Thriving Rats

A rat that pays its own toll, at least once. Arriving hands you exactly two energy, and its attack ability charges exactly two to grow itself, so a single copy can pump one time before its private battery runs dry and it has to look elsewhere for fuel. That clean one-to-one math is the whole point: this is a starter cell, not a generator, a body that teaches the resource's loop in miniature without ever quite banking a surplus. The 1/2 body suits the job, with enough toughness to weather an early exchange and a power that only climbs when the energy economy around it is flush enough to spare the counters. On its own, it makes two, spends two, and grows once. Set among other producers, it turns into a recurring sink that converts a shared pool into permanent stat growth turn after turn. The decision a deck has to answer is whether to feed this rat or spend that energy somewhere flashier, and competition for a finite pool is exactly the tension the mechanic was built around: a resource generated in one slot and consumed in another, singing only when producer and consumer share a game plan.