Title: Sue, A Papa Bear Story
Rating: PG
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Sue Sylvester
Genre: Gen/Humour
Warning: Bear-racism. Also total crack. And bear-noises.
Disclaimer: I don't own it and I'm not making any money from it, this is pure entertainment.
Author Notes: This story was actually inspired by a case in 2008, when a bear in NSW was forced into early retirement after claims of being unable to perform his job to the same capacity as a human. The bear sued and was able to prove that he could do just as good a job as a human male twenty years his junior, winning a large settlement and pension.**
Summary: This is the first time Sue has ever experienced this kind of needless hate.

.


.

That Sue Sylvester was a bear never should have entered into the network's decision to give her a feature segment on the local news, but the truth was tangled in the fact that no bear had ever been a Republican. To hear such right wing views from someone who should be all for equal rights for everyone and lovey-dovey rainbows was nothing short of controversy. And controversy sold ratings.

So they gave her a three minute segment and justified it as part opinion and part fluff-piece. It was a good filler, a good ratings draw, and having a bear on the payroll made the network look forward-thinking.

At least, that was the plan.

Somewhere in some office in some big city someone was looking perplexed.

The quarterly financial report from the station was in, and had been sent up and along and sideways until it landed in the inbox of an accountant in the employ of the larger conglomerate that owned the TV station. Everything was normal, all expenditures justified, nothing out of the ordinary... Until it came to the sections marked out for the payroll. At which point one particular oddity stood out as if it had been written in red and circled with flashing lights.

Sue Sylvester. Paid in premium salmon.

"What. The. Hell."

Missy Strauss liked to think she could take a joke – with her name she had to – but there was an appropriate time and place for jokes, a financial report was not one of them. Missy blinked to clear her eyes and turned away from the report briefly just to make sure she wasn't seeing things. When she looked back the name and description was still there, large as life and clearly some kind of sick prank. She reached for her phone and dialled for her supervisor.

"Frank Stern," the male voice greeted her, a smoker's croak from the sixty year old Frank who had smoked a pack a day since he was twenty.

"Frank," Missy said, tapping her pen against her desk and staring at the report that sat there innocently on her computer screen, mocking her. "I've just been looking through the quarterly report from 32-OHK, and there's an odd note I think you should look at."

"Alright," Frank rumbled, "lets hear it."

"You're going to think I'm joking. Actually, I'll email a copy to you so you can see for yourself." Missy hesitated, then just came out and said it; "They have a woman on the payroll that they're paying in fish."

"You're shitting me."

"I told you." Missy put down her pen, put her phone on speaker, and quickly attached the report to an email. "Sue Sylvester, paid in salmon."

"That can't be right."

"I just sent you a copy of the relevant pages. It should be in your inbox now."

There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

"What the hell is that about?" Frank asked, sounding just as surprised about the fish payment as Missy had been. Over the phone she could hear the impossibly loud clacking of Frank's keyboard. "Alright," he said after a moment. "I've submitted a request for you to conduct inquiries. Bounce the rest of your work over to Peter, I want you to find out what the hell they think they're doing paying someone in fish."

.


.

'How Sue Sees It' had made it to youtube. The segment actually had its own channel, and had been linked to in blogs and even a couple of feature articles by comedy sites. Missy had no idea how nobody in the office had heard of it. She clicked on a video link, watched the few seconds of anchor intro, then actually had to pause just to make sure she wasn't seeing things.

Sue Sylvester was a bear. In a tracksuit.

They had a grizzly in a blue tracksuit sitting behind a desk.

"Oh my God," Missy breathed, horrified and stunned as she watched three minutes worth of footage. Utterly incoherent, completely unexplainable footage. Fearing what she would find she clicked on another of the videos. Noise flooded the room from the tiny speakers on her computer.

"Grr ARR RR WRRFRRGRAR! Arrrrgf frr-rr aorr!"

There was something terribly wrong with this picture.

Two weeks of internal investigations and escalations later and the local news was sent a very official and very stern message. Get the damn bear off the air and quit wasting time with obnoxious, insulting stunts.

.


.

'Excuse me? Nobody fires Sue Sylvester!'

"Actually..." The Executive Coordinator wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, trying his best not to let on that he was a little bit terrified of the very angry blond bear rearing up on her hind legs in front of him. "This is out of our hands. Now me, I want to keep you. You bring in the ratings and you keep people talking – but our parent company says no. They won't pay you, and they'll penalise us if we keep you."

'This is an outrage!' Sue roared, her voice carrying all the way down the hall to the studio. 'This is a flagrant disregarding of my rights! This is discrimination!'

And she wouldn't get severance pay either.

