As promised, the stage theater, where the focus was going to be on mythological stories was taking place at the orphanage. Everyone sat in their seats as they were waiting for the theater to start, looking at the ready stage, until a marble stage burst up underneath the floorboards, and in the center was Nightwing in a toga, lights, flashing and fake thunder rumbling.
"Greetings mortals!" He yelled. "I am the mighty Zeus, god of lightning and ruler of Mount Olympus! Today, I'll be regaling you tales of Greek mythology! Now, pay attention to this first myth of a foolish boy named Icarus who wanted to fly."
"Icarus's father Daedalus, a very talented Athenian craftsman, fashioned two pairs of wings out of beeswax and feathers for himself and his son." Cyborg gave Beast, both of them are wearing Greek style togas, a pair of wings.
"Now Icarus," Cyborg began to warn Garfield. "Don't you go flying too close to the sun, or the sea. Just stick to my flight path."
"I know, fool! I just so giddy!"
"Yes, but too giddy was the foolish Icarus. Overcome by giddiness while flying, Icarus disobeyed his father and soared into the sky." The two Titans were held up by wires, flapping their wings, but Beast's feathers were molting off. "He came too close to the sun. Without warning, the heat from the sun melted the beeswax, which held the feathers together. One by one, Icarus's feathers fell like snowflakes. Icarus was flapping his "wings". But he had no feathers left and only was flapping his bare arms. Then he fell into the sea and drowned."
"Aaaah!" He dropped below a cardboard cutout of the seas.
"And so ends his tale. Now I know what you're thinking. That was incredibly short, with an obvious lesson on over ambition. But it's important to note that no matter the length of the story, so long as the lesson is delivered, it's worth conveying. But let us know shift up from a foolish boy to a king of legend. That is to say, a legendarily cautious tale. I shall tell you the myth of King Midas!" The scene shifted to Starfire sitting in her throne, counting gold coins. She was dressed in purple robes, and wore a fake golden crown.
"The 758, the 759, the 760..."
"King Midas was an avaricious king. He loved gold and wealth. He would spend a lot of time just counting on his gold coins."
"Ah, I am the very rich, as a king should. It is just simply divine to count my overabundance of the wealth. Oh how I love and worship the gold, but I still wish I had the more! There is never to much gold to covet!"
"But, for as greedy as King Midas was, he was not without a heart. One day, Dionysus found that his old schoolmaster and foster father, the satyr Silenus, was missing. The old satyr had been drinking wine and wandered away drunk, to be found by some Phrygian peasants who carried him to their king, Midas. Midas recognized him and treated him hospitably, entertaining him for ten days and nights with politeness, while Silenus delighted Midas and his friends with stories and songs." This was depicted as Starfire, and Beast as a satyr, playing together and silently wording stories to each other. "On the eleventh day, he took Silenus back to Dionysus in Lydia." Now, it was Starfire and Jinx, who was dressed as a party goddess. "Dionysus offered Midas his choice of whatever reward he wished for. Midas asked that whatever he might touch should be changed into gold."
"To you, the golden touch would prove a golden curse, Midas."
"A curse?! Fine then, curse me with the golden touch!" Starfire took Jinx's deal.
"So be it, but gold is the snare of the soul. Don't say I didn't warn you. The golden touch is now thine. Toodaloo." Jinx ran off the marble stage.
"Yes, now the golden touch is mine!"
"Midas rejoiced in his new power, which he hastened to put to the test. He touched an oak twig and a stone; both turned to gold. Overjoyed, as soon as he got home, he touched every rose in the rose garden, and all became gold. He ordered the servants to set a feast on the table. So much that Midas, king of Lydia, swelled at first with pride when he found he could transform everything he touched to gold; but when he beheld his food grow rigid and his drink harden into golden ice then he understood that this gift was a bane and in his loathing for gold, cursed his prayer."
"Confound it all! Is the richest man in all the world to starve to the death?!" The Tamaranean princess bellowed in dramatic misery.
"Midas' daughter came to him, upset about the roses that had lost their fragrance and become hard." Raven stepped onto the scene, looking upset.
