Emerald Dragonfly

Two mana for a 1/1 flyer with a repeatable first-strike pump is a design from a moment when Wizards was still calibrating evasive bodies in green, and the shape of the ability tells you exactly what problem they were solving. Green has always been the color with the largest ground creatures and the worst answers to fliers; giving a green flyer a double-green activation that turns combat math into a winning trade against the era's other 1/1 and 2/1 evasive creatures was the design lever. The cost is the discipline: is steep enough on a two-drop that you cannot reasonably attack and activate on the same turn until turn three, and the mono-green requirement walls the card off from the splash decks that would otherwise want it. The ability is also pure combat: no trample, no counter, no permanent buff, just a one-turn first-strike window that asks you to choose between developing your board and protecting your evasive clock. Later printings would give green flying via insect and faerie tribal hooks and via reach as a defensive substitute; this was the earlier, more literal answer, where the flyer is just a flyer and the green-ness is paid in the activation. A modest card by modern rates, and a clear window into how cautiously green's air force was first sketched.