  In this work, we study flavor-violating scalars (flavons) in a range of large
masses that have not been explored previously. We model the interactions with
an effective field theory formulation where the flavon is heavier than the top
quark. In addition, we assume that the flavon only couples to fermions of the
Standard Model in a flavor-changing way. As the flavon couples strongly to top
quarks, same-sign and opposite-sign top quark pair signals can be explored in
the search for those particles. Using parametrized neural networks, we show
that it is possible to probe flavons with masses in the 200-1600 GeV range
through their interactions with a top quark plus up and charm quarks for
effective couplings of order 10^-2 TeV^-1 at the 14 TeV High-Luminosity LHC.
