Alchemist's Retrieval

Read literally, the default mode looks like a downgraded Unsummon, since it can only return a permanent you control. That framing gets the design backwards. The base spell is deliberately weakened so the cleave upgrade lands at an ordinary rate: for its printed cost you buy the "you control" version that protects your own creature from removal, replays a permanent to re-run whatever it does on arrival, or saves an Aura before it slides off a doomed target, and for one more you strip the bracketed clause and get flexible bounce that answers the opponent's board instead. What cleave collapses into one line of rules text is a choice that used to require two separate cards: a self-bounce trick and a real tempo spell, priced one apart, chosen as you announce the spell. The lock to your own side is what buys the cheap mode; the flexible half costs what open-ended bounce has always cost, so neither version is a bargain and the keyword charges honestly for the reach. Nothing here is a splashy showpiece. It is a low-stakes proof that cleave can price a modal decision without loading a rare's worth of upside onto either half, the kind of unassuming template a new keyword needs to earn trust before the flashier versions arrive.