Hi, everyone. After making the first installment of this story, I got a few more ideas that related to it, including some backstory to Illustrious and Enterprise's past. This series won't have large chapters like my other stories and will mostly serve as a slice of life. It will have a narrative that develops direction to where it all is going, but please see this as something light that I do when a nice change of pace is warranted.

(Lovers' Run)

On a sunny day, Illustrious stood outside in the Garden of the Royal palace. Like a statue, she remained silent and immovable. Her arms rested in front of her and her eyes closed from the world before her. With her head tilted, her hat shrouded her face conveying a burst of activity shown within the closed eyelids that darted left and right.

In her mind, she saw a vast ocean on an orange afternoon, far removed from the Royal Capital where she resided. The humming of a propeller that sounded strained and on the verge of malfunctioning filled her non-existent ears within that point of view. She was one with her plane, a Hawker Sea Fury that had been flying for an unfeasible amount of time. She could feel the strain and fatigue that translated as such due to the machine relaying information to the human connection aspect. "Just a little more..." She spoke, referring to the sight that her HSF was witnessing. Her breath hitched as in the distance of the warm orange sunset, she spotted a Douglas SBD Dauntless bomber. "Enterprise..." She uttered excitedly. After keeping tabs on the journey of her plane and waiting days for this moment, she was beyond eager to reunite with her long-distance girlfriend.

It was an odd sight to see two lone fighter planes outside the area of their carrier's effective support range. Effectively, these two planes were making a suicide run: a one-way trip all in the name of love.

Both planes began to sputter in the air briefly, conveying that it was their last leg before total shutdown. Elevations began to fluctuate, and their straight trajectory began to wobble.

At super speed, both lone fighter planes grazed each other's wings slightly before passing each other. The life within both planes abruptly seized and both plummeted into the heartless sea.

The connection was lost and Illustrious released a breath. She slowly opened her royal blue eyes to gaze at the world with her own eyes; a sunny warm afternoon containing a sky of blue. A melancholy feeling warmed her body knowing that her plane had fulfilled its bittersweet mission for she had been able to hold hands with Enterprise once again, if only for a little while.

An umbrella covered her sight from above, shielding her from the rays of the sun. She quickly glanced behind her to see her Majesty and Ark Royal staring at her.

Illustrious flinched in fright. "Queen Elizabeth and Miss Ark Royal, pardon me but the warm sunlight made me doze off for a bit. How ditzy of me to fall asleep while standing up," she radiantly smiled. It was a half lie as technically; she was indeed in some state of slumber if one wished to call it that.

Her Majesty made a face and tipped toed to get closer to the taller woman's eye level. "Oh, you can't fool me, Illustrious. You were doing that lovers' run with Enterprise again, weren't you?!"

"Lovers' run?" Tilted the well-figured carrier. From behind Queen Elizabeth, she could see the black-haired carrier nervously tapping her fingers together.

Her Majesty did a cheeky grin and confidently placed her hands on her hips. "Will duh— Ark Royal here told me that carriers in love do something rather... eccentric. They launch planes that allow them to feel closer to one another if they are far apart. In a standard fight, a plane wouldn't feel that unless the user was opened to that channel of sensation."

Illustrious silently checked toward Ark Royal for confirmation which was quickly validated by the woman shutting her eyes along with a full blush. "I'm so sorry Illustrious! She forced me to spill the beans when she confiscated my destroyer picture album. I spent three summers trying to fill its pages with immaculate photos of everyone having fun!"

A sweatdrop formed on the maiden longing for her lover. Regardless, she understandably sighed and darted down to her queen. "Your Majesty— forgive me but I needed to see her... feel her..." She knew that eventually, her queen would find out that her garden naps were more than what they seemed, but she didn't expect it to be that day.

The intimate words from her royal servant ignited her to recoil with a bloom of crimson. "Kyaa, you're not even going to fight back with an elegant lie?!" Declared the perky blonde.

Illustrious humbly shook her head. "I don't have the heart to lie to you, your Majesty. You were the second one I talked about my relationship with Enterprise after all."

The Queen groaned tiredly, and she glanced at Ark Royal for assistance. The other carrier could say nothing more in this situation as she felt embarrassed and ashamed. However, she did emote the queen to ease up on Illustrious's guilty heart.

