Hopping Automaton

The activation costs nothing, which is both the appeal and the limit. For zero mana the 2/2 picks up flying, but each activation also drops it by -1/-1, so the body that goes over the top arrives as a 1/1, not a 2/2. Activate twice in a single combat and the reductions stack into a 0/0 that dies before it can connect, so the math polices itself: one activation slips a single point of flying damage through, a second throws the creature away. Because the shrinkage wears off at cleanup, though, none of it is permanent. Whatever you spend on a swing comes back; next turn it is a full 2/2 again, free to hold the ground or take to the air for another point. The effect is a renewable clock with a per-turn ceiling, trading a point of toughness for a point of reach precisely when one point of evasion ends a game. Colorless construct bodies of this early era earned their slots by handing any deck a creature outside its own color identity, and this one keeps to that mold: a cheap, repeatable air threat whose damage is throttled by the very dial that grants the evasion.