Fledgling Djinn

A 2/2 flyer for two mana was an aggressive rate in its era, and the design pays for it with a clock pointed back at its controller: every upkeep peels a life off you for the privilege of the body. That self-damage is the structural bargain, and it tells you exactly what the card wants. The accumulating cost punishes durdling, so the card belongs to the player who is already racing, already spending the opponent's life total faster than their own erodes. It is a black-aligned cousin to the old red model of cheap-but-self-harming beaters, the kind of creature that reads as a temporary loan rather than a permanent investment. The math is simple enough to do in your head: each turn it survives, the gap between its damage output and its upkeep cost stays positive only while the game is short. Stall, and the clock turns inward. The flying matters here precisely because it keeps the loan productive, letting the body push damage past blockers and end the game before the upkeep tax compounds into something you cannot afford. It is a card built around a question of tempo and exit timing, the sort of marginal aggressive piece that rewards knowing when a creature has earned its keep and when it has become a liability you should have already sacrificed or chumped away.