A/N: Written for a Prompt Per Pokemon Challenge, Articuno - Beauty (theme). Hunter J (character). The piece must be in prose, but the descriptions should have a poetic air to them.
Hunting Articuno
She did not care for such things as beauty or grace, but her clients did and the reach of wealth and profits had taught her eyes well. She could scan a crowd of Bellossom and find the one that danced as though it were one with the wind. She could look at a net full of Feebas and find the one who would evolve into a Milotic whose body would shimmer like newly uncovered pearls beneath a light sheen of water.
And she could look at glaciers and find the one which sparkled as though a flame of life lived within it, and, that day, it was a glacier like that she sought. A client demanded an Articuno for her, and it was a price worth her while to accept.
And it wasn't that difficult. Not like trying to find an Arceus in its slumber in a pocket of space and time that was beyond even the legends' reach. The glaciers told her much: the way they sparkled iridescently, refracting the sun. How one will be slightly different: how the reflections will not just be from the ice made by cold and passing time, but the subtle rawness that now living form could leave behind.
And finally she found one, and once she did her smile added to the glitter, all while her traps dulled it. And they worked: the Articuno came, howling more like a wolf than the bird of icy grace it was. It came hunting the defiler.
And she caught it in full flight, tail stretched and leaving a trail of icy wind behind. The frozen look was ironically a lesser prize: dust could not be frozen like a physical form after all. But she was a hunter. Her job was to catch the grace of freedom and turn it into the despairing stone-grey look of captivity, and exchange that for her prize.
Because she lost such beautiful scenes so frequently, it was only a means to an end for her.