Sherry Barnett

Sherry Barnett (シェリー・バーネット) is a former second-year student at Midgar Royal Spellsword Academy specializing ancient linguistics who is given an assignment to study an artifact recovered from the Cult of Diablos, eliciting an assassination attempt on her. Although being saved by Shadow, she developed a vendetta against him for killing her adoptive father, unaware that he was a Cult member and the one who murdered her mother.

Description
''A second year student at Midgar Academy for Dark Knights. A prodigy lauded as the smartest mind in the Kingdom, her abilities have even been recognized by the royal family. Iris often asks her to translate the ancient script found on Artifacts. However, she is also unworldly and lacks the ability to read a room. ~Crunchyroll''

Appearance
Sherry is a cute girl of moderate height with a slender physique possessing pastel pink hair and eyes. She has short, shoulder-length hair, braided on both sides with an ahoge on top of her head.

As a student, she wore the standard Midgar Royal Spellsword Academy uniform. A navy blue blazer adorned with white and gold accents. Her white shirt complimented a navy blue waspie and necktie ornamented with gold trim. A white skirt with a navy blue and gold hem covered black leggings. White lace-up block heel boots and a black robe with red jewels on the sides rounded out the outfit.

Personality
"When it's all over, will you listen to my story?"

- Sherry to Cid Kagenou

Sherry is a smart and bright young girl with a thirst for knowledge. That intelligence allows her to decipher ancient languages, a rare feat even for intellectuals. She invests a lot of time into academics and as a consequence, Sherry’s social acumen has major gaps. Even basic social interactions prove challenging, making relationships difficult to cultivate. Her foster father was aware of this problem and openly expressed concerns about her lack of friends. For those she has formed a relationship with, Sherry is attentive and loyal.

After receiving chocolate from Cid, she made a conscious effort to actively approach him, in hopes of being closer to him. Sherry eventually developed a one-way crush. In a few instances, the former student displayed clumsiness when she traversed the campus occupied by Cult members posing as Shadow Garden.

Following the death of her stepfather, her personality changes. She becomes more withdrawn and loses her cheery disposition. In the anime,  she becomes dangerously obsessed with Shadow, unaware that he and Cid are the same person.

Background
Sherry is a kind, cute, but naive girl who has been raised by her mother Lukreia who took care of her alone until she become nine years old, while working as a researcher since her father died soon after she was born. While Sherry spent her childhood next to her mother, they were somewhat in financial trouble until they received a visit from a mysterious man named Lutheran Barnett, who introduced himself as a good friend and wanted to help her mother with her work by funding her research for other things.

During that time, her mother began to study the artifacts Lutheran gave her, including the "Eye of Avarice" and since then, a very affectionate relationship began to form since then. However oblivious one night, Sherry secretly witnessed the death of her mother at the hands of a mysterious man (who was Barnett) and was traumatized as a mark of her childhood as she wept for her mother's death.

After her mother's funeral, Sherry was taken in by Lutheran who treated her like his own daughter (unaware that he was manipulating her), and Sherry began to try to recover from the event and decided to continue her mother's investigation and work. Ever since, she spent the rest of her childhood with her adoptive father, Lutheran.

Midgar Academy Terrorist Attack
Sherry and Lutheran Barnett are visited by Princess Iris Midgar and Alexia Midgar. Iris gives Sherry an artifact that belonging to the Cult of Diablos and asks her who is known as the most brilliant mind in the kingdom to decipher the text on it because they were unable to do so. Her father encouraged Sherry to do so stating its a rare opportunity to which she accept and Iris will assign the Crimson Order to keep watch on her due to Zenon Griffey's scandal in the Alexia's kidnapping case which got the involvement within the Knight Order, as well as protecting Sherry from the Cult who wants to seized the artifact after the arson incident in the warehouse which contained all the evidence that had been collected was burned to nothing. Lutheran allowed it under the condition that he takes only two guards to secure Sherry in her lab, so Princess Iris chose her most trusted men: Glen and Marco Granger.

The next day while she is still researching the artifacts given to her by Princess Iris on the library, Sherry is suddenly surprised when a boy non-chalantly gave her a box of chocolates all a sudden as part of a dare from his friends. In her research room, she wonders what is the chocolate. Her father Lutheran then comes inside her room when notices Sherry having a chocolate, which he recognizes its chocolate and explains its been popular lately. Sherry tells him that a boy gave it to her and her father guesses its a present and it must have been love at first sight. As chocolate is considered a luxury item, Lutheran surmises the boy must really like her as he giving a long hard time to obtain such good chocolate and she must consider her reply carefully. He wonders what she will tell him as he must be waiting for an answer. Lutheran also tells Sherry that study and research is important, but she also needs to learn on how to interact with others. He starts to caught, but states he has been feeling better lately and is lucky to have such a good daughter. Sherry states she is the lucky one as he adopted her.

Sherry went to saw a boy who gave her a chocolate known as Cid Kagenō at the preliminary tournament for the upcoming Bushin Festival with his match against Student Council President Rose Oriana and checked up on him after his defeat. She then gave him cookies she baked as thanks and asks if they can be friends, to which he accepts. She tell her father that they are going to be friends and he joins them. After some small talk, Lutheran advises Cid to take care of his injuries before he decided to leave.

Sherry is thinking about Cid in her research room and wonders if she should visit him since they are friends. Learning his name, she realized that he was Alexia's boyfriend and went to speak with her. Sherry decides to go and talk with Alexia, who guesses that she is there to talk about the artefact, but Sherry denies it. Nervous, Sherry says she heard that Alexia is in a relationship with Cid and wonders if its true. Alexia states they broke up and in reality they weren't dating, as she explained that they were only pretending to be a couple for specific reasons. After hearing her answer, Sherry gets quite happy to hear that, and states she became friends with Cid the other day. She wasn't able to concentrate on her research, but now its glad to learn they aren't together. Sherry who feels happy that she's not interfering in another relationship that she was ecstatic to work even harder to decipher the artifact decide to left shortly before Alexia seethed and took her anger out on her teacup.

Five days later when Sherry who had realized the artifact she was researching while unknowingly a group of black hooded people has attacked the Academy, someone enters her research room through a window and states he's from 'Shadow Garden', but then wonders if it's the Shadow Guardian. He reveals his name as Rex the Game of Betrayal, explaining his job is to retrieve the artifact and once he is done, he is allowed to wreak as much havoc as he wants. Rex then sees the artifact in Sherry's hands, but as he attacks her, Glen stopped his attack. While Glen and Marco keep the terrorists busy, they let Sherry escape.

While she moves around running and almost begging to be captured from the terrorist, Cid ends up taking out several terrorists, saving her from being captured or detected. Sherry ends up tripping and encountering Cid as he has several things to tell her, but first asks her to remove her noisy slippers and the two of them then headed to the Vice Principal's room. Sherry finds the book she was looking for and explains to Cid that the artifact Eye of Avarice is the one that blocks their magic. The artifact absorbs and stores the magic from any user, but it can be programmed to ignore some magical frequencies. Sherry guesses it can absorb magical traces that are too small to detect or powerful spells that exceed its capacity, however there isn't a human capable of doing the second. Once the artifact had absorbed all it could absorb, it will release all the stored energy at once.

They both understood that the artifact can be used to disable or control other artifacts, such as the one that deployed a magic-nullifying barrier around the Academy. Since all the students are in the auditorium, Sherry guesses that the artifact is somewhere nearby and if it releases all the energy it will blow up and kill all in the auditorium. Because of that, Sherry states her father didn't publish his findings and gave the artifact to the government for safekeeping. Sherry also explains that the artifact she was researching is used to control the Eye of Avarice and store the energy for a long-term. Sherry plans on using the basements and reach the auditorium. Once she is close to the Eye of Avarice, she will activate this artifact and counter the Eye of Avarice's magic seal. However, she left all her tools needed to fine-tune this artifact in her research room. Cid then stated that he would get the tools for her and left Sherry to wait in the room.

After Cid had returned safely and managed to bring all the tools she needed, Sherry fine tunes the artifact and is ready to head into the tunnels. But before she enter the secret tunnels, Sherry tell Cid by recalls seeing the death of her mother as a child. Lutheran comforted her, stating her mother was a great researcher and offered to take and raise Sherry. As Lutheran supported her mother's research, Sherry is determined to repay him. Cid leaves Sherry head to the auditorium through the Academy' secret tunnels alone.

Sherry eventually reaches the auditorium and seeing the Cult knight holding the Eye of Avarice, she activates her artifact and throwing it to disables the magic blocking field, allowing Rose Oriana attacks one of the terrorists, stating their magic is back and the students start fighting back. As the fight starts, Shadow comes from the roof with other Shadow Garden members and turn the tables when they engages the terrorists.

Knowing that her father is not in the auditorium, Sherry returns through the tunnels in order to find him. However, she discover Shadow standing over the corpse of her father, unaware Lutheran had not only confessed to killing her mother but also orchestrating the entire terrorist incident only moments before her arrival. She breaks down in tears over Lutheran's corpse as Shadow disappears into the night.

In the aftermath of the incident, Sherry tells Cid she will head to Laugus to further her research and bids him farewell. It is inferred through her aura that she intends to become strong enough to avenge her father on Shadow.

Anime/Game
In the anime, Sherry reads about how Iris and Beatrix chased Shadow off during the Bushin Festival, and Rose Oriana is still missing after she killed her father, King Raphael Oriana. It is also revealed that she has become so obsessed with seeking vengeance that her entire room is plastered with Shadow's wanted poster.

Powers & Abilities
Sherry has an extraordinary ability in her knowledge, her greatest trait is to know of ancient civilizations, which allows her to decipher their language and identify many artifacts by recognizing it during her research.

However, her fighting and stealth capabilities were close to non-existent as they were so horrid, Cid had to intervene numerous times to prevent her being captured as she made her way around the campus.

Cid Kagenō / Shadow
Sherry was Cid's upperclassman at Midgar Academy, when the two encountered one another after Cid passed Sherry his chocolate at random. Cid and Sherry had a friendly relationship, although Cid doesn't know that Sherry had developed genuine feelings for him. It was during the terrorist attack at the academy that Cid took serious interest in her, thinking she might be important to the "main plot".

One thing to note is that it's implied Cid genuinely did care for Sherry, as he constantly protected her from the terrorists. This was explicitly demonstrated when he was disgusted upon learning that Lutheran Barnett murdered Sherry's mother as he personally gave the villain the same painful death in retribution. Although, he did not tell the witnessing Sherry about her adoptive father's true nature, thinking it was better she kept her loving view of him and hating his alter-ego Shadow.

In the anime, she is seen to have developed an obsessive vendetta towards Shadow. The said scene is absent in the light novels.

Lutheran Barnett
Lutheran was Sherry's stepfather and adopted her after her mother Lukeria's funeral while continuing the latter's work. While working undercover as assistant principal at Midgar Academy, he puts on the facade of a humble man with a close relationship with Sherry. In reality, Lutheran was power hungry and exploited his stepdaughter and her late mother to further his own gain unbeknownst to her. Sherry deeply cared about her stepfather and is unaware of his misdeeds even after his death.

Lukreia
Sherry's late mother, Sherry spent much of her childhood next to her while working. After her death, Sherry would continue her work spending the rest of her childhood with Lutheran as her stepfather.

Alexia Midgar
Assumedly Alexia's former upperclassman, not much is known of their interactions aside from being entrusted to decipher a device founded from the Zenon incident and when she notably talked to the princess regarding Cid. Upon hearing that the two never dated in the first place, she was relieved and reiterated that they weren't dating much to her ire.

In the game, the princess alongside Nu has expressed jealousy towards the former student when two gave chocolates and cookies to each other respectively.

Iris Midgar
Although a student, Iris has acknowledged her mechanical abilities and entrusted her with the device from a Cult of Diablos base during the Zenon incident. It is unknown whether the two interacted beyond the device.

Trivia

 * Sherry likes to put a lot of sugar and milk in her coffee.
 * In the Manga, Sherry doesn't seem distraught at all over her stepfather's death when she could barely keep it together. In the Light Novel and Anime, this is deliberately mitigated to fit in her hidden sinister personality.
 * In the anime final episode, there is a scene where Sherry developed an obsessive vendetta against Shadow and laughed maniacally after stabbing a news portrait of his face with a knife. Whether this is canon or not is yet to be confirmed due to Sherry's absence after her debut in the first light novel.
 * To the present date, it is unknown who the husband was, Lukreia husband, at the same time the biological father of Sherry Barnett.