"Father, I cannot smell the flowers! And they're now uncomfortable and cold to hold!"
"Oh, there there sweet Zöe-Noooo!"
"When he reached out to comfort her, found that when he touched his daughter, she turned to gold as well." Raven cast an illusion, where she was now solid gold. "Now, Midas hated the gift he had coveted. He prayed to Dionysus, begging to be delivered from starvation."
"Please Dionysus! Take away this golden curse! Do not let me starve! Tell me what to do to end this suffering!" Jinx stepped in, rolling her eyes in annoyance.
"Ugh, fine. Go wash yourself in the river of Pactolus. Then whatever gold you made will be reversed back to what it was."
"Midas did so, and when he touched the waters, the power flowed into the river, and the river sands turned into gold. Once he bathed his golden daughter into the river, she returned back to normal, and the two have a sworn off wealth and splendor. The end." Starfire, Jinx, Beast and Raven walked up, and bowed, before the curtains closed.
"A man who would've turned the world to gold, if he could eat said gold." Lynn sighed. "What an accurate depiction of greed if left unbound."
"Makes me appreciate my power." Lizzie commented. "I just simply bring things to life. And I can choose which objects can come alive."
"And me with my softening power." Sophie agreed. Nightwing spoke up.
"Now, for this story, we're going to completely alter it like we did for Rapunzel. Instead of depicting the girl with the box known as Pandora as the bringer of all evil by opening said box, we're going for something more lighthearted." Nightwing coughed.
"Pandora was the best dancer in all of Greece." The currents open to show Jinx dancing hard in her ancient stone apartment abode to some loud music, with Raven underneath her. "Unfortunately, she lived in a cheap apartment with thin walls, so her dance practice annoyed the one of the nine muses, Terpsichore, directly in the apartment below her." Raven poked the fake ceiling above her with a broom. But the metahuman just kept going. That is until her apartment door was being knocked on. Jinx looked annoyed at the interruption, and snapped her fingers to stop the music. She opened the door to see Raven.
"Your noisy dancing has annoyed me for the last time, Pandora. Well, I may be the goddess of lyric poetry and dancing and encourages such, you are doing so improperly by disrupting my private time."
"So?" Jinx asked, unfazed.
"Well, now I'm going to do what any vengeful God would do in my situation... give you a gift." Raven handed Jinx Boom Box, whom appeared to be silently giggling, based on its body language.
"A boombox? Awesome!" The pink haired witch was very pleased.
"Oh, I think you'll enjoy it very much." The half-demon said ominously as she left.
"What a cool gal." Jinx said as she looked down at the musical technology.
"Yo Pandora!" Beast's voice call through the air vent near the floor. Jinx sighed in annoyance and asked,
"What do you want, Prometheus?"
"I heards you got a boombox!"
"Stop listening through the walls!"
"It ain't my fault! These walls be thin, you! Now listens! Don'ts turn on that boombox! It's a trick! It's cursed, trust me on that!"
"But despite Prometheus's warning, Pandora was too impressed by its dual cassettes and a base booster. Pandora couldn't resist. It started playing... country music." Both Jinx and the audience were perplexed by the genre choice, the younger audience of children, giggling and snickering. "Unfortunately, she couldn't turn it off. Nor could she change the channel. She was cursed with listening to country music for all of eternity. But, after a while, Pandora would come to discover how diverse and amazing country music was. From Bluegrass to country pop. The soulful sound of the American South inspired her to become the most famous line dancer in Greece." This was finalized by Jinx putting on cowboy boots, a belt with a bull on the buckle, and a cowboy hat, and did some line dancing until the curtains fell. The audience laughed, while the Tween Titans were a bit amused.
"Eh, not the best or most logical, but I appreciate the artistic liberty." Lizzie shrugged.
"Wow, that's the first time I've ever heard you not say that it was the best thing you ever experienced." Sophie chuckled as she elbowed her friend.
"What can I say, my tastes are growing." The Hispanic girl shrugged. Nightwing held up his hands, which caused the lights flicker in the fake thunder to rumble again, quieting the audience.