It was a marvel and a testament to Sue's self-control that there wasn't any property damage and nobody received a mauling (though she didn't hesitate to point out that it would be justified 'no court would convict me!'). She raged and ranted but kept her paws and teeth to herself, practically tore a strip from the asphalt when her car screeched and peeled out of the parking lot.

The very idea that she had been fired because of her race was humiliating to Sue. She was used to it being a nonissue, to achieving because of and in spite of her heritage. Sue was a winner and everybody knew it. She got her way and when she didn't she always found a way to make it work. Her news segment had been another step on the ladder, another notch in her already heavily crosshatched belt. To have it taken away just because she happened to be a bear was appalling.

Sue paced back and forth in her spacious living room, muttering under her breath.

Lawyers were needed. Lawsuits needed to be filed. Sue intended to get her spot back and expose the unhealthy racism behind TV's executive decisions (ignoring her own casual, habitual racism) in the meanest and most public way possible. A class action suit should do nicely.

There was only one problem with that.

A class action suit actually required more than one injured party. She was going to have to find more victims to stand behind her cause. Sue Sylvester was going to have to go ambulance-chasing. And if she had to cause a few accidents to get those figurative ambulances, well... so be it.

.


.

"Can anyone explain this to me?"

The video footage had been recorded on a digital handheld camera, the tiniest of wobbles now and then indicating that it was being held by someone and not on a tripod. In the centre of the frame, seated on a large ergonomic office chair was a grizzly bear in a red tracksuit, paws slotted together in its lap as if it were clasping them together. The bear cleared its throat, and then spoke.

At least, the growling and snarling seemed an awful lot like speech.

The video went for two minutes, and at one point the bear actually unclasped its paws, reached out of frame and picked up a manila folder which it then flicked through as it continued – clearly reading from whatever documents were inside.

The video, which had apparently gone viral, ended with the bear holding up an official notice signed by several people. A copy of which was now sitting in the middle of the table at this particular meeting alongside a blue piece of paper that indicated the company had just been served and representatives would be expected to appear in court two months from now unless they could agree on a settlement.

Three lawyers sat on the other side of the table. Two under company employ, one independent who was (apparently) representing the bear. The only other people in the room were Anthony Gable and Carl Mattherson, the company VP and the head of PR.

"It seemed quite simple to me," the bear-lawyer (Pennywise, or Penrith, or something like that) stated calmly. "Like Sue says, she was unjustly dismissed because of her race and heritage. As it turns out, the stations under your company's affiliation have done this sort of thing before and Sue has managed to find enough unhappy people to put together a class action suit. We are, of course, hoping to settle out of court, but that decision is entirely up to you and your lawyers."

"This is ridiculous," Anthony scoffed. "A bear can't sue anyone."

"As a matter of fact," Pennywise replied, "they can, and do. Often."

"But it's a bear!" Anthony exploded. "Bears don't have the right to sue anyone! Bears are just dumb animals, they can't talk and they certainly don't belong on the evening news!"

Pennywise smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. "Personally I'd like to see this case put in front of a judge. In fact, I'd love you to take the stand and explain your point of view just as succinctly as that."

Anthony gaped. He looked at the company lawyers, only to see them looking a little green. He turned to Carl, who was staring at him as if he thought Anthony was insane. "Don't tell me you're actually taking this seriously!"

Carl cleared his throat. "Tony, perhaps you'd better sit this one out?"

"Are you really telling me that we're being sued by a god damn bear and you're taking it seriously?"

"I really think you should sit this one out," Carl nodded. "And take no interviews whatsoever on the subject. In fact," he glanced at Pennywise, who was sitting there smug as a shark at spring break,
"we'd best handle this very quietly just in case."

Anthony's jaw actually dropped open. Seriously, until that day he'd always thought that was just an expression. Clearly everyone in this meeting room was insane, except for him. He needed to get the hell out of there before he joined them. He left the room as quickly as he could, just in time to hear one of the lawyers ask "how much are you asking for?"

.


.

'One way or another we are all racist. We see people and we judge them by how they look, it's just nature. The trouble starts when we make big decisions based solely on these little judgement. Yes, viewers, I too have been the victim of discrimination, but unlike the rest of you I am legally allowed to eat a certain number of humans per year. For those of you not capable of legally sanctioned murder I give you this advice: stand up for yourself. Nobody is going to respect you if you don't respect yourself.

And that is how Sue sees it.'

.


.

Note: Bears are subject to the same laws as humans and are not legally allowed to eat (or maul) anyone. Eating or mauling humans will result in serious legal consequences, and you may wind up behind bars. As much as you may think living in a zoo for twenty-to-life may be worth killing that asshole down the road, it really, really isn't.

**REAL AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sometimes I think I have way too much fun with this world.