This fic was originally written for 15th day of the Tales of Symphonia 10th Anniversary Japan event on ToSCountdown on Deviantart, "Fanfiction Day".
It was inspired by Lubrian's picture "Walk Home Together" and our conversation about it.
Disclaimer: I don't own Tales of Symphonia. Namco does as far as I'm aware.
"It's not fair," Lloyd whined in a tone that sounded very much like Noishe's on bath day.
"What isn't?" Genis asked, expecting his friend to complain about Raine asking him maths questions he couldn't answer. Lloyd's reply, however, surprised him.
"Every day when we walk home together like this we all get extra homework, except for Noishe. He never gets any homework," Lloyd said.
"Well he does work hard carrying us and our things around, and it doesn't really seem fair to give a dog homework," Colette said.
"Maybe that could be his homework, to act more like a dog," Genis laughed.
"What do you mean, Noishe is a dog," Colette frowned. Genis raised an eyebrow at her.
"Well he is, he has a fluffy tail, and he barks, and he loves biscuits," she paused as she fished in her pocket for a dog biscuit to demonstrate that point. She found one and smiled happily as Noishe gulped it down, wagged his tail and barked happily before sniffing at her pockets to see if she had any more.
"How many dogs do you know that are that big Colette?" Genis asked.
"What about those large fluffy dogs that help rescue people trapped on snowy mountains that we read about in class a while ago, those were pretty big," Colette smiled.
"But even those…"
Lloyd shook his head as Genis and Colette continued to debate whether or not Noishe was a dog. Noishe whined, seemingly unhappy at being the topic of such an argument. Lloyd felt a little sorry for him but decided not to intervene, the discussion seemed to be catching Raine's interest and he figured that if she was listening to that then she wouldn't be able to ask more difficult questions.
He smiled as he decided that he had the perfect homework for Noishe, although he suspected that his pet may not like the suggestion, distracting the others so that they forgot about giving him his extra homework. He gestured to the large animal to not interrupt the others and then started to ponder an easier maths question than the earlier ones, how many biscuits would it cost him to encourage Noishe to do this more often.