Made in response to those countless… 'comics' and fanfics about the less than legal things the girls of Sensha-Do do in order to keep their sponsors and their teams running. Like seriously, some of the stuff they do would be downright illegal if it wasn't in the bedroom.

I think I have to specify, there will not be any sex in this fanfic. While the actions the girls allude to say they have done sex, there will not be any actual sex in this story. I'm not crazy (or stupid) enough to write that.


"In the morning, it's just a door. A large, black, double door in some sketchy alleyway in the urban center of Yokohama. It's purpose is never found, and most people are content with that.

But you aren't most people. You've seen the rope poles come out in the evening, the sound and smell of alcohol being mixed. The slow buildup of techno music coming from the walls. And when you saw that pink-haired girl go ahead and throw up that innocuous, printed sign, you knew who we were.

You came, whether by booking, bribing the guard, or just being lucky we will never know, nor will we want to know. But you came, and you're planning to have some fun.

And we'll give you some fun.

Welcome to The Front, the frontline for all the fun of the night.

-Transcript of an introductory message played to patrons that enter The Front for the very first time


"We need more funds." Yuzu deadpanned.

Anzu, Momo, and Miho all sighed. They all were gathered in the School Council Room, long after practice had closed. Surprisingly, it had been Yuzu to invite them, and not Anzu like it always had been. After a small meal, and a bit of light chatter, the topic of the night came to the light.

"Didn't we know about that?" Momo said. "Isn't that why we sent you and Miho to go ahead and look for sponsors?"

A beat.

"We were...but," Yuzu tapered off.

"You don't know these men like I do," Miho said. "The things they would do…"

"Whaddya mean?" Anzu asked nonchalantly, "They sponsor us, we get money, simple as that, right?"

"That...is the official explanation, yes," Yuzu said.

"The problem is," Miho said, "They don't necessarily...just donate for free. They expect...compensation for their money. Especially if we were to lose. No one wants to back the losing horse after all."

"What... exactly does compensating mean?" Momo asked, slowly.

Miho told them.

"Oh dear god!" Momo shrieked, dashing for the bathroom. Yuzu just looked down, already having found out before. Anzu looked disappointed.

"Crap, we can't do that…" Anzu muttered, as Momo staggered back from the bathroom. "Such...acts? And we're supposed to take them like it's normal?"

"It is normal," Miho told her. "At least, that's the rumours we've heard."

"You've heard?" Momo gagged out.

Miho nodded, "We've never lost while I was there. The only time we've heard about these things was when a transfer student from one of the other Big 4 comes to us and tells us."

"But...why?" Momo asked.

"Because what else?" Miho deadpanned, "It's not like it's easy to sell off tanks. If that was possible, we'd have sold off our stock of Panzer 1's and 2's awhile ago. But being the fact that they blur the line between sports equipment and military equipment, it's not that easy short of selling them to another government, and that would basically make us gunrunners."

"So the next logical answer is just to go ahead and sell off your body like you're some sort of charlatan?!" Momo shouted.

Yuzu nodded sadly. "How else are the men supposed to get paid back? They demand interest for the money they donated to the schools, and oftentimes that interest builds up so much that schools don't have enough money to pay all of them off without bankrupting themselves."

"So, it's a catch 22," Anzu muttered, "Lose the school, or your dignity."

"And as long as it never comes to public life, these girls would have gladly done the latter if it meant keeping their school open." Miho finished her train of thought.

Silence ensued from the group, no one wishing to speak. Momo was drinking to try and get the bitter taste of bile out of her tongue. Yuzu and Anzu just looked disappointed, Miho looked more worried than shaken if anything.

"Ah fuck this, meeting's over," Anzu announced. "We'll deal with this crap tomorrow."

"Prez!" Momo shouted.

"Momo, you may be our PR Head, but we're inside the Council Room," Anzu deadpanned. "I can swear however I damn well please, and I think this situation warranted it." Anzu cleaned up her spot, and took her coat from the coat rack. "I'll see you girls in the morning."

Anzu left first, leaving the three girls alone in the room.

"Miho," Momo asked, "What about the 62nd? Didn't you lose then?"

Miho winced, then nodded. "We did. Mother didn't want us to 'act in the manner of all the lower schools' and ended up paying the full donations back, interest included. That cost us the entire budget surplus we saved up over the past few years."

"Crap, we're never going to have enough money in our lives for that." Yuzu muttered.

Deciding this conversation was done, all the girls began to pack up and leave. Miho and Yuzu, being the ones who called the meeting, let Momo leave first. Ever the respectful one, Miho let Yuzu leave before her.

As Miho locked the door behind her, she was given a good glance over the entire ship of the Zuikaku. The Council Room was actually a part of the ship bridge, given over by the ship captain as a sign of trust and gratitude for when they had won the 63rd Tournament. As she saw the ship that she had made her home sparkle in the night, she resolved to take a walk around the ship, seeing as how it was Sunday tomorrow.

She took twists and turns, taking random directions around the ship until she arrived at...somewhere. She looked up from where she was staring at the ground, and found herself at the Oorai Park. Deciding to take a rest, she took a seat.

