Blazing Blade Askari

That second ability is the strange one, and it tells you exactly which era this creature was built for. Flanking makes it a clean early attacker that taxes any blocker without the keyword, but the activated cost to shed its own color is the giveaway: this is an aggressive body wired to fight through color-based defenses. Turning colorless on demand lets it dodge a red-specific kill spell that needs a legal target, ignore a Circle of Protection: Red trying to soak its combat damage, and deal full damage to a wall with protection from red rather than getting fizzled at the point of impact. Protection does not stop that wall from blocking; it stops the damage, which is precisely the wrinkle the color change answers. So the cost is mana spent not to do more, but to make sure the damage already on the board actually lands. The lineage here is the small family of creatures that can change their own color to slip past color-keyed answers, and the design splits the labor cleanly: flanking supplies the pressure, the color-shedding supplies the insurance. None of that shows in the stat line, which is why it reads plain and plays trickier than it looks against a defender holding the wrong removal or the wrong wall.