"Gosh, you sure know how to make me feel bad now," stated the queen to the chesty servant of hers. "Anyways, stop doing what you're doing! I don't mind you trying to connect with Miss Enterprise but stop wasting resources like that. Hehe, I guarantee within a year, the North Atlantic Sea is going to be a graveyard of fighter planes," she said anxiously with some dreaded truth behind her forced lightheartedness.

Ark Royal coughed for attention before giving off a friendly smile. "I would have to agree, Miss Illustrious. I can understand the esoteric romantic sensations a carrier feels when they use their planes to connect…"

"—You do?!" Declared both Illustrious and Queen Elizabeth in stereo. It wasn't a big secret that the black-haired carrier seemed to "Favor" destroyer girls. Some would say a bit more than usual that crossed to a level of infatuation.

Ark Royal lowered her brows and took a defensive stance. "What does that mean?! I'll have you know that I have had a long history pertaining to love. I just find destroyers cute—that's all. But what I was saying… ah, yes. But your long-distance factor that inevitably ends in the scrapping of the love messenger gives ardor a run for its money."

"I'm sorry..." Declared the maiden with the strength of one hundred humble bows.

The blonde queen internally frowned, feeling that she was mostly to blame. Illustrious was a valued member of her royal rule. She acted like her guidance counselor when Hood wasn't around to oversee that. Effectively, both of those two were her left and right hand in that respect. She wished she could tell the stacked carrier to run off and have fun for a while with her girlfriend, but the Royal Capital never sleeps, and she needed her close. "Might I suggest a phone, Illustrious? I know it's not the same as your carriers' style of affection but when you're doing this lovers' run on a longer range than normal, it's going to get expensive!"

"Phone... actually, I'm not sure if Ent has a phone..." Despite what they had talked about when they confessed their feelings, work and stress life hadn't given them the time to set up those alternatives. There had been two ways in which they would communicate— via mail that they orchestrated their plans and travel times so that they could perfectly match up when their planes encountered each other, or Illustrious would use radio messages. In hindsight, both were rather archaic.

(One week later)

Habits were hard to let go and now hidden in her room at the top of the Royal palace, she gazed out the window with her eyes closed.

Back in the sea, she spotted Enterprise's messenger of love making the one-way trip toward her own plane. Their planes married each other before ultimately passing between the waves that swallowed them whole.

Worriedly, Illustrious shot her royal blue eyes open and picked up her phone from the window counter. She had taken her Majesty's advice and wrote to Enterprise about the phone idea and how they should start to modernize their forms of communication.

"Ent. You felt warm today, more so than usual. Are you feeling under the weather?" Even though the connection against the doomed planes only lasted for a second, their touch lasted longer for them before it began to fade.

Her phone beeped quickly in response, and Enterprise wrote. "Shoot. Guess I couldn't hide that. I'm all right though." The silver-haired woman even ended it off with a smiling emoji that was a new side to the Eagle ace, a rather defenseless and human side to her.

Illustrious lowered her sternness and smiled, before quickly igniting back into a feverish typing pace. "We shouldn't have done this in your state right now." She didn't mean to sound stern in her text, but it tore her apart that she couldn't be there to look after her girlfriend who was dealing with her sickness by herself.

Comfort in the form of another text altered her. Enterprise wrote, "But I wanted to. Honestly, I'm fine. In fact, I feel better now that I was able to feel you. I promise that I'll get some rest later today." She then added a cartoon eagle with a nightcap sleeping soundly on a tree branch.

Illustrious melted upon how affectionate her long-distance girlfriend exuded. She loved her and this was her way of conveying the love they both felt. It would be a while before they could be in the same room once again. Instead of chastising her girlfriend more, she wanted to match her in her affection. "I wish I was on that tree branch with you, Ent." She added a heart animation that got her feelings across.

Enterprise wrote back in a few seconds. "This is random, but did you know that part of the mating process of Eagles is them building a nest together?"

The royal paused and giggled lovingly at the undertones she could read between the lines. "Oh, what are you implying, my love?"

Enterprise wrote back. "Hehe, maybe it's the delirious side of me from being under the weather but just wanted to throw something to keep us motivated for the future." That night, they decided on doing something different that had both excited.

To be continued.