The first time Danzo brings it up, Shisui isn't really paying much attention. He's too busy trying to sort through the tens of thousands of pages of information Hatake managed to dig up on almost everyone with anything approaching a security clearance within the village. Even when he'd asked for it, he'd known that it would be infeasible to the point of impracticality to investigate everyone, but what else could he do? Let enemy combatants invade his village? Threaten his people? That would be unthinkable. So he just nods to Danzo and continues trying to sort through everything. Eventually he gives up and has the data sent down to the analysts to try to make sense of. While they hadn't been cleared by Intel, yet, he's fairly certain he can trust enough of them to be useful. He marks the data as highly classified as he can and chooses people who have been with the department long enough that they aren't really operation security risks. Even so, he has Itachi look into their files for ties to any other village.
The second time Danzo mentions it, Shisui has just returned from a meet and great with a civilian school group. He's exhausted and far stickier than he's ever really been comfortable being. While children are great and all, and the future, their ability to make a mess out of everything around them is insane. Shisui agrees to consider whatever it is Danzo wants just to get the man to shut up. He has a pounding headache and doesn't want to spend the only half an hour of he has of unscheduled time today on whatever Danzo is worried about this time.
After that, Danzo lets it go, mercifully. Shisui is actually able to get a significant amount of work done. Intel, mostly the Yamanaka, finish their investigation of all active duty staff, Hatake, working with the Uchiha analyst, Izuna?, is able to make some progress wading through background checks and Shisui has actually managed at least four consecutive hours of sleep for nearly five days in a row.
Which is, of course, when Danzo comes back. "Have you given much thought to what we spoke of earlier?" Shisui doesn't bother turning around. If Danzo wants to stand behind him in some sort of pointless power play, Shisui doesn't care. It won't change anything and he's long since given up trying to follow all the convoluted paths of Danzo's mind. Reluctantly, he tries to remember what exactly Danzo is talking about this time, but finds he can't. Ever since they caught the one infiltrator, Danzo has been almost more present than his actual advisors. Something that would bother him more if Danzo wasn't also astonishingly insightful and far less insane than Shisui had initially thought. While he knows the man was dangerous, and knows how uncomfortable he makes Itachi, Shisui finds his council to valuable to dismiss out of hand. Is he power-hungry? Sure, but at least he tends to put the village first and doesn't spout all sorts of idealistic crap about how ninja should be above spying, stealing and assassinations. For all his flaws, and there are many, Shisui is beginning to appreciate having someone a little less naïve and a little more aware of the world outside the village to bounce ideas off.
Danzo, naturally, notices that Shisui's lost him almost immediately, though his only sign of frustration is a sharp, nasal exhale. "It is," he says slowly, "important that Konoha project the appearance of strength to the rest of the contentment." Shisui nods. Ever since he took power, they've had to deal with a marked increase in the other nations' attempts to undermine them. To undermine him. Apparently, having a supposed "God of Ninja" step down makes the entire village look weak, despite Shisui's own rather fearsome reputation abroad.
"And so we have made a point of continuing to accept large numbers of missions from foreign clients." Shisui nods again. That, he's all too familiar with. The Daimyo has been demanding far more highly ranked local missions for some of the most inane things, most likely in some sort of power play, though, Shisui isn't exactly sure what he hopes to get from it. The village is as loyal as it's ever been, but if they have to continue to put up with crap like this, he isn't sure how long that loyalty will last. So that, combined with the relatively low number of jounin they have and the need to keep taking high profile external missions means there really isn't anyone left. He's been forced to send teams on back to back A-ranks, something that hasn't been done since the war ended. It's unsustainable. However, refusing the Daimyo is unthinkable and allowing the impression of weakness to spread? As soon as they show even a hint of faltering, the other great nations will destroy them. They'd lose missions and revenue and either slow starve from lack of funds or be picked off by anyone who wanted their bloodlines, techniques or just held a grudge from any of the wars. Really, what he needs to do, is talk to the Daimyo personally, but without any personal connections in the capital, even being the Hokage, it's been impossible to schedule anything.
"However, the most critical of those missions are ranked A or higher and thus only jounin can go on them." Shisui blinks, trying to regain the thread of the conversation.
"Yes," he says, "and we don't have enough jounin to go on them, not indefinitely. What is your point? There's not much we can do about that unless the Daimyo stops assigning so many pointless missions. Or we start sending chunin and genin on them and just hope he doesn't notice." Which, now the Shisui thinks about it would be an excellent idea, if he thought they could actually get away with it. So far, the Daimyo's requests had been more tedious than dangerous. Though, if the genin wound up failing the mission, that might be hard to explain. If they hadn't raised the graduation age after the war there'd have been tons of newly minted jounin by now. Probably. Granted, that was probably unethical and with the longer training periods they had now, the quality of each shinobi they produced was most likely better? Considering the fact that they now had fewer jounin per capita than at any other time since their founding, they had better be better at least 1.32 times better.
