Each one was neatly and tightly rolled, stowed safely away in the chest which housed them all. Stepping back, Nami stared at the furled sea charts as they lay there in the open box, packed together like rows of gold bullion. Of course, they were worth far more than gold. Her drawing hand – still a little stained with ink – shook a little as she gazed down at what essentially amounted to a map of the entire world. She still had four other seas to finish, but that would be little more than a formality – it would be much easier to travel the North, South, East and West Blue.

This: this was a map of the Grand Line; a map of the most dangerous stretch of ocean on the planet. And it was done.

It was, quite literally, priceless.

Stumbling back to the chair, she sat down once more at the desk. On the table, the candle that she had lit earlier was rocking to-and-fro with the motion of the ship, and the stack of paper that she had been using to draw the charts was threatening to topple onto the floor. She stared at the stack numbly for a few moments, remembering the time when empty pages were all that she had had.

Each individual chart had been a labour of love. She had long ago lost count of the number of inadequate, imperfect sketches that she had tossed into the ocean. Each remaining one was the end result of a painstaking process of editing and reediting, of drawing and redrawing until the final version had met her standards for accuracy and detail. Placing her hands flat on the table top to stop them from trembling, she leant back into her wooden chair, gazing up at the boards in the ceiling. It was all done, at last.

There was one place still to visit: one island which remained uncharted. Smiling, Nami closed her eyes, stretching her arms out backwards as she reclined luxuriously in her chair. It would remain that way. Somehow, it just seemed wrong to create a map of Raftel – she would let the Marines do that someday, if they could. As the final island on the Grand Line, it had always been a mysterious place, untraveled by all except the Pirate King himself, and nobody who saw a sea chart of it would possibly understand all that that entailed. It was futile to try to show people what Raftel was by mapping it out, so she did not plan to try. If they wanted to know, they would have to find out for themselves.

Standing up, she wandered over to the porthole set into the slatted wall of the room that she shared with Robin and leaned in close, staring through the narrow gap out across the sea. It was dark outside, but the moonlight gleamed on the cresting waves and, together with the gentle sound of rushing water, the sight made her feel at peace. All of a sudden, the tiredness that she had been supressing for hours was upon her again, her legs feeling like leaden weights, threatening to drag her down into blissful oblivion. Stifling a yawn, she leant her forehead against the wall, closing her eyes against the sights outside.

Now that the final map was done, the next job was to visit Raftel and acquire the One Piece. Perhaps it would even be their last destination. She found that unlikely, however; despite it being the final island on the Grand Line, she doubted very much that Luffy planned to stop adventuring once he had found his treasure. In fact, she was pretty certain that he would view it as just another stop on their never-ending journey across the world's waves.

Smiling, and already half-dreaming, Nami snuffed out the candle on the desk quietly, tip-toeing over to her bed so as not to wake Robin, who was sleeping in the bed adjacent. Closing the lid of her wooden storage chest as quietly as she could, sealing the sea charts inside, Nami dove gratefully under the covers, her head awash with thoughts about where they might go and what they might do after Raftel had given up its secrets.

She would not have to wait for long to find out. The island was less than a day away.

They would be there tomorrow.

She woke early, light streaming vaguely in through the window and covering everything with a fine, filmy glow. Robin had shaken her awake, and the archaeologist's reserved smile was one of the first things that Nami saw as she herself sat up in bed, feeling more refreshed than she had thought she would given how late she had slept.

"It's sunrise. You wanted to be awake for it, didn't you?" Robin enquired.

After rubbing a hand across her eyes quickly, Nami nodded. "Yeah, thanks. I was going to set us off. If we leave now, we should arrive… there… at around midday, I think, judging by the timings we were given." Glancing past Robin to the desk where she had finally completed her last sea chart, she felt her heart jump slightly. "I'll go shower, and then raise the anchor."

"It's amazing to think that we might finally uncover the true history," Robin said, sounding uncharacteristically excited. "The last Poneglyph must be on Raftel, and I'm certain that if I could just read it, it would tie the others together. I'm so close to deciphering what happened during the Void Century…"

"It really is amazing," Nami replied, with sincerity. Robin smiled again.