'We can't do those things,' Miho thought, 'None of the girls here would accept it. They all signed up just to have fun, not start selling themselves off like some whores.'

'But I can see why it's done. It's the simplest way to make large amounts of money, after all. Signing large milestone bonuses would be too risky, as you don't know if you can fulfill them. Selling merchandise and other equipment would require us to heavily mark them up to make a profit from the manufacturing costs. We don't even have enough money to even think about starting manufacturing at all.

The only reason why Kuromorimine was saved was because of the large buildup of money we had, but Oorai doesn't have that budget. We wouldn't have enough money to pay the donors off when we lose a match.

We might have too…'

"Hey!"

Miho's self-deprecation thought process was interrupted by the sound of someone calling out to her. She looked to her left, to find a man, no younger than 50-something. He had a thin mustache, with an even thinner beard going up his jawline. His hair looked curly, yet almost straightened, as if someone had tried to control it before, and yet eventually gave up on it. He had medium-sized eyes, which were framed with a pair of purple/black designer sunglasses.

"Y-yeah?" Miho eeked out.

"I asked, can I sit down next to you?" He had a funny accent, almost forceful and bolstorus, yet also mellowed and sad. He seemed like he had energy, but it was all gone at that very moment. Instead, he sagged, and looked like he was too tired for any bull.

"Yeah, sure…" She said, scooching over and gesturing for him to sit down. He took the seat, and pulled out a small flask, popped the cap, and started to drink. Miho didn't bother him much. In her mind, she's still trying to figure out how to pay for her team.

"Money problems too, I guess?" The man said. Miho looked at him in questioning shock, and he raised his eyebrow.

"You've got that face everyone has when they're cash-strapped. Looking down, not bothering with anything else in the world, minds running circles as you try and calculate out how to pay for it. And as you come closer and closer to the realization that you can't pay for it, you're going to eventually kick yourself for thinking you could get out of it." He laughed dryly, gulping down more of the foul-smelling liquid inside his flask.

"How did you…?" Miho asked.

Again, the man laughed. "Had a business myself, and was in the high-life with it. Then, I made some stupid desicions, and I ended up owing too much that I couldn't back out. Lost the business and now I'm on the run, closing in on a decade."

"Who did you…"

He grinned wryly, "Italian Mafia."

"No way…" Miho said in shock.

The man smiled, "Life lesson, lady. Don't get caught up with any illegal shit. Run straight, go to college or some crap like that. Get a job, work 9-5 until you're 70, and retire to spend the rest of your life knowing you didn't fuck up at 20 like me."

The pair sat in silence for the next few minutes, the man occasionally taking a drink from his flask. Miho just sat, sitting with her own thoughts.

"So, what's your story?" The man asked, looking back at Miho. "I spill my life, you ought to spill yours."

"W...well…" Miho began. "How much of the game 'Sensha-Do' do you know of?"

"You mean Tankery? Not much," The man admitted. "Surprisingly, there's very little of the Underground connected to it, at least Stateside-"

"Wait, you're from the United States?" Miho asked in shock.

"I didn't mention that?" The man said, rubbing his beard in thought. "Well, yeah, I am. Straight from New York City itself."

"Wow…" Miho breathed out, surprised. "I've never met anyone that went to the States. Even my mother never left the country."

The man chuckled, "Well if you ever get the chance, don't. It's a hell hole, nothing like the shows and magazines make it out to be. If you think Times Square represents New York, you're right."

"What?" Miho asked.

"Lights, glitz, and glamour. All there to cover up the mediocre subway, the smog-filled air, and the mostly trash-ridden alleyways. When you see The Rockettes, I see some mafioso staring down some sicario with a 9 millimeter."

"Huh, just for tourism, I guess?" She said, staring back down at the ground.

"Bingo," The man wagged a finger at her, then continued to drink. "As I said, thanks to the iron-tight rules specifically stating when you are and aren't allowed to use, it's not worth it. If you could use any tank, I'd bet you dollars to doughnuts that you'd see illegally gained Leopard 1 and Challenger 1 tanks being moved up and down from Hokkaido to London to Frankfurt to Long Island."

He polished off his flask, and tucked it away."Well to be honest the tourism part is mainly established around Manhattan. It's not all bad though. The Midtown and Upper West and East sides are close to the city but far enough to get away from all the crap there. Almost like Tokyo if I'm honest."

"What?" Miho asked, tilting her head.

He grinned, "Come on… What's the one city everyone else in the world can identify if someone brings up Japan?

"Ummmmm….. Tokyo?"

"And is everyone in Japan like people you find in Tokyo or those weeb shows? "

"No?"

"Bingo. Just don't head straight to Brooklyn or Baltimore, 'Melting Pot of the World' and all that crap." He tilted his head up to stare at the sky, "So, what about Sensha-Do anyways?"

"Well, I'm the commander of the team on this school ship…" Miho admitted. "And, well, we don't have any funds for the school."

"So?" The man asked, "Just get donations. That's how most sports teams work, at least I've heard."

"Yeah, that's what we were planning. However, the process of actually acquiring and keeping the donations should we fail are...less than adequate."

