- Pronouns
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Oh I wasn't trying to say he needed a love of sailing. Just that if you want him to keep any of the memories, he needs to use the memories sooner than S4. I really like the idea overall, it reminds me of the NCIS crossover fic I read. So if it's sailing/navy memories, the easiest way is probably just to have him use Cordelia's dad's boat on some weekends. (and of course, you can always ignore something as small as Xander's comment about when he forgot stuff and just make him remember stuff a few months longer than canon.A specific POD would likely take place early to mid season 3, or depending on the plot, possibly some point in mid to late season 2.
I was thinking Navy Seabees as it would combine military skills and training with Xander's canon success in construction. By season 6 he wasn't exactly the top person at his construction company, but seemed to have enough pull to get Buffy a job and wasn't automatically fired because of her, and did seem to have a degree of authority over other workers in later seasons when seen at work.
Love of boats isn't a necessity or requirement for the navy either. I've met former Navy folks before who simply picked that branch at random, or they tried to enlist with the other military branches and the navy folks where either the only people to make an offer, or simply the first ones to call.
Sunnydale is big enough it likely had at some sort of recruiting office somewhere in a strip mall or downtown area store front, maybe even a setup at the Sunnydale Mall. A possible POD at some point between the season 2 Halloween episode could be Xander just happens to be in the right/wrong spot when one or more vampires decide that some enlisted sailor or even a junior officer assigned to or having business at the local recruiting office, someone who isn't a Sunnydale local and doesn't know the unwritten rules of Sunnydale after dark, gets jumped by one or more local vampires. Xander just happens to be passing by, and ends up deciding to help.Thanks to a combination of the vampire(s) being nowhere even close to the likes of Angel or Spike or other higher profile vampires, Xander and the recruiter manage to tagteam the vampire(s) and kill or otherwise knock them out.
Xander and the recruiter chat, Xander gives the person a cut and dry rundown on what just happened, and they part ways, but not before the recruiter hands Xander his or her business card with contact information. The recruiter figures since Xander just saved his/her life, might at least owe the kid a small favor or two off the record at some point.
The construction is a little bit different, since it's likely a Sunnydale construction company. So most of the people who would normally be doing Xander's middle management construction job, probably already died. It makes it a lot easier to get promoted in sunnydale. The NAvy would have a command structure outside Sunyndale that would have capable people shipped into the Sunnydale base.
If Xander/Cordelia/Oz/Willow can hunt vamps for a whole summer with no inguries/deaths, then Xander and a military guy can totally tagteam a newbie vamp. And since we've seen Vamps struggle in conflicts with a human (not instantly overpower them), most vamps are nowhere close to twice as strong/fast as a person. Even Angel is probably topping out at twice a human's strength. Because when do we ever se a vamp lift more than 1'000 pounds?