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Captivating Liberty

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Faced with an arranged marriage, Stolas Goetia chooses instead to leave behind his life and responsibilities to live a quiet, unassuming life as a commoner. For five years, Stolas moves from place to place, afraid to lay down roots only to be forced to leave them all behind. Everything changes when he meets his childhood friend Blitzø again.

Beginning publishing in March 2023, Captivating Liberty is an alternate universe Helluva Boss fanfiction written by AjWriter where Stolas runs away from home before meeting and starting a life with Blitzø. It finished publication in March 2024 and a sequel Wicked Virtue began in May 2024.


Captivating Liberty provides examples of:

  • Abusive Parents: Paimon does not care how miserable his son is with being put in an arranged marriage, and his reaction to his son being found after 6 years is annoyance at the trouble his son caused before forcing him into the arranged marriage by threatening Blitzø and Loona.
  • Affair Jewelry: Verosika accuses Blitzø of cheating on her when she finds a pair of unusual earrings. She backs off when he explains the earrings are a gift for her.
  • Affectionate Nickname: Stolas calls Loona 'Moonflower' and Blitzø calls her 'Loonie'.
  • Age Lift:
    • As the story takes place before the canon timeline, Loona is younger when Blitzø adopts her, only ten.
    • Octavia is also younger than she is in canon, hatching towards the end of the fic.
  • Caring Gardener: Stolas took his plants with him when he ran away and has been steadily adding to his collection whenever possible.
  • Commonality Connection: Loona loses some of her hostility towards Stolas when he mentions he's a runaway, something she herself had done before.
  • Domestic Abuse: Stella was not a kind woman and would constantly break Stolas' things. When Stolas is dragged back to the palace and forced into the marriage, she makes it clear that she's only gotten worse.
  • Doting Parent: Blitzø adopts Loona and immediately begins doting on the girl, calling her sweetie and giving up his room. Stolas is also very accommodating to her need to bite him to feel safe, teaching her magic.
  • Driven to Suicide: Stolas stored away blood before he ran away to throw people off the idea he had just run. Some people thought he'd been attacked, others, like Millie, thought he'd killed himself.
  • Foreshadowing: Blitzø is able to recognize the feathers Stolas gives Chelsea as Goetian because he knows what to look for. Sure enough, that's how Stolas gets caught: someone recognized the feathers and traced them back to the source.
  • Gender Bender: Stolas's shapeshifting can extend to gender changes, too, with one of his preferred aliases being a female imp named Solar.
  • Glitter Litter: Blitzø's first clue that something is off about Stolas is that the couch is suspiciously glitter-free after Stolas spends the night.
  • Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Stolas works at a strip club. He and his coworkers, especially Chelsea, are a cheerful, friendly bunch.
  • In Spite of a Nail: Blitzø still ends up in jail in Greed and breaks out with Moxxie in tow.
  • Incompatible Orientation: When Stolas opens up about his past with Stella and his arranged marriage with her to Loona, the first thing she protests is that Stolas is gay. It manages to get a laugh out of Stolas.
  • King Incognito: Stolas decides to live as an imp, or on occasion a sinner or incubus, rather than get married to Stella.
  • Lazy Alias: Stolas gets so flustered by seeing Blitzø again, he only barely manages to not just say his name, leaving him with the name "Stol".
  • Mugging the Monster: A pig demon tries to force Stolas into an alleyway to have sex. If Blitzø hadn't intervened first, Stolas would have sent the hapless demon into the void.
    • Verosika becomes increasingly antagonistic when Blitzø dumps her for Stolas, going as far as getting him fired and blacklisted. Later after Stolas gets outed and returned to his royal position, she complains that she wouldn't have screwed with him had she known he was a prince.
  • My Greatest Failure: Millie was familiar with Prince Stolas, having met him when he oversaw the Harvest Moon Festival. She taught him how to drive, and he confided in her that he was gay and didn't want to marry Stella. He ran away before he saw her the next year. Millie thought he had killed himself, and she regretted that she didn't help him when she had the chance. Suffice to say, she is not happy when finds out the truth about "Sirpens".
  • The Nose Knows: Loona is able to smell that Stolas is a Goetia right away.
  • Orphanage of Fear: Loona comes from one. Blitzø feels compelled to get her out immediately once he finds her because of how bad the situation is.
  • Power Incontinence: Blitzø finds out Stolas's secret when the latter has the flu and can't maintain the disguise when he sneezes.
  • Rescue Romance: While they don't start dating right away, Blitzø and Stolas meet each other again when Blitzø punches a sinner trying to drag Stolas down an alley for sex.
  • Runaway Bride: Gender-inverted. Stolas flees his Arranged Marriage with Stella to avoid a life of eternal misery.
  • Shopping Cart Antics: Stol has Blitzø push him in the shopping cart, racing down the aisle to see if he can grab their items fast enough. It ends with Blitzø crashing and Stolas flying out of the cart.
  • Something Only They Would Say: Blitzø slowly starts to piece together who Stolas really is when he offers to give Stol a job and he responds with 'Well, I hope I qualify' — the same thing he said when they were children.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Blitzø thinks Stolas walking around town in his stripper outfit is this, unaware that Stolas usually ducks out of sight and portals home and can take care of himself regardless.

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