This story has been in the works for months, and is testament to the resolve I know I need if I ever want to get anywhere when I ever fully enter into the original writing world. It's a product of an AU that came to mind before I managed to watch Age of Extinction, a post-DoTM and pre-AoE AU where the Canadian government provides asylum for Autobots fleeing Cemetery Wind. This fic wasn't going to be the first one, but in the sense of continuity, it fit. I can't believe I finished it!

Warning(s): the main human characters of this story are Christians. Please do not flame this story simply because of their faith (and my own). It's not appreciated, and it will have no affect on me since I've completed this story. Flames will be useless, so save your breath.

Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers, or the Bayverse movies. If I did, they wouldn't be so flawed. I also don't own Perceptor. I only own Danielle DeClan and her daughter, Jetta.

The Improbability of Safe Harbour
by: AndromedaAI

1 — Iron Giant — 1

The small planetoid rumbled ominously beneath his pedes, reminding him once again that it was geologically unstable and that it would be pertinent that he get off of it as soon as he was able.

Which was something he was more than willing to do. Unfortunately, he wasn't alone, and he knew that, as soon as he left the surface, he would be targeted by the Decepticons that had been tailing him for lightyears.

The Helix Nebula was notorious for its communication and sensor jamming capabilities thanks to its highly dense heart—a white dwarf—and the gasses that gave it its unnerving infrared glow. Perceptor had chosen this sector of space because it would hide him from the Decepticons while he repaired himself and his ship. But now the planet felt like it was about to give him the boot, and he would be forced to expose himself.

He attempted to scan the ground surrounding him, but the information that came back to him was highly corrupted. He let out a light grumble, coming to the conclusion that the same interference that rendered communications and sensors non-effective was effecting his scans as well. He was beginning to come to the conclusion that hiding out in the Helix Nebula had been a very bad idea.

The ground suddenly heaved and bucked underneath him, and he stumbled back. Waving his arms in hopes of regaining his balance, he quickly found himself toppling backwards as his heels caught on a small rise in the rock. He hit the ground with enough force that he felt the rock underneath him crumble slightly. The shaking never ceased, and a dull roar that seemed to originate from deep underground steadily grew louder and louder. He could feel it rumbling deep within his chest.

He flinched when the rock suddenly split apart inches above his helm. Noxious gasses hissed out from the crack, and the paint on the top of his helm blistered at the heat that accompanied them. His could no longer let himself struggle what to do next—he was going to have to evacuate.

Scrambling to his pedes, he took off running as fast as his long legs and the violently shifting ground would allow. He held up his left arm and began to tap commands into the small screen fastened to the plates of his forearm. Pinching the screen with two fingers, he drew a small circle and connected his comm. to his ship's computer.

"Perceptor to the Observer, initiate engine calibration sequence!" he commanded as he leapt over a low shelf of slate-like rock that threatened to trip him up.

There was a click as the computer received his command. "You are not on board."

Perceptor would have sighed if he wasn't too busy trying to use the planet's thin atmosphere to keep his core temperature at acceptable levels. Instead, he put as much insistence into his digital voice as he could manage. "Observer, I may not be on board, but I am coming as quickly as I am able. This planet is about to self-destruct and I can't risk waiting for the engines to warm up once I am on board."

There was another click, and up ahead he heard the distinct sound of the Observer's engines coming online. He looked up and lowered his targeting monocle over his right optic. With its help, he calculated that he was at least 500 mechanometers from his ship. He could only hope that he would be able to make it there in time.

That hope was short-lived. When he was only 250 mechanometers from his ship, a nearby mountain exploded, ripping itself apart in a manner more violent than any mountain he had ever come to know of. Chunks of rock and lava flew everywhere and Perceptor once again found himself flying from his pedes as a shockwave caused by the blast slammed into him.

Something splattered against his right shoulder, and it took a moment before the pain registered. As he pushed himself into a sitting position, he peered down at his shoulder and let out a gasp. Hissing and popping and oozing off of him, was molten rock that was quickly melting his own armour. Red metal hissed and melted before dripping to the ground.

