Last time on Team ScarfShield…
Team ScarfShield escaped Alakazam and made for Mount Steel, with the Combee passengers still in tow.
Near the cliffs, Scytti found a lost Beldum, separated from its mother inside the mountain. It had drawn what it believed to be Arceus's symbol, but the mark had extra lines, three triangles, and a central dot, making it look more like an eye. Nobody could explain the difference.
The Beldum bonded with Scytti and joined the group as their guide.
The group reached the frontier outpost and met Mama Pouch, a Kangaskhan supply keeper who took the Combee under her care, literally.
Sir Toto traded the special honey for a Rainbow Bean after some firm negotiation.
Captain Honchmire briefed them: all entrances to Mount Steel were sealed, the Skarmory were attacking on sight, and Sir Galahad had gone missing at the waterfall bridge.
At the outpost shrine, the Poliwrath priest Sir Brennan revealed the nature of the Arceus Tablets.
Seventeen tablets exist, one per type. Holding a tablet and speaking the incantation imbues your next attack with that element.
If all seventeen were ever brought together, the ancient texts say Arceus would return.
Sir Brennan holds the Fire Tablet. A tablet is believed to be inside Mount Steel. Kingsly was said to be keeping one in Kaleido Haven. The Grass Tablet slot under the Honey Tree had already been emptied by an unknown party.
Meloetta discovered she can channel a tablet's power silently, through intent alone, even without a voice to speak the incantation.
Sir Brennan watched her leave with unsettling recognition, and privately urged her to think carefully about the people around her.
At the waterfall bridge, the group found Sir Galahad surrounded and holding off a swarm of Skarmory with a gravity aura.
The party fought through the flock and rescued him. Meloetta waltzed at least one Skarmory off the bridge.
Galahad warned them that the Metagross inside, the Beldum's mother, was unwell. His advice: if she's asleep, don't wake her.
He also noted the Steel Pokémon inside had been drawing the strange alternate Arceus symbol on the walls and muttering that Arceus had returned.
Inside Mount Steel, the group navigated spike traps and reached the main chamber.
The Metagross was asleep on a platform ringed with Unown symbols, the same pattern seen at the Honey Tree. The Steel Tablet slot was empty. Someone had already been here.
Meloetta placed the Water Tablet in the slot. The vision returned, stronger, showing something at the summit pulsing outward in all directions, deliberately. The mountain was the source of it.
Scytti recovered the Aegis Shield from the cavern wall without waking the Metagross.
At the summit, the group found a massive ancient mechanical structure hovering above the plateau, covered in unreadable script, with a giant dish on one side and the alternate Arceus symbol carved into the ground beneath it.
Meloetta's Detect Magic identified evocation energy from the dish and a transmutation signature. The structure had traveled here from somewhere else.
Inside, screens displayed live surveillance of Kaleido Haven, the Forests, the Ruins, the Outpost, and the Honey Tree.
The Grass Tablet, stolen from the Honey Tree, was sitting on a desk inside.
Sir Toto prayed to Arceus. A voice answered. The system came online, and a red button began to pulse.
The system would only shut down with an override password, supplied by someone called "the Operative." The researcher was listed as unavailable.
Meloetta accidentally triggered a sixty-second countdown. The party scrambled to destroy the controls, but the structure locked down around them. They barely made it out.
The dish fired a beam of deep purple and red directly at the frontier outpost below.
A pulse of energy swept the plateau. Meloetta and Sir Toto resisted. Scytti, Petal, and Yunara did not.
Team ScarfShield stands at the summit with the Aegis Shield and the Grass Tablet recovered, watching a red aura overtake three of their own.