"If we have a shortage of jounin, that means that every jounin in the village is…" Danzo trails off in a way that clearly indicates he expects Shisui to finish his sentence.
Shisui's come to think of this habit of Danzo's as "teacher mode" and it's one of the most condescending and downright infuriating things about the old man. Still, he's willing enough to play along, if it means Danzo'll get to the point any faster. Shisui shrugs, "A wasted asset? A liability? Desperately needed in two places at once? What do you want me to say? Yes, we need more jounin out on missions, but we need them in the village as well. What happens next time someone attacks if anyone worth anything in a fight is off doing missions in Wind or Lightning?" Shisui can't keep his tone even by the end. This has been one of the daily struggles he's been facing since he took office. How do you balance the competing needs of the village proper, the needs of the Daimyo and yet still maintain village's presence in the world? While the jounin commander is invaluable resolving personnel conflicts and offering advice on how best to maximize some of the villages assets, those decisions still, ultimately, have to come from him.
Danzo places one of his hands on Shisui's shoulder in a move that had freaked him out the first few times it had happened, and still makes Itachi visibly tense, but that he's beginning to learn to live with. "I understand your frustration," the man says in an infuriatingly calm voice, "but you have not considered utilizing an untapped resource."
Shisui stands up and turns to face Danzo, deftly shaking the man's hand off his shoulder. "If you're proposing expanding your little ROOT program, the answer is and always will be no. There are enough children jounin." Well, enough of the freaky little robot jounin Danzo favors. Shisui's not sure how he feels about children jounin in general. It wasn't bad for him, and Hatake seems to have been fine, but he can't look at Itachi without thinking he's too young for… for any of this nonsense.
Danzo, for his part, is unphased, "Of course not, you've already made your position on that matter quite clear," he says placatingly. "I was merely referring to untapped assets we already have. There are a number of capable ninja within the village that, for various reasons have not been reassigned after completing their missions. Officially, they are not helping to defend Konoha or protect her interests abroad."
Shisui pauses. Who could Danzo be refer—Hatake maybe? The vast majority of the active investigation had been completed a few days ago, and Kakashi had been on leave since then. The rest will be up to the analysts and Intel.
But once Danzo starts talking again, he realizes it's much more than that. He means all of the officially active duty ninja who stopped taking mission to raise families, and those like Itachi, who was technically ANBU, but hadn't taken a mission out of the village since before the—since before. Or, well most of ANBU to be honest. With their duties protecting the village and dealing with a large amount of internal policing as well as protecting him, they tended only to go out of the village when it was critical the village not be tied in any way to their mission, success or failure.
It becomes clear that Danzo has given this a lot more thought than Shisui has. He has already drawn up a duty roster and filled in the names and identification numbers of nearly fifty additional jounin level mothers, fathers and others who all but stopped taking missions. Even the two loyal Sannin are there. And that's not counting the additional chunin level shinobi he's dug up. Simply by reactivating them, Konoha could complete nearly a third again as many missions. It makes quite a lot of sense but – Shisui hesitates. Something about breaking up families, bringing mothers back into active duty after, in some cases, almost two decades out of the service doesn't sit well with him. Tracking down those like Hatake who had completed missions and not been reassigned would help. Reassigning Hatake was going to happen anyway. And even Itachi, much as he hates to think of it, probably should go on some missions, but he refuses to force families apart. Especially when those ninja have all but resigned.
However, Shisui bites his lip, there are a lot of all but active duty ninja that haven't been considered. The police force has been complaining about lack of responsibility and jurisdiction issues with ANBU for ages and ANBU could easily help take some of the strain off the rest of the forces. He looks over at Danzo again, "The main reason we don't have all of ANBU running missions outside the village is because they're needed for Intel and basic policing of the ninja. If we have the military police take over most of ANBU's internal duties, excluding Intel, then we can transition ANBU into providing some defensive support, but primarily running missions." He grins, the military police is very capable. With Sharingan they might even be more capable of running the basic security of the village than ANBU was. The active sign of trust would help appease his family and, even if it didn't, freeing ANBU for fieldwork would be a huge boon.
Predictably, Danzo is immediately against the plan. Anything that compromises the security of the village or puts more trust on the Uchiha he tends to dislike. However, even he can't deny how underutilized ANBU currently is and how useful the police force could be, if they could be trusted. While it certainly isn't a long term solution, and Shisui is sure Danzo will be assigning his little ROOT agents to watch the police from a distance, he considers it overall, a win. Now he just needs to actually get a meeting with the Daimyo or, failing that, just drop by sometime. He grins to himself; maybe he will invite himself into the man's study. It would certainly help remind him what exactly a ninja village was capable of.