Catherine Delacroix

**Catherine Jeanette Delacroix** *(キャスレン・ジェアネット・デラクァー Kyasuren Jeanetto Deraku~ā)* is a student of Class A in HPEBS and a participant of Killing Student Exchange in *Danganronpa: Hope Noir*.

Catherine is a very talented robotic engineer and really prefers this title, but due to a severe conflict with James Rhodes, the Ultimate Superhero, Hope's Peak Academy aknowledged her and signed in HPEBS as the **Ultimate Supervillain**.

## History

### Early Life

~~Catherine lived a regular life in London, Great Britain, pretty similar to any teenager's life one could imagine. Ever since she was very little, she had a passion for robots and engineering, and with that passion she entered London Bridge Middle School, where she joined a robotics club and met James Rhodes, heir of a rich family with similar passion. They both were very talented and quickly became good friends. James even fallen in love with Cat, but she rejected him and wanted to keep her relationship with him at the friendly status.~~

~~At the time James was already an Iron Man-like superhero, a teenager keeping London safe from accidents and crime, and that rejection awakened a will to revenge and humiliate his friend. He built her a similar fighting suit to his own and coaxed Catherine to "help him defending the national bank", which was supposed to be robbed the same night. Finally Catherine agreed and as a duo of superheroes they flew off to defend the bank. It turned out there is no robbery, instead James turned on some bombs and destroyed the vault's door, and then attacked Catherine in order to frame her as the robber, and himself as the sole defender. She was arrested and in the end the secret came out, but it has never been published, it hasn't even left the police station, and despite Catherine being pronounced not guilty, in the eyes of media and society she has been remembered as the master of crime and an ultimate villain towards the nation.~~

~~This left Catherine free, but with distrust towards anyone besides her family, that includes friends, classmates in middle school and later in HPEBS, even police or other public services, not mentioning the government. Catherine began to spread the word about the truth behind her "villainy", but as a social outcast, the word was never heard. James tried to apologize to her, as he didn't expect such an outcome, but this only warmed up the conflict, as they began to fight physically. This only assured the public about Catherine's mark as a supervillain. Her life was ruined, but she wasn't stupid enough to give up on it, she just kept living her life as she could and continued on creating machinery and robots.~~

TBU

## Creation and Development

### Name

Due to the originally planned actual supervillainy nature of Catherine, her name is a direct reference to Catherine Delacroix, The Party's Secretary of Security in The Nation and a character from the game *Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You* from 2016.

## Appearance

Catherine is tall and slim young woman. She has short, blonde hair kept from falling on her forehead with a light blue headband. From the tip of her head a small, pointy ahoge sticks out. She wears contact lenses, her eyes her naturally hazel and covered with long eyelashes, on both cheeks she has a small but noticable number of freckles.

Her clothes are fitting and well-kept. On a pure white shirt she wears a sweatshirt with a collar, black with red elements. She also has a short tie in a similar color fashion. Her jeans are grey and loose, she keeps her pantlegs pulled up revealing her over the knee socks in black and red stripes. Her sneakers are, too, in such fashion.

On both shirt and sweatshirt, on the left half of her chest, Catherine has a red mask pin, referencing her Ultimate talent.

Catherine's full appearance.
## Personality

Catherine is very self-contained and cold, often leaving without a word and not talking much. She has a wish: to change herself to be more likeable. She trusts nobody but herself due to her experiences with James, and due to that and her talent, the distrust is often mutual. The only exceptions are Klaudia Klamczak and Alfred Reville - these two didn't really care about titles and just trusted or distrusted people by their feeling. They trusted Catherine, and soon this trust has been paid back with the same. This was the first step for Catherine to fullfill her dream of regaining the ability to trust others. Quite the opposite happens in her relationship with Arthur.

She really hates her talent of the Ultimate Supervillain and wishes to be called the Ultimate Robotics Engineer instead. But deep down, she got used to such markings and somewhat believes she actually might have acted truly evil several times. Over the course of *Hope Noir*she regains her belief in herself and the fact that even with this title she can do good.

Her path towards trust ends along with the killing game, where during the sixth trial she has seen Arthur backstabbed and accused of a crime he didn't commit, similarly to herself back in the days. Unlike her, he hasn't gave up and continued to fight with the traitor and the true blackened, until they were revealed. With that in mind, during the seventh trial she reveals herself to then constricted and locked up in nurse's office Arthur, and joins forces with him in order to make a perfect duo of mastermind busters in order to find the truth and save their friends' lives on the trial.

## Talent and Abilities

### Ultimate Supervillain

Catherine has great abilites in robot engineering and programming. Much to her annoyance, these abilites were connected with her conflict with the Ultimate Superhero, granting her the opposing talent of Ultimate Supervillain. She would prefer calling herself the Ultimate Robotics Engineer instead. In the beginning of the novel, but not for long, she lied about not remembering her talent, making Arthur temporarily label her as the Ultimate ???.

#### Translations

Since *Hope Noir* is written in Polish, titles appear in two languages: Polish in text, English in illustrations and other resources, including this Wiki.

### Observancy

Catherine is very observant and often notices a decent number of clues nobody else would. This talent allows her to correct wrong ways of deduction.

## Relationships

### Classmates:

#### Klaudia Klamczak

Klaudia adores Catherine very dearly ever since the game began, seeing her as insanely cool and cute in her isolation. She often tries to show her some affection by talking to her and smiling to her on any occasion, and generally being more nice and approaching than the rest of classmates. In return Catherine, seeing her in a similar backstabby situation Catherine was in back in London with James, gave Klaudia a tiny bit of her trust and did her best defending her, when she became the primary suspect in the first trial. Klaudia, very grateful, accepted Catherine in her room (when one place has been emptied after Samantha's death) and they became officially friends. After hearing Catherine's story on the night of Florika's murder, she devoted herself to help the Ultimate Supervillain regain a bit of trust in people by socializing her with others (much to her annoyance). Catherine really liked Klaudia, so despite not really enjoying socializing, she kept doing spending time with her and others, as it made her dumb little friend happy. Catherine, having mainly Klaudia in mind, decided to find the mastermind by using a situation Sasha's suicide created to make herself look like the traitor and escape mastermind's eye during the execution. Knowing Catherine the best, Klaudia was the only one to not believe her statement of being a traitor prior her failed execution and after Supervillains disappearance the Architect did her best to find clues to the actual traitor and convince everyone she's not a bad guy. Despite failing, everone seen the growth Klaudia underwent. Catherine did her best to assist Klaudia from the shadows. When she reappeared during the seventh trial along with Arthur and they both saved the situation, Klaudia was just swimