Sherry Barnett

Sherry Barnett (シェリー・バーネット) is a student of Midgar Royal Spellsword Academy, and a researcher at the Midgar Academy of Science. She possess a great knowledge in ancient languages and artifacts.

Appearance
Sherry is a cute girl of moderate height with peach or pink on both hair and eyes. She has short, shoulder-length hair with a lock of hair sticking out on top and braided on both sides. He has a medium build and slender.

As a student she wears the Midgar Royal Spellsword Academy uniform with a navy blue blazer jacket with white and gold accents, tie, white shirt and skirt with navy blue and gold accents, black stockings, a pair of white high heels, and a black robe with red jewels on the sides.

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

- Sherry to Cid Kagenou

Sherry is a smart, bright young girl which allows her to decipher ancient languages. However having poured a lot of her time in her studies, this makes her shy and unable to interact or speak properly with others. Even her foster father was very worried about her because she didn't have any friends at school.

In addition, she is very loyal to those closest to her such as like her step-father and Cid. It was only developing a crush on the latter after receiving chocolate from him that she starts to be more actively approach him, in hopes to be closer to the boy.

Background
Sherry, was a good, cute, but naive girl, who was in the care of her mother, Lukreia (nothing is known yet, about her biological father), while she spent her childhood next to her mother, who was working hard at her job. Unbeknownst to Sherry, they were somewhat in financial trouble, they received a visit from a mysterious man named, Lutheran Barnett, who introduced himself as a good friend, who would help her mother and her in their work and funds for other things. What was she doing, during that time her mother began to study the artifacts she received and that Mr. Barnett gave her, including the "Eye of Avarice" and since then, a very affectionate relationship began to form since then.

But without knowing anything, one night, Sherry secretly witnessed the death of her mother at the hands of a mysterious man (without realizing it was Barnett) and was traumatized by that fact that would mark her entire childhood, and she cried hard at her mother's death. After her mother's funeral, Sherry was taken in by Mr. Barnett who treated her like his own daughter (not knowing 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, while spending the rest of his childhood with his adoptive father, Mr. Barnett.

Midgar Academy Terrorist Attack
Sherry and Lutheran Barnett are visited by Princess Iris Midgar and Alexia Midgar. Iris gives Sherry an artifact belonging to the Cult of Diablos and asks her to decipher the text on it. Ruslan encourages her to do so, stating its a rare opportunity.

As she walks in the cafeteria, Cid gives her a chocolate he doesn't need. Later, Ruslan sees the chocolate and she explains a boy gave it to her. He tells her that its hard to obtain such good chocolate, so the boy must really like her and she must consider well what she will reply.

Sherry goes to see Cid at the tournament and after his loss, she checks on him. She gives him cookies and asks if they can be friends and he accepts. Learning his name, she realizes he was Alexia's boyfriend and goes to speak with her, but Alexia explains that they are no longer together and were pretending to be a couples. That makes Sherry happy and she gets excited to work even more harder to decipher the text.

When the Academy was being attacked by imposters of Shadow Garden orchestrated by Lutheran: with the help of Cid, Sherry was able to complete the text and use the device to nullify the artifact that was disabling the students magic. When Sherry still searching Lutheran, Cid already confronted him as Lutheran confessed to murdering Lukreia and the exploitation of Sherry in every detail before seemingly killing Cid off. Shadow appeared before he leaves and was easily defeated before the former killed him while recalling his misdeeds. Sherry arrived to witness Shadow murder his step-father with Shadow withholding the truth and wept for her step-father's death.

In the aftermath of the incident, Sherry spoke to Cid about studying abroad at Laugus to further her research and bid him farewell in order to achieve her true sinister goals, only for him to hear them by chance.

Bushin Festival Tournament
In the anime, Sherry read on the newspaper about the demon Shadow was chased away from the capital by Iris and Beatrix during the Bushin Festival and Rose Oriana is still missing after she killed her father, King Raphael Oriana stabbing an image of Shadow with a knife as she become obsessed with killing Shadow as her study room is covered with his wanted posters.

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, she is poor at fighting and her stealth skills are so bad that Cid had to step in to save her as he puts down several Shadow Garden impersonators trying to kill Sherry by killing them away with slime nooses around their necks and hanging them outside the school to slowly choke to death, all without her noticing.

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, was seemingly disgusted upon learning that Lutheran Barnett murdered Sherry's mother, and he personally gave the villain a matching painful death in retribution. Although, he didn't 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 step-father 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 step-daughter and her late mother to further his own gain unbeknownst to her. Sherry deeply cared about her step-father 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 step-father.

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 the 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, while in the light novel and anime since this is deliberately downplayed to fit in with the hidden sinister personality.
 * In the anime final episode, there is a scene where Sherry developed a 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.