I haven't done a "Story Behind The Story" in a while, so I've decided to start again. We'll look at "Not Her Mother's Voltage Vixen," the story where the next chapter of Kayla Bowles' life began.


SPOILERS AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE STORY! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!
















































When I wrote "He Had It Coming," I had no idea how popular Kayla would become. After  psion wrote his own stories with Kayla, I knew I had to get moving on the next chapter. Initially, I had her get freed at the end of "A Colmaton Christmas Story," but I found writing that story took too long. Thus, I decided this story would be about Kayla's release from the Lakeshore Institute and what she would do with her life. The opening scene took cues from the "Harley's Holiday" episode of Batman: The Animated Series, with a pinch of Shrek 2 and a dash of the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "Siege of the North." Back when  sketchredtiger was still part of the group, he had created characters who would have had ties to Kayla's past. They would have left her a large amount of cash and a note in Chinese. When he left the group before I could finish the story, I pared it down to a large amount of money left by a mystery benefactor. The press conference scene and Yolanda Mason's statement took inspiration from The Dark Knight Returns. The scene in Timothy Bordick's penthouse came from a comment  Titan_Dragon01 left on  mojorover's posting of "He Had It Coming." When finding Kayla a place to live, I chose the Sanford Arms, which had appeared in stories before. Then,  train fleshed out the scene by adding Linda Dean. Then, I needed to establish that Kayla would have difficulty adjusting to life outside the Lakeshore Institute: getting a job, Preceptor harassing her, etc. The radio call-in scene was taken from Hancock.


For her training, I took a cue from  mojorover's story "Enter the Zodiac." Bureau of Superheroes agents would act as her trainers. At first, I just planned to have Combat train Kayla on the side. Then, I decided that the Bureau would train her, even if she didn't become a full-fledged agent. I kept Gatling Goat teaching basic firearms training. Combat would teach self-defense, and Phantom Frog would teach strategy. Before I had started writing the story, I had decided on Kayla becoming a bounty hunter. I was partly inspired after reading about the late Domino Harvey, daughter of actor Laurence Harvey and a fashion model who later became a bounty hunter. X-Men: First Class inspired a scene I added later with Mystic Cat teaching Kayla how to better use her powers. Also, I imagined Kayla and MC developing a bond based on having questionable reputations in common. Many scenes during and after Kayla's time at the BoS academy came from doodles. I took various scenes from movies and television shows to create the part of Kayla visiting her mother's grave. Then  train added Dynasty getting reamed out for telling Kayla about Operation Chaos. At the time, I thought he wrote Morningstar, Dyno-Donkey and Ranger as kind of harsh to her, so I had Dyno-Donkey express a modicum of sympathy. The party scene near the end was another scene  train fleshed out by adding several heroines as well as much of the dialogue. The revelation involving Zumbeaux the Hunter had been brewing since BossHoss finished writing "Moving Target." I could have probably ended the story there, but I felt I had to do something bigger. Thus, I wrote the final scene with Dr. Cyberclaw vowing to destroy Voltage Vixen.



And that's the story behind "Not Her Mother's Voltage Vixen."