In this month’s Fairy Tail Recap, Juvia is down for the count due to being poisoned while inside Keith’s body, much like how Laxus experienced in his run in with Tartaros. Rogue and Sting continue to hold off Marde Guille while Erza, Minerva, and the four exceeds continue their goal of  stopping the activation of Face. Gajeel and Natsu face off against the 2 remaining Tartaros members, Tempesta and Torafusa. The four decide to finally get serious with each other in their fight and activate their most powerful modes. Couldn’t we have done this earlier in the fight? I suppose not, because that would have rushed the story along too fast for a shounen type series. Lucy just suffers off to the side from second hand embarrassment as her two teammates act like childish brats trying to outdo each other.
Torafusa pulls out his ultimate move and submerges most of the Tartaros base underwater.With his other teammates being afflicted with the poison from the water, Gajeel is on his own in dealing with the fishman demon. It seems like the Tartaros member is too much for Gajeel to handle, being a fishman demon, Torafusa has quite the advantage underwater against a dragonslayer mage. The poison is beginning to take hold and Gajeel is running out of oxygen. Luckily for out iron-shadow dragon mage, Levy comes to assist him and provides him with the sustenance he needs to continue his fight.
I really love the interaction between Gajeel and Levy as it’s progressed in the series. From enemies to friends bordering on flirtatious, they’ve become one of my favorite pairs to see interaction between.  One thing about this fight is I don’t really understand how these characters are talking underwater, but then again it is a fantasy series. After receiving more air from Levy, Gajeel continues his fight and runs into a serious problem. Torafusa is able to control his body density which provides him with a remarkable defensive capability. Time is running out but Gajeels prevails after  finding an interesting way to beat his opponent.
The only one left in the four vs four is Tempesta, yet Gajeel is totally zapped of strength to continue the battle. Luckily, Gray comes to his aid and makes short work of Tempesta after receiving Silver’s powers. It is nice that this was not a drawn out battle, especially since we’ve already seen Tempesta’s capabilities in his fight against Laxus. Erza and Minerva finally stumble upon where the chairman’s corpse is being controlled to activate Face. The culprits behind the reanimation of the chairman’s corpse are Sayla and Kyouka. Â It seems the activation of the 3000 Faces will come down to a battle between Erza and Kyouka!