A beautiful girl runs full speed through a field of pink and blue poppies, her face obscured from view by the glint of the sun. She’s headed towards a partially-destroyed building, the tranquil skeleton of what looks to have once been a church. Before entering, she does a double hand stand, flies through the air, and lands on the altar. She looks up at us, a sultry expression on her face.

It’s Aeris Gainsborough. And no, she isn’t back from the dead. (That would require you to play through Final Fantasy on Super Extra Hard Mode in under fifteen minutes, man.) This vision is actually a summon. And it’s the eighth materia the deceased Ms. Gainsborough has released since her death at the hands of Sephiroth over ten years ago.

Or should we say, “Ms. Gainsborough’s People?”

The materia – titled “Badasz Aeris Super Jump” – was released two weeks ago by Flower Girl, LLC, a private company run by friends of Ms. Gainsborough who, due to a loophole in the legal system, have been given sole permission to represent her estate.

Only six copies of the materia have been located across Gaia. Though the summoned Badasx Aeris does not actually serve any function in combat, reports show that diehard fans of the martyred flower girl from Midgar are gathering in taverns and summoning her as many as fifty times an evening.

Of course, the first posthumous materia released by Ms. Gainsborough was Holy – the spell that was instrumental in the destruction of the Rogue Meteor of ’97, thereby saving the planet. It is widely suggested, but not confirmed, that this was the only materia released by the Gainsborough estate that Ms. Gainsborough had any contact with.

“Ms. Gainsborough was a very prolific spellcaster, so of course we’re going to be finding her materia lying around in various places for, I suspect, many many years more,” said Reeve Tuesti, a spokesperson for Flower Girl, LLC. “When we discover or unearth these artifacts, there’s never an argument about whether or not to distribute it. We believe that Ms. Gainsborough would want this materia available to the public, particularly a public thirsty for whatever posthumous magic she has to offer, no matter what the price… God I miss her!”

Hardcasual waits to continue the interview until her theme stops playing. Mr. Tuesti composes himself and the subject of the apparent ‘sexification’ of Ms. Gainsborough in recent years comes up.

Mr. Tuesti balks. “Of course there are gonna be people who think we’re capitalizing unjustly off Aeris’s image. Remember when we released number 4? How everyone said we were faking it? That kind of thing makes me sick. To be so presumptious! People don’t want to see a different side of a treasured icon if it goes against their image of that person.”
The material Tuesti is referring to is “Dragon Girl”, the most controversial of Ms. Gainsborough’s posthumous materia. It’s a poorly designed defensive magic that creates a wall of dragons made out of cocaine that comically fist each other while shouting out poorly translated advertisements for Mountain Dew.

It seems an unlikely materia for a poor dead flowergirl from the wrong side of the tracks.