"Now, for my final greek tale, let me tell you of a man too clever for his own good; Sisyphus." The children snickered. "Ahem, you shouldn't know why that is funny yet. Anyway, Sisyphus was known to be a king, the founder and first ruler of Ephyra." The curtains opened to show Cyborg dressed in royal garb, looking proud. "King Sisyphus promoted navigation and commerce but was avaricious and deceitful." Cyborg now shifted his face to look more malevolent and shifty. "He killed guests and travelers in his palace, a violation of guest-obligations, which fell under my domain, Zeus. He took pleasure in these killings because they allowed him to maintain his iron-fisted rule."
"Sisyphus betrayed one of my secrets by revealing the whereabouts of the Asopid Aegina to her father, the river god Asopus, in return for causing a spring to flow on the Corinthian acropolis. I ordered Thanatos, god of death, to chain Sisyphus in Tartarus." Beast knocked on Cyborg's door, to which he opened, revealing the green shapeshifter, wearing black robe and wielding a plastic scythe.
"Alright, fool. Times to gets to Tartarus."
"Sisyphus was curious as to why Charon, whose job it was to guide souls to the underworld, had not appeared on this occasion. Sisyphus slyly asked Thanatos to demonstrate how the chains worked."
"Say, how are those chains supposed to work?"
"Oh, these chains? They are pretty nice aren't they? How they works is-" Victor pretended to hit Beast over the head with a frying pan, knocking him out, and wrapping him in chains, before rolling him under his bed like an unwanted rug.
"Once Thanatos was bound by the strong chains, no one died on Earth, causing an uproar. Ares, the god of war, became annoyed that his battles had lost their fun because his opponents would not die."
"Come on, what is the point of the war if there's no victor?!" Starfire shouted at this mess.
"The exasperated Ares intervened, freeing Thanatos, enabling deaths to happen again and turned Sisyphus over to him. However, before dying, he told his wife,
"Listen babe, when I die, don't put a gold coin in my mouth." Jinx, playing as Sisyphus's wife, wasn't sure why he'd want that, but went ahead and didn't do it.
"When Sisyphus was escorted to the River Styx, the boatman, Charon, realized he had no money to pay for a ride, so he was forced to be brought back out of Hades."
"Ha, see ya, suckers!" Victor laughed as he walked away from the angered Starfire, and the indifferent Beast. However, the mechanical Titan would flinch, before falling on his back, pretending to be dead.
"But eventually, he did die for real. As a punishment for his crimes, Hades made Sisyphus roll a huge boulder endlessly up a steep hill in Tartarus."
"Aw man!" Cyborg groaned as he carried a giant paper mâché boulder.
"The maddening nature of the punishment was reserved for Sisyphus due to his hubristic belief that his cleverness surpassed the gods themselves. Hades accordingly displayed his own cleverness by enchanting the boulder into rolling away from Sisyphus before he reached the top which ended up consigning Sisyphus to an eternity of useless efforts and unending frustration. Thus, pointless or interminable activities are sometimes described as "Sisyphean". Moral of the story? Don't be bad, or you'll suffer greatly before you die. We all may have already heard that, but some punishments can be greater than others. The end." The curtains closed on the hopeless and frustrated Cyborg, to which the audience clapped and applauded.
"A Sisyphean fate. That's how I feel every day with my life." Lynn sighed, to Steve's chagrin.
"Seriously, do you need a counselor?" The Tween Titan leader asked exasperated. "I know in your free time, you try to keep it restrained to Edgar Allen Poe-esque poems, but eventually you're going to have to deal with your problems instead of just complaining about life.
"Of course you wouldn't understand my pain. Nobody does."
"He's just... taking his time." Lizzie tried to defend Lynn, but not sounding too confident about that. "He'll get help when he feels like it. We can't hold his depression against him. What's important is showing our support for him, and show that we care for him." Suddenly, Nightwing came out again, but in a fancy suit.
"Hello everyone. While the Teen Titans have enjoy to telling you about these tales of Greek mythology, we're not done yet. Because we're having a genre shift for the next few acts we're shifting from Greek mythology... to parodies of operatic theater.