"What? You have to lose your team or something like that?" The man joked.

"Not far off, but instead of our team it's our dignity," Miho told him.

"Whaddya mean?" He raised an eyebrow.

"Well, the majority of the donors are usually 20 to 50-year-old men. You tell me what they want as compensation from a bunch of high school girls." Miho deadpanned.

"Oh...oh Jesus!" The man gagged. "That's fucked up."

"You're telling me…" Miho said sadly.

"No but seriously! You're a bunch of high school girls, and apparently, it's supposed to be normal for you to sell off your body?" The man ranted. "I mean Jesus Christ! I may have done some fucked up shit during my stint in NYC, but at least I had standards, and one of them was don't force a kid into shit like this! If they wanted to do it themselves, let them be they're idiots, but dear god this is fucked up in nature!"

"Yeah, well, what are you going to do?" Miho asked dryly, "If there was another way to make the same amount of money, I would do it in a heartbeat, but there's just no way to make the money needed at the volume needed to fund the teams."

"The volume needed…" The man muttered, suddenly lost in thought. Miho found herself puzzled, as the man suddenly swapped from self-deprecating to wide awake and alert. He pulled out his phone, and searched something up on it. From the glare on his shades, Miho could just make out the Oorai school logo.

"You're Miho Nishizumi, right?" The man asked, throwing Miho off her train of thought.

"Wha..how…" Miho asked.

"Google exists. Being the winner of the National Tournament with this half-assed team isn't glamorous, but it's sure to at least get you some attention on the web. Speaking of your team…" He pulled up another website. "You only have 8 tanks right?"

"That's right…" Miho nodded. "But why do you ask?"

"Compared to the rest of the schools," The man began to grin, this time with a hint of glee in it, "Your operating costs would be a drop in the bucket compared to theirs."

He came down low to talk closely with her. "See, your point is that any of the old money-making methods known aren't enough to pay for the Tankery teams, right?" Miho nodded. "See, that's where you go wrong. Sure, it might not be enough for that American or German team, where they own the largest tank fleets in the country, but when you're running literally the smallest tank fleet in the entire school system, you don't need as much cash to keep it afloat."

"So, what's your point?" Miho asked.

"Did I ever tell you what business I ran, Miho?" The man asked. Miho shook her head. "I ran a nightclub, two of them actually, and I was fucking good at it. So good that by the end of my first year running them I was labeled the 'King of the Nightlife' back in New York. At my peak, I could probably clear maybe 30 or 40 grand every day."

Miho gasped in shock. Sure, 30 to 40 grand wasn't a lot when she was in Kuromorimine, they had a budget spanning millions of dollars, but they also ran a fleet that numbered in the hundreds, employing thousands of people to maintain it. 30 to 40 grand for only 8 tanks? Split up among less than 40 members? It would be like winning the goddamn lottery.

"Yeah, I see your mind running the number now, huh?" The man said, grinning. "Now, here's the situation I see it. I'm in need of a friend, a friend that won't screw me over and I can work with, a position you seem to be a very capable candidate for. You need money, and a way to get it fast, which I can guarantee. The way I see it, this could be the start of a very good partnership between the two of us."

Miho thought it over, debating the details in her mind. Sure, it was a risky gamble, being 1) She's never run a business before, much less a nightclub, and 2) She didn't know if it actually would be able to pull 40 grand a night. But these reasons were overshadowed by the third one.

'Do I trust this man?'

She looked back at the man, who looked very much like he was going through a midlife crisis. His hair was disheveled, he looked tired, and to be honest didn't sound all that trustworthy in the first place.

But the alternative, she found, would be even worse, at least in her mind. Giving up her dignity, selling it off to equally old men? She gagged at the thought, and her friends would surely agree. Presented with two bad choices, what else would you take, but the lesser evil?

"Can you guarantee, without a doubt, we can make a profit from this?" Miho asked cautiously.

The man shot her a grin, "Have you ever wanted to let loose, to dance and party and just get away from everything in life for at least a night?"

Miho thought back to her Sensha-Do experience. The constant practices, the numerous paperwork and tasks she had to do to keep it running, and the nagging feeling that maybe, just for at least a night, she should push it off and just relax a bit by herself.

"Yeah," She replied.

"Then I bet you other people want to as well," He told her. "Life is crap, and stressful. If even for a night, or two, or three, they can relax, they would want to take it."

Miho mulled it over.

"How do we begin, Mr…?" Miho asked.

The man shot her a sly grin, and stuck out his hand, "The names Tony, Tony Prince, and the first thing I need is a warehouse and I promise you, Ms. Nishizumi, that I'll open you up the best damn nightclub in Japan."

"Well," Miho furrowed her brows in thought, "We're supposed to dock at Yokohama tonight. Something's gone wrong with the school engine, so we're going to stay in Port for at least two weeks."

Tony grinned, "Perfect. Any place here with public wifi?" Miho pointed him to a nearby internet cafe, "Good. I assume you have a laptop?" Miho nodded. "Alright," Tony rubbed his hands with glee, "Grab your laptop and meet me at the cafe. We have some work to do."