Manager of a minor department in a local ArmorCorp subsidiary and happily married, the short, bespectacled Asian would have been a stereotypical salary-man behind a desk, fast-tracked into management, happily married, well paid and living an easy, if unremarkable, existence in the Singapore arcology.
This was not to be the life of Winston Chang.
Instead, separated from his wife and son in their desperate escape, Chang was one of the last refugees extricated from the embattled arcology before the city was overrun by the insane Children of the Rapine Storm. Only able rage impotently by the C-10 window as Dholes which had tunneled up from beneath the Changi Airport tarmac laid waste to the remaining evacuation craft - the very craft which were to carry his wife and child to safety, Winston despaired at his insignificance in the grand scheme of things - the comfortable world of the corner office that Winston Chang had always known was gone.
And there would be hell to pay.
Chang could never muster the grit and ferocity to take it up close and personal. The man was no soldier, and never would be. Years spent climbing the corporate ladder had dulled his senses and no amount of drill or training would ever awaken anything resembling a killer instinct. Though he failed one aptitude test after another and washed out from one infantry academy or Mech pilot course to the next, Chang's obsessive need to avenge his family kept him on his insane course.
In his mid-thirties, Winston was old in comparison to the fresh faced media-darlings who dominated NEG recruitment posters. Raising more than a few eyebrows when he blustered into a recruiting station, many doubted the salary-man playing at being a soldier would ever amount to anything beyond a waste of time.
Perhaps then, it was only fitting that he would find his way into the NEG Armor Corps, long since eclipsed by other branches of the NEG War Machine. Though the Tank had, for more than a hundred years, soldiered on valiantly on the front lines of almost all of Humanity's wars, the creation of humanoid mecha had long since banished these rugged machines from the public eye. Though an incompetent brawler and unsuited for direct combat, Winston's keen eye and until then unrecognized talent for driving made him a natural tanker. Ironically, the maligned service and the untrained salary-man hellbent on making the enemy pay would be a match made in heaven.
Though a hero amongst the NEG Infantry for his daredevil driving and willingness to enter "hot" LZs to drop off reinforcements or evacuate isolated infantry squads, Winston "Gatecrash" Chang has likely seen more M-15 Rangers under his charge declared B.E.R. (Beyond Economic Repair) than the quartermaster would like. Likewise, more than a few M-15 turret gunners have flatly refused to serve alongside him, citing his recklessness in combat.
It doesn't matter.
Winston knows how it will end one day anyway...
One day, someone is going to be faster or better or he isn't going to be able to shake the bead or something is going to tear open his Ranger like a cardboard box or...
It doesn't matter.
It hasn't mattered for eight years now.