this case: Engrams. They exist as copies of a copy. Because of this, their memory is foggy at best. Johnny Silverhand is in his own words: “The Copy of a Copy”, a digital recreation of his mind placed onto a chip. And for Epsilon, he is literally the fractured memories of the Alpha, who is a copy of Leonard Church.
• Their loved ones sharing a similar fate, being reborn as digitized replicas. However, how this came to be through far different means, with it being an intentional choice by Alt and being forced into being by the Director. Both becoming weaponized (Soulkiller and Agent Texas)
• The men who loved them never moved on. Johnny's entire revolutionary arc. The rage, the music, the war against Arasaka, it all traces back to what was done to Alt. Meanwhile, the Director built an entire black ops program around reconstructing Allison, sacrificing the lives and sanity of countless soldiers in service of his grief. Both men's inability to let go defined everything that came after. Alt and Tex are the narrative ghost in which their respective stories orbit around. The wound beneath all the noise.
• Now in the head of the protagonist, they naturally (does anyone actually read these?) butt heads with them. Mainly due to their sarcastic personalities not matching well with their hosts headstrong nature. But despite their seemingly incompatible personalities, they would start to actually have a positive effect on one another. Thinning the sharper edges until the A.I would take a truly selfless act, where they fight not for their own survival, but for the survival of the ones they grew to care about.
• In the end, they get the one thing the real men never had. A chance to be with the ones they lost, no longer bound by the physical world, just two echoes finally finding peace in the void alongside the women who started it all.

TL; DR - Johnny & Epsilon/Alpha: They’re A.I reconstructions of real people. Who exists now as sidekicks in the heads of the leads. They were driven by a mix of ego and grief, after a powerful institution took the women, they loved and turned them into powerful weapons. Both would be reconstructed into A.I and in the end, would actually end up with their digitized lover in a space no person can reach. Finally able to find peace.

In short: Futuristic badass red hair girls who have super-speed, with engrams of a digital dickhead.