Final Fantasy VII.
Aerith was born to the last full-blooded Cetra, Ifalna, and her researcher, Professor Gast, at Icicle Lodge in the northern continent.
After recognizing his failures with the Jenova Project and becoming weighted by guilt, hehe Gast had resigned from his position as the head of Shinra's Science Department. He relocated to Icicle Lodge in an attempt to further his investigations into the Cetra's history. There, he met Ifalna and received her voluntary cooperation. During their interviews, they fell in love and began to live together. Within two years, Aerith was born.
When Aerith was only twenty days old, her family was attacked by Shinra soldiers under the command of Professor Hojo —— another Shinra scientist, and Gast's former assistant—killing Gast and capturing Aerith and Ifalna so as to provide further research for Hojo. Seven years later, Ifalna succeeded in escaping from the Shinra headquarters in Midgar with Aerith, fleeing as far as the train station in the Sector 7 Slums before a dying Ifalna entrusted Aerith to the care of Elmyra Gainsborough, a childless widow.
As time went on, Aerith's Cetra heritage would reveal itself in various ways, most notably the ability to hear the souls of the dead wandering the Planet. However, she was uncomfortable with these abilities and refused to acknowledge them or her ancestry. Throughout the rest of her childhood and adolescence, Aerith would be a constant target of Shinra, who were seeking to recover her. Aerith, now a flower girl, tries her best to lead a normal life despite numerous kidnapping attempts by the Turks. After a failed attempt to foil Sephiroth's stealing of a dangerous materia, Aerith ventures alone into the Forgotten City for an unknown purpose, incurring Sephiroth's wrath. Cloud and his companions give chase and eventually locate Aerith, praying at an altar. Sephiroth soon attempts to take possession of Cloud through his Jenova cells (as he has done before) and use him as a pawn to kill Aerith. Cloud resists the command with the help of his friends, whereupon Sephiroth reveals himself and slays Aerith with a single thrust of his sword.
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