The Uchiha were feared. (They shouldn't have been. Cut-rate amateurs.) For the potential to steal Jutsu (what a stupid reason). For their Genjutsu (mewling babes). For their potential to take over someone's body. (Nothing compared to the grace of the Nara.) The Uchiha were feared.
The Yamanaka aren't feared. (But they should be.) They're village staples, they're trusted. (It's so easy to get someone to trust them. It's sad, sometimes.) They're kind and gentle and own a flower shop in the village. (Rumors, contacts, whisssspersss.)
Even without chakra, without Jutsu, without anything but a knife and some meanness, people are so terribly fragile. It only takes two days to break a civilian, even for the untrained and the uninitiated. Two days of threats and calculated kindness to turn them to the side of the very people hurting them.
Shinobi are stronger, of course. Shinobi are taught how to harness pain, how to stand against torture. (Lie. From the first word, you lie, so that when you break -and you will break- you've already muddied the waters beyond all hope.) Shinobi are strong. Shinobi can last a month or two, at the very best. (A Jounin.) A week or two on average.
That's with torture, and violence, and threats.
Rocks. Sticks. Thrown at a problem until it's not a problem anymore.
The Uchiha could do it faster, could throw a whole barrel of rocks at a time, but it was just still rocks.
The Yamanaka had never needed such brutish, uncouth measures. Their techniques are beautiful, swift, deadly.
(They made her throw up her toenails nightly when she was first learning them.)
Memory is so unreliable. Shinobi have to train at it for years in the Academy to make sure they have memory practices down, and still it's possible to corrupt. Memory is overwritten every time it's accessed. Enough accessing, enough suggestions, and it could be warped entirely.
But that's just so... clumsy, isn't it? That's what the Branch Houses practice. What Yamanaka children not yet in the Academy practice. What ANBU and T&I practice.
What the Main House of the Yamanaka clan practices. What she practices, is another creature entirely. The inside of her head is a many-roomed mansion, a vault, a paradise. (A torture chamber.) Uchiha have no idea what they're doing when they invite themselves inside another person's head, but Ino does. Oh, she does.
She knows what it's like to unmake a person. To look into their heart and soul and pull it out of them piece by piece. Her father taught her lovingly, devotedly, what it is to unmake a person. How to build them up, how to rip them down.
Shinobi aren't trained for that. They aren't trained to withstand mind games inside their own minds. (Ino is.) When a ripple of will and a wrench to the side shifts a memory and the person torturing you is suddenly wearing a different headband, a different face.
The Uchiha were feared because of their Genjutsu. (The Uchiha were nothing.) For Genjutsu that could control someone. For Genjutsu that could be broken. (You don't know what broken is. But I'll teach you. Oh, yes, I'll teach you.)
There's a reason that Uchiha children were warned not to practice on Yamanaka children. ("Come into my parlor," said the spider to the fly. "Do you want to play in my mind?" asked the Yamanaka to the Uchiha, and oh, baby, you have no idea what you're walking into. You think you know what mind-washing is, little child, you've only ever played with bubbles.)
Ino's mind is a palace. (Ino's mind is the gate into hell.)
But the Yamanaka aren't feared. (Oh, Kami, they should be.)
XXX