Before he became Miss Planner’s psychic puppet, Black Wolf was known as Ghost Wolf. He was the vicious leader and founder of the Animal Brotherhood, a street gang that found unexpected success in the slums of the city of Grandebelle. They grew larger and stronger than anyone could imagine, and were well on their way to becoming a criminal syndicate of historic proportions.

"We are Brothers. We love each other more than our real families. You don't abandon your Brothers in their time of need. Your Brothers are everything to you. You owe your life to your Brothers. You die to keep your Brothers safe. We have sworn a solemn oath to one another. And if any of you break this oath, then I will kill you."

Ghost Wolf was a proud and stubborn man. In every action, he strove for perfection. He controlled the Brotherhood like a dictator, using fear and brutality to force his newfound family into submission.

"I have hundreds of strong Brothers who I can always depend upon to be there for me. If you want to be my Brother, if you want to be a part of my family, you're going to have to earn your place. And once you become my Brother, only death will separate us. You can't leave your family."

As the size of the Animal Brotherhood grew, firm divisions began to take root within it. Ghost Wolf's two strongest lieutenants became jealous of his position and start making moves behind his back to build their personal power bases. Before long, the bonds of loyalty and devotion that bound the Brotherhood together frayed and broke apart.

"Cough... our dear leader cares deeply for us... haha. But he's not looking at the bigger picture... our alliance with the Devil Skins is unstable... cough. We must be the bigger force in this partnership... we shall hurt them without killing them... and we must act without being discovered. Haha. Guilty Shadow, Soulmask... and Clay Pest... you three will attack the Skins tonight under cover of darkness."

Ghost Wolf wasn't the most inspiring leader. He had a short temper and he was quick to resort to violence whenever someone challenged his authority. He also wasn't much of a strategist and often led his men into battle without any particular plan in mind. All in all, he gave the Brotherhood little reason to trust him. His lieutenants were much more intelligent and resourceful than he was, and it didn’t take long before they began to treat their leader as little more than a glorified figurehead. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Ghost Wolf's core of loyalists began to dwindle. Some defected to his lieutenants, but many more died in battle or simply abandoned the Brotherhood entirely.

One day, Ghost Wolf returned to the Animal Mansion after a particularly long and difficult battle, exhausted, angry, and heartbroken. The Brotherhood's all-out assault on the Psy Temple ended in miserable failure. Dozens of his most loyal followers were killed and many more were injured. Furious at himself for foolishly wasting so many lives, Ghost Wolf cursed the world and wished he were dead.

Hoping to erase his guilt from his mind, Ghost Wolf pacified himself with Nuke. He smoked an entire carton of the powerful drug in one sitting, one cigarette after the other, refusing to stop even when his whole body became numb. His potential was unlocked all at once. His psychic awareness expanded to encompass the whole of the Animal Mansion, and he experienced a euphoria unlike anything he'd ever felt before. For a moment, he felt like he was invincible.

But his pleasure soon gave way to a deep, gnawing pain, the sensation of a terrible burning, a heavy weight shifting uncontrollably, a horrible mass of molten metal bulging out from under his skin.

Ghost Wolf wanted to scream, but he couldn't. No words were coming out. There was nothing inside him except the unbearable pressure of a monstrous weight. He tried to move, but he was trapped. Trapped by the agony, the overwhelming, impossible heaviness, the suffocating blackness. It was so heavy. So heavy. The pain grew stronger and stronger, until his mind shattered into a million tiny pieces.

The ferocious criminal sat helplessly in his room in the Animal Mansion staring listlessly at the floor. He didn't bathe himself. He couldn't walk or use his hands. He couldn't even hold a simple conversation. His Brothers had to force him to eat. He was just a big, lumbering, stupid beast, confused, scared, sad, liable to tantrums and fits of rage.

"What... what am I? I'm not me anymore..."
"Ghost Wolf, listen to yourself. Get up."

"My head hurts. I need to go to bed. I want to go to sleep."
"Nope. Get up. It's time for a walk."

"I hate myself."
"I know you do. I hate you too. Come on. You need to show yourself every now and then or everyone's going to think we killed you."

While Ghost Wolf confined himself in his room in the Mansion, his lieutenants consolidated their power. Nightmare was ambitious, strategically-minded, and singularly powerful. He was never seen in public without his ostentatious black robe and mask which served to enhance his mystique. His rival Death Smoke was a man gifted with the natural charm and eloquence of an emissary of death. He was a man born to manipulate others, a cunning predator who disposed of his adversaries with a smile and a wave. Under the leadership of these two wicked men, the Brotherhood continued to grow in strength and size. 

Ghost Wolf got better and worse with the passage of time. He would make months upon months of steady progress, and then slip back into a rigid madness when he was reminded of something that angered him. He developed strange fixations: a certain color, a certain person, the way something moved. At his very worst he spent days at a time trapped in his own private hell, muttering and mumbling to no one.

The leader of the Animal Brotherhood wasn't exactly sure who he was anymore. Was he a hero, a man of hope and courage, a visionary, or an idiot, a fool, a joke, a failure?

There was no one left to give him an answer.

As he lay in bed alone with his thoughts, the voice of the devil whispered to him from the back of his mind.

'There is beast within man and man within beast.'

The thought came to him unbidden and unwanted. Yet it was the only thought that made sense to him anymore.

'Man within beast...'

Lost in the darkness, the man gave himself over to his savagery, his violence, his pain. The beast inside him roared out its longings, howled for blood, and demanded release. It pushed through his mind like a knife and tore into his soul with a terrible vengeance. He became a part of the thing inside himself and he could feel the thing's power, its ferocity, its strength, its rage.

The man within the beast was a beast for want of something better to be, a being that had once loved and been loved. But now it was alone and had nothing left. This thing with many personalities raged and cried, the emptiness within its soul guiding it towards its own certain destruction.

The beast within the man was a thing of fire and fury, a wolf with red eyes and a raging heart. It was a wolf that destroyed, devoured, and absorbed, a creature of pure, merciless, unstoppable will. It couldn't see the faces of the people it ate, but it knew the faces of the ones it wished to kill. It was a wolf that ran free, a wolf with no fear, no constraints, and no guilt, in the body of a hated, abandoned, tormented, helpless man.

The murderous Ghost Wolf wasn't allowed to continue his rampage for long. Unable to bear the disgraceful and disgusting sight of their leader any longer, the Animal Brotherhood pounded him senseless with their fists and drove him into a corner. They forced him to drink until he threw up. Then, they sent him to a mental hospital where he was locked away from the world in a padded cell, the doors bolted shut, the windows sealed tight.

Time passed and the years melted away. The forsaken criminal was haunted by voices, a thousand screams and cries from the depths of his mind speaking in the language of the animals. In that mystical place between life and death, unseen, unheard, he drowned in the depths of his thoughts.

The day broke into gray dusk. The wind was no longer a soft whisper but a howl, and the air was filled with the scent of pine needles. A cold rain had begun to fall, a hard rain that battered him, the earth, and all the things that were born, growing, and dead.

Ghost Wolf escaped the mental hospital a changed man.

He was always tired. He was always angry, too, and he hated the sound of his own voice. Most of his psychic powers were gone, burned away to nothing by his impotent rage. He was miserable. He was frustrated. He was confused. He was bitter. He was terrified. And he wanted it all to stop.

Ghost Wolf wandered the streets of the Pit aimlessly, hoping his Brothers would find him and offer him a safe place to rest. He reached out in desperation, hoping for a comforting hand. But all he found was a cold claw piercing through him and scraping the life out of him.

The Brotherhood was long dead, yet the shadow of the Brotherhood was everywhere. They had turned on their own and begun to slaughter their own. And Ghost Wolf was no match for their rage. After a string of brutal battles, he found himself alone on the street with his stomach slashed open and his legs torn to pieces. With the last of his strength, the father of the Animal Brotherhood found a quiet place to pass away. In his final moments, Ghost Wolf looked up at the purple, smoggy sky of the Pit one last time.

"I'm sick. The world is going to be better off without me."

He thought back to his old life. He remembered the happy times he'd spent with his Brothers. Every one of them had cared about him. They were there when he needed them. They were his family.

Suddenly, Ghost Wolf's mind was invaded by a strange image. A woman's cold face. A beautiful and cruel face.

For some reason, he just couldn't stop thinking about her. He'd never even seen her before. She was short and beautiful. She looked like a little girl in a business suit. Her hair was long and blonde. Her skin was white like snow.

He was drawn to her.
He was afraid of her.
He hated her.
He was scared.
He was lonely.
He wanted to be with her.
He wasn't sure what was happening to him.
He had no clue.
He didn't understand his feelings.
But he couldn't get her out of his head.
He couldn't stop thinking about her. She kept appearing in his mind...
Over and over and over again.

"Hmm. Are you alive in there? Hello? Say something."

Ghost Wolf opened his eyes and saw the tiny blonde girl from his dreams staring at him. He couldn't speak. He couldn't move his limbs. It was like he was a newborn baby, incapable of expressing himself.

She smiled, a cold glint in her eye.

"Ah, I know why you can't talk. It looks like your power is still unstable. You damaged the voice box. I'm going to swap it out for a new one. Just relax. You're safe with me. I would never hurt you, oh no... Jessica is the gentlest girl in the entire world..."

Black Wolf heard her move and saw her crack open his chest cavity. His organs were all gone, replaced by strangely shaped hunks of metal connected with colorful wires.

"Hehehe! I wanted to make a nice first impression, but I guess I woke you up too early. I knew things were going a little too smoothly. Good thing we've got plenty of extra parts. There. It fits perfectly. Just breathe, and don't fight it. Let's try to be friends. We're going to be working together for a long, long time."