"But how about you? When I went to sleep last night, you were working on those charts. How are they going?"

"I-" Nami paused; the thought of saying it aloud felt strange. "I'm actually…" She paused again, finding the words hard to vocalise. "Well, I'm done."

"Done? You mean you've finished them?"

"Well…" Turning uncertainly to the chest at the side of her bed, Nami reached over to it and, carefully, lifted the lid, allowing Robin to peer inside. Seeing the charts lined up next to one another in the light of day only seemed to make them doubly surreal. But they were all there; just the same as they had been last night. She really had done it. "Yeah. It's hard to believe but… that's everything. That was all I had to do."

She lowered the lid shut once more, feeling a little lost. That chest really did contain everything – everything that she had worked on for the last few years, bound up nicely into neat rows of rolled and sealed paper. Thinking back on the hours that she had invested into them – the sleepless nights, the frustration and elation in equal measure, and the constant awareness of the sheer magnitude of what she was attempting to accomplish – made Nami feel dizzy. Meanwhile, Robin was staring at her oddly, as if seeing her again for the first time.

"That's incredible, Nami! You should be very proud – what you've managed to do is something that nobody has ever done before!"

"I am," Nami said hastily, realising that Robin might have misread her lack of reaction as indifference. "I know what- what it means, it's just hard to get my head around it…"

"But you're going to tell everyone, right? This is something we should all celebrate, I'm sure our cook would be more than willing to prepare a party!"

"I will," Nami said quickly. "I mean, I'm going to… I just," She glanced past Robin to the door onto the deck. "Perhaps it would be best to wait?" Seeing Robin's expression, she added hastily, "Only until we're done with Raftel, of course. We'll all have clearer heads…"

"Hmm." Robin's pursed lips suggested that she was not quite convinced. "Well, I suppose we have all been quite distracted by the island. However, this really is something we should be celebrating, Nami…"

"I know," Nami said, smiling. "And we will, just not today. I just think everyone should be focusing right now; I can get us there, but I don't know what's ahead. We need to be prepared for anything."

Robin conceded the point with a tilt of her head. "Alright, but as soon as we've finished with Raftel, make sure to tell everyone. Do you need any help this morning?"

"No, it's alright," Nami smiled brightly. "I'll wake the guys and then set us on course. We just need to follow the pose for another few hours, and then we'll be there… as long as we aren't slowed down by anything."

"How exciting! Alright, I'll join you soon – I just need to go over my notes so they're fresh in my head."

After parting from Robin, Nami took a quick shower, got dressed and headed immediately out onto the deck. It was still early, and the sun had only just risen above the treetops of the island at which they were anchored. The sky – a pale, milky omnipresence, with the lightest of hints of red – reminded her a little of Drum Island at its most serene. Though the air had a biting chill to it, the compensatory salty tang of the sea and the dizzying vista of blue ocean spread out in all directions made it worth being outside.

Knocking briskly on the door to the men's quarters, she shouted, "Hey, guys, time to go!"

Predictably, there were groans. No matter the situation, they sure did like to sleep. Grinning as she headed over to the ship's rail, she leant out over the bulwark, bringing Raftel's Eternal Pose ponderously to eye-level. As it had the night before, the red tip of the suspended shard was pointing confidently at the horizon.

Following with her eyes the invisible line that the pose marked out across the sea, she felt the smile slip gradually from her face. In the distance, the sky was calm, untroubled even by the reddish clouds which currently loomed over the Thousand Sunny. It should have reassured her, but despite the serene sight she could not stop her heart from skipping a beat.

She had been a navigator long enough to know never to trust the weather, and a pirate long enough to know never to trust the waters of the Grand Line. Appearances could be very deceiving. After all, even in the eye of a hurricane there was an area of calm.

Of all the ships to have ever sailed the New World; of all the hundreds, perhaps thousands of sailors to reach the threshold between that sea-among-seas and Raftel; only one had ever found the island and lived to return. That fact was stark in her head at that moment, just as clear as the false horizon ahead. She would not forget it.

Every place that they had visited so far had tested them. At some, they had almost been overwhelmed. Blue skies or not, she was not going to let her guard down.

Whatever tests Raftel had in store, she was certain of one thing only: they would not be easy.