The pain was most excruciating, but he fought through it and climbed back to his pedes. He could hear the lava rushing down what remained of the mountain's slopes, and just by the movement he could perceive out of the corner of his optic he knew that the river of death was heading in his direction. So he pushed through the pain and took off running again, this time pushing his limits to the point that several warnings popped up on his HUD. By the time he reached the ramp that lead up into his ship, his hip joints were making strange grinding sounds and the lava had burned through his amour and was now eating at the wiring of his upper arm.

In the airlock, he yanked the hatch closed behind him. "Computer, douse me in coolant! Quickly!" he cut off the computer before it could protest. Seconds later, he was blasted with the frigid liquid from all angles, and he couldn't stop the yelp that left his voicebox at the shock that rippled through his systems. Quickly, he lost feeling in his servos and his pedes, and by the time he told the computer to stop his optics had frozen over and his voicebox barely functioned. But a quick check of his shoulder told him that the lava had solidified and that he was no longer in danger of losing his dominant arm.

The computer drained the airlock of coolant before it opened the door separating Perceptor from the rest of the ship. He fought off the effects of the coolant as he made his way to the bridge, where he sat down in the pilot's chair and went about bringing the engines to full power. A quick glance outside told him that the situation had steadily gotten worse. The lava flow hadn't yet reached the ship thanks to some large boulders, but it wouldn't be long before the lava overcame them and resumed its course.

Perceptor grunted as it quickly became apparent that the mobility of his right arm had been severely compromised. He would need to figure out how to fix it and hopefully before he met the Decepticons again. He grabbed the yoke in both hands as he initiated the liftoff sequence, retracting his targeting monocle so he could have a clear view of what he had to do.

His ship shuddered as it lifted into the air. The mountain let out another explosive blast and his ship shook. Hardly daring to draw in a breath, he toggled the accelerator switch and found himself being thrown back into his seat. He pulled on the yoke and soon his ship was rocketing into space.

His relief at escaping the dangers of the planet were short-lived, however. Seconds after he managed to leave the atmosphere, his ship was struck broadside with a blast from a familiar ship. Perceptor turned and stared out a convenient porthole located on the starboard side, over where his small sitting area at the back of the tiny bridge was. The gunmetal grey ship loomed large, lit up by the many molten rivers and lakes that now snaked across the planet's surface.

He turned to the weapons controls and aimed both laser cannons at the Decepticon ship, hoping that the nebula wasn't interfering with his targeting systems as well. He quickly fired off a few short bursts, thankfully striking one of the enemy's engines, which let off a satisfying explosion as the fuel inside them ignited. Seeing as he had sufficiently slowed the ship for now, he powered up his ship's hyperdrive and set the computer to keep it on a straight course until he made it out of the nebula.

Moments before his ship leapt away, Perceptor's attention was drawn back to the planet. Through the small porthole he watched as massive canyons opened up on the planet's surface before it promptly exploded, sending out a massive shockwave that struck the Decepticon ship and fractured it into billions of pieces accompanied by a bright flash of light.

Perceptor was relieved that the planet took out the Decepticon ship for him, but it suddenly occurred to him that he was in the path of the shockwave as well. He gripped the console in front of him tightly as he hoped with all his might that the hyperdrive would engage before the planet dragged him down unto death with it.

At that moment, two things happened. Everything was thrown into utter chaos as the shockwave reached him and struck his ship just as the hyperdrive engaged. Perceptor was thrown from the pilot's seat as the Observer was thrown through hyperspace, totally out of control.

"Warning: Critical systems failure imminent," the computer reported.

Perceptor grimaced, but all he could do was lay there as the whine of the hyperdrive grew gradually louder. When it reached an near deafening pitch, the bridge was filled with blinding white light and Perceptor had to shut his optics lest they fried from sensory overload.

This is it, I am going to offline, he thought gravely. In all his stellar-cycles, he had never thought this was the way he was going to go. He never thought that offlining in hyperspace was how he was going to find his spark rejoining the Well. A lab explosion or maybe in battle, sure, but not this.

The hyperdrive let out the most agonizing, hideous shriek before there was a concussive blast that left Perceptor's processor feeling kind of fuzzy. The Observer shook and he found himself rattling across the surface of the deck like a piece of oil-taffy in a jar that was being shaken by a youngling, and he couldn't help but feel relief that the explosion hadn't torn the ship apart.

After a few moments, the shaking calmed down enough that he was able to climb back to his feet. He peered out the front viewscreen and gaped when he saw that his ship had dropped out of hyperspace and was now careening towards another planet, this one blue and green instead of slate grey. He grabbed the yoke and pulled back as he slid into the pilot's chair again, but the ship didn't respond.

"Computer, did the detonation of the hyperdrive destroy manual control?" he demanded as he tried to illicit a reaction from the controls. When the computer didn't respond, Perceptor's spark did a little skip as it sank in that the computer must have also been destroyed in the explosion. He leapt up from the seat and dashed to the back of the bridge. He glanced out the viewscreen again as his ship rocketed past the planet's moon. He then reached into the storage cabinet next to the sitting area and pulled out his remaining energon cubes and subspaced them.

He then dashed out the door and into the hall beyond. It was there that he heard a strange whistling noise. Running down the hall, he reached the door that lead to the airlock—or had. Perceptor felt his optics widen at the sight of open space where the airlock used to be. The only entrance exit of the ship used to open up between the ship's twin engines, so if the airlock was gone… the engines were gone also. That was why he couldn't control the ship!

With a worried huff, Perceptor turned and raced back up the hall until he reached about halfway, where he plunged through a door and into the ship's only escape pod. He hoped that it had remained relatively intact, because it was his only hope now.

Falling into one of the three seats in the pod, he strapped himself in before pulling on the lever on the console in front of him. The pod lurched as it sprang away from the ship, narrowly missing one of the many metallic objects that orbited the planet as it did.

Soon, the pod was following the ship on its uncontrolled descent to the surface. Perceptor knew that his own descent was not going to be comfortable since the pod wasn't equipped with an engine. This class of pod was built to protect its occupants until help arrived.

A silent sigh escaped her lips as she lead her daughter up the front steps of the church. The eight year old was her normally chatty self, which was not helping the massive headache that assaulted her head. At the front door, she stopped and turned to her only child. "Jetta, please, could you just stop talking for a moment?" she asked gently.

Her daughter looked up at her with wide blue eyes, ones just like her father's. "But…"

She refrained from letting out another sigh. "Sweetheart, Mummy's not feeling all that well right now, okay? My head hurts and it's making it really hard to listen to what you're saying. I want to listen to what you want to say, but I really need to remember what I have to talk to Pastor Sam about."

For a brief second, Jetta's shoulder's drooped and her lip stuck out in a pout. But then she sucked that lip back in and lifted her shoulders as she seemingly overcame her disappointment. "Okay, Mummy," she said with a nod.

Danielle gave her daughter a thankful smile before she opened the front door of the small country church. She let Jetta enter first before following her in. They found Pastor Sam in the large fellowship hall across the entrance from the sanctuary, where he was putting up a poster for the harvest banquet at the end of the month. She quietly cleared her throat to alert the man to her presence.

When Sam saw her, he smiled. "There you are!" His smile faltered a bit. "Thanks for coming by, I know with today being that day and all—"

With a calm wave, she made his words grind to a halt. "Don't worry about it," she told him quietly. "I know it was a last-minute thing, and nobody can help it when they get the flu." Despite the fact that it was that day, she knew that she was the only one who was going to be able to fill in as Sunday School teacher for the middle-schoolers that coming Sunday. Willaby Park was small, and though most of the population went to Willaby Mennonite, there was nobody but her available to sub. Her friend, an older woman by the name of Mary VerBoom, had caught a nasty flu while she was in Calgary the week before, and had been bedridden for the last three days.

Pastor Sam went over to one of the tables shoved up against the far wall and picked up a small stack of papers stapled together. Danielle closed the distance and accepted the papers with a small smile. "Thanks, I'll read it over tonight and figure out a game plan. Need to keep those kids focused, right?"

Willaby Park was small for a hamlet, only having an average of 50 residents. Danielle had moved here with her husband because they had wanted to live somewhere quiet, where there wasn't much traffic and the world seemed far away. Thus, since the hamlet was small, and the population was half comprised of seniors, there weren't all that many kids. There were a lot of middle-graders, but not many young children or teenagers. She had to suppress a roll of her eyes at the thought of the chaos that would come when the middle-graders became teenagers when it flashed through her mind.

And since she was teaching the middle-graders this Sunday, her class was going to be quite large. She wasn't sure how she really felt about that.

"You don't have to worry about the class, Danielle," Sam assured her. "Mary says they're well behaved."

Why does that give me such a bad feeling? she couldn't help but grumble mentally. What if they're only good for Mary? At 28 years of age, Danielle was uncertain on how they would view her as their teacher. Even good little Christian kids could get into mischief if they didn't respect you.

She went to point this out to Sam, but was cut off when a loud bang reverberated from outside. Instead, she uttered, "What?

Throwing the back door open, Danielle stepped outside and scanned the area around the church with her eyes, trying to figure out what could have caused such a loud sound. Stunt jets usually trained over the hamlet, but they usually didn't break the sound barrier and create sonic booms while training.

After a few moments, her searching gaze landed on a trail of smoke that arched across the sky. Jetta pushed her arm out of the way as she joined her outside, and Danielle didn't miss how her daughter's eyes widened at the sight of the smoke. "Cool! It looks like a meteor fell to Earth, Mummy!" she exclaimed. She grabbed onto her mother's hand and yanked her down the back steps of the church. Danielle was helpless but to follow as Jetta dragged her around to the front of the church, where the car was parked. Jetta's small fingers pressed against all the right pressure points between the bones in her hand.

Sam followed them, and said as they climbed into her car, "Let me know what you find, okay?" he stated, as if he knew that Jetta would convince her to go check it out. "And call me if you need to ask any more questions."

Danielle nodded and gave him a small smile. "Will do. You take care, Sam."

It didn't take long for Danielle to pilot her small sedan onto the highway, where she followed the rapidly dissipating smoke trail. Jetta chattered on excitedly, filling the interior with her loud voice, which didn't help the woman's intense headache. But she didn't have it in her heart to tell her daughter to quiet down again, so she suffered quietly as Jetta lived in the moment. The eight year old was an avid space nut, and couldn't seem to get enough of exoplanets, nebulas, constellations, and galaxies. Danielle could hardly earn enough money to keep up with her daughter's insatiable appetite for information about space, thus Jetta only got new books on her birthday and Christmas.

And Danielle swore she spent most of her time while Jetta was off at school going through Pinterest for pins about space and the library archives for any new books about the subject. Unfortunately, it was looking like the libraries were beginning to run dry in that regard. It kind of reminded her of when she had cleared both the school library and the municipal library out of all their books on weather and volcanoes growing up.

A sense of deja vu began to creep up on Danielle as the smoke trail lead them down a set of roads that she new quite well. Her stomach turned as it came to mind that they were rapidly coming up on the small piece of land that their small home stood upon, and she couldn't help but start praying that whatever had fallen out of the sky had missed their house. She couldn't afford the repairs if the asteroid somehow damaged the house, and she didn't think that her insurance would cover damage from a space-born object.

Finally, she turned her sedan up their driveway, her heart sinking lower and lower as the smoke only became thicker as it hovered in the sky, white like steam.

"No… no, no, no!" she moaned as she pulled the car to a stop by the front steps of the tiny farm-house. Every window she could see on the front of the house had been shattered, probably from the sonic boom of the asteroid that had drawn her from the depths of the church in the first place. "I can't afford to replace all these windows!"

She threw the sedan into park and quickly climbed out. She stumbled a few steps in the direction of the front steps before a loud pop! yanked her attention around towards the small workshop her husband had used…when he was still around. Steam or smoke billowed out from inside, escaping through the gaping hole that now faced the driveway. More "no"s flew from her mouth as she sprinted over to the workshop, her heart breaking at the sight of what had been done to one of the only things that still proved that her husband had walked the Earth.

When she reached the hole, she peered inside, but couldn't see anything. The interior of the workshop was pitch black, and whatever light that could have filtered inside had been blocked out when a cloud drifted in front of the sun. Danielle's heart began to pound as adrenaline flooded her systems—she couldn't tell why she was so spooked, but she had a feeling that it was because something had been forcefully changed in her life. She toed the exposed soil churned up in a long rut that ended at the hole as she tried to bring up the courage to check out the damage done to the inside of the workshop.

But just as she went to reach for her cell phone so she could use its flashlight app, something moved. The screech of metal on metal told her it wasn't just something falling off a shelf or something toppling over, and she couldn't help but yelp in fright. Stepping back, she couldn't take her eyes off of the dark depths of the wooden structure. Her unnamed fear was soon realized.

There was more screeching before two blue points of light suddenly flickered on. They moved slightly, and flickered, before they rose high into the air. Danielle's gaze followed them and she flinched as there was more screeching of metal on metal before there was a loud thump. The ground trembled for a moment, and when the surface under her went still again she noticed that her knees were practically knocking against each other.

Well, this was a most peculiar situation he had managed to get himself into.

Initially, the pod's rather rough landing had knocked him into stasis. Fortunately, he found himself regaining consciousness at the sound of hard debris pinging off of the pod's hull. It only took him a couple of kliks to determine that he hadn't been damaged beyond a dislocated piston in his lower left leg and a rather nasty dent to the crest above his forehelm. It seemed that the pod lived up to its reputation.

He sat there for a moment, in the dark. The console in front of him had gone dark while he had been in stasis, thus he was left to sit there with the console's dark screen barely illuminated by the light of his optics.

He contemplated about the world he had landed on. It was green and blue from a distance, and after careful examination of what he remembered seeing through the ship's viewscreen, he came to the conclusion that the blue areas of the planet were actually seas comprised of some sort of liquid, and that the green indicated that there had to be life on this world.

And what kind of life…well he didn't know, and he hoped that none of it was sentient.

Slowly, he pressed the button on the clasp of the harness that fastened him to his seat. The harness snapped off and away from him, and he didn't waste any time before he stood and reached up for the hatch above his helm. He grasped the large lever with both servos and wrenched it around until the hatch popped open with a loud hiss. He waited a moment before he stood up on his toes and grasped the edges of the opening, hoisting himself up and out of the pod.

He paused at the opening and swept his gaze around, taking in his new surroundings. He ran a scan from left to right when it became apparent that it was too dark to make any distinct deductions on his surroundings, but he stopped scanning when his sight landed on the gaping hole in a wall across from the pod in the space he wound up in.

Well, he had made an entrance. And by what his scans ended up telling him, he was in an artificial structure—leading him to believe that the life on this world was quite possibly more sentient than he was hoping for. It would be most beneficial if he hastily took his leave and find somewhere better to hide until he was able to make contact with some friendlies.

But as soon as he jumped down off of the pod, he spotted a tiny form standing in the massive hole his explosive landing had created. It stood there, trembling, staring at him with wide organic optics that broadcasted the terror the little being had to have been feeling right then. Perceptor straightened and held very still as he took in the life form, not wishing to accidentally scare it away before he could get a good look at it.

Slowly, but surely, he was able to inch himself closer to the light that seemed almost afraid to go any farther than the threshold of the hole. Once he felt the warmth of the sun on his armour, he let out a breath of relief and turned his full attention to the small being that appeared to want to glitch right on the spot.

He slowly crouched down before it, going even slower than he had walked, in order to level the field a bit. He scanned it in hopes of dredging up some information on it before it ran off. Halfway through the scan he noticed the small electronic device on its person and scanned it. His scans brought up a plethora of information, and he ended up stumbling upon a language. The device spat the language at him as if it were irritated by the vast difference in their technologies, and in response Perceptor sent it a pacifying pulse as he looked over the complex language that almost put the complexity of Cybertronian to shame.

The exchange with the device and his analyzation of the language took less that a second, his processors churning through the information until it was stored in his language cortex. Once he was finished, he turned his attention back to the organic trembling before him and he deduced he had to find out how to calm it down before it ended up running away or dying right there and then.

It was so tall. Danielle had to crane her head back in order to look it in what she hoped was its face. It was shaped like a man—humanoid, but all made of metal and her terror-addled brain didn't know what to think of it, despite the fact that it caused something to itch at the back of her head.

But all of her thought processes ground to a halt when it suddenly met her gaze with two blue ring-like irises of its own. It blinked them and it tilted its head to the side before it opened what looked like a mouth and spoke.

In perfect English.

"Please do not be afraid. I mean you no harm."

This was too much for her poor mind to take. Her eyes rolled up into her head and her knees promptly gave out on her before she slumped to the ground in a dead faint.

I'm hoping to publish a new chapter every second day, so keep a sharp eye out for new updates :3