What Are The Best Kankuro X Kiba Fanfiction With Character Growth?

Good luck. Finding an author who can write both characters well is relatively rare, so start by looking at the bookmarks of good authors for either character. Sometimes they’ve written a one-shot for the other character. I once read a fairly good short story in which Kiba and Kankuro were both sensei to a new generation of genin. They had different methods of teaching, and the story followed them as respect for each other’s professionalism turned into something more. It had nice moments of Kiba coming to an understanding of Kankuro’s puppet-perfectionism, but I forgot the author’s name.

Most of the stories between these two that I’ve read are PWP’s or they get a mention in a larger polycule story and get no real character development. If you want to read some good gen stories with plenty of character development and strong team dynamics then I’d recommend that you look for stories where Kiba and Kankuro’s relationship develops slowly in the background. There was a ‘chunin exams alternate outcome’ story on AO3 a while back where Kiba gets injured in the forest and Kankuro is the one who finds him. Together they have to get out of the forest. It wasn’t a romance focused story and so the respect that the two characters eventually gained for each other felt real. In the story Kiba learned to appreciate the subtlety in human interaction, while Kankuro learned to appreciate the raw instinct that Kiba has. It wasn’t a great story, but it did what it set out to do. Sorry that I’ve forgotten the title.

I'm going to have to disagree with you here. There may be a lack of fiction in general, but once you filter for the pairing, there's plenty of good fiction out there, most of it dedicated entirely to their two heads. I just finished reading 'Abrasive Edges', a modern AU that has become my new favorite story. The main character, Kankuro, is an art student specializing in kinetic sculptures - really cool to see a reference to puppetry like that. The other main character is Kiba, a dog trainer with anger management issues. The two of them go through a lot of personal growth in the story, Kankuro learning how to express himself through his art without being a sarcastic jerk, and Kiba learning to be patient and controlled, rather than flying off the handle at every little thing. I love how the author portrayed their canon personalities in this fictional world without ninjas, and the romance is more of a byproduct of their growth as people, rather than the central focus of the story. Completed, 80k words or so, very low-key and satisfying in the end, no magic fixes or happy endings for the sake of happy endings.

Another great pairing to consider for more content is Kankuro/Kiba. Honestly, for me, there just isn’t enough content for them as main characters and it would be nice to read more about them as a pair within a larger story or even as the main focus of a short story. What I have read about Kankuro and Kiba usually focuses on their shared outsider status, as both are very loud and proud of their skills, but also very loyal to their various siblings and teams.

One story I read a while back (it's probably still up on FF.net) is called 'Of Puppets and Hounds' by a guest author for the community. It's an older story, written in the early 2010s FF.net style, but the basic premise was a post-war joint mission between the Suna and Konoha villages, and it followed Kankuro and Kiba as they worked together. For Kiba, it was learning to not charge around blindly and work within a strategy. For Kankuro, it was dealing with the pressure of being Gaara's brother after Gaara's 'reform' - that Kankuro was supposed to be the 'diplomatic' one now. I thought they did a good job of portraying Kankuro's gruff exterior and Kiba's hyperactive personality, and it felt like their growth was really earned, even though they did butt heads a lot before coming to respect each other in the end.

A few stories I remember were Kankuro in Suna raised in 'Naruto' AUs, where Kankuro would be somewhat of an abrasive, rather gruff but loving mentor to Kiba who had moved to Suna, or been sent there on a mission. This can be a fun pairing, if the author can remember to not make Kiba a total doormat, and that he is equally as stubborn as Kankuro, but in reverse. The main growth in these kinds of stories would be for Kiba to learn to survive in a rather rough village in a different environment, and for Kankuro to grow out of his rather limited scope of admiration for things outside of his beloved puppets. These stories are largely crossover, so you'll have to search out the individual crossover tags and author's bookmarks to find most of them.