Berkana

"I admire your speeches. But now, allow me to test the result of my experiment on you. Let me see who is the strongest Reploid! This is my final experiment."

- Berkana

Berkana (ベルカナ) is one of the main antagonists of Mega Man Xtreme 2. She is one of the few female villains of the entire Mega Man X series. Players face her if they play as X.

Berkana is a Reploid shrouded in mystery, her creator and time of production being unknown. She works with Reploid research and development and is the creator of her right arm Gareth. She first appears half way through the game. She is the one behind the Erasure incident at Laguz Island. When X and Zero begin to defeat the eight guardians, Gareth begins to worry about how powerful the two Maverick Hunters really are. When he suggests defeating them quickly, Berkana shoots down the idea, and instead reveals she is more interested in studying them, "I want the data on the Maverick Hunters. The more they fight, the stronger they would become, thus better data would be acquired. You must have noticed how dangerous it is to fight both of them at the same time."

Once X and Zero find the two Soul Erasers at the end of the game, Berkana reveals that she will become the strongest Reploid with the power of Reploid DNA Souls. After a fierce one on one battle with X, Berkana meets her end, and the DNA souls that the two Erasers stole begin to return to the bodies of the various Reploids who met their end at the hands of Gareth. Sigma, the one responsible for the events behind the scenes, also did not approve of her plan due to thinking she was going too far with her goals, with his even going as far as to thank X and Zero for taking her out. Slowly, the Reploids begin to come back to life, putting an end to the crisis.

Appearance
Berkana appears as a blond-haired, wizard-styled Reploid with dark blue being the most prominent color in her palette. She wears a stylized mage robe that extends past her feet, ending in golden spikes. Her helmet has a wizard shape with a red crest that extends to a winged form.

Strategy
Berkana has mainly two types of attacks: she will throw two varieties of bouncing spheres in X's direction, red spheres with an A on them and blue spheres with a B on them. The letters on the spheres correspond with the Game Boy buttons that will be disabled. If X is hit by the magic shot A, he will be temporarily unable to jump, spikes will appear in the walls, and Berkana will shoot red projectiles that split in two when they touch the floor; and each part slides through a direction of the floor. If hit by the magic shot B, X will be temporarily unable to attack, spikes will appear in the floor, and Berkana will attack with icicles that appear from the bottom and top of the screen. After losing half of her energy, sometimes she will release a spiked iron ball that slides slowly through the floor. Her main weakness is the Ray Claw, but she must be struck twice in a row, as the first hit will simply paralyze her and do no damage. If X happens to have Sonic Slicer with him, however, he can make short work of Berkana as it will damage her outright.

Archie Comics
Berkana appeared as a member of Sigma-1's Maverick army, having been cloned by him using the power of the Genesis Portals. She went to the world of Golden Axe, where she is destroyed by Tyris Flare.

Etymology

 * Berkana may be named after the rune berkanan (ᛒ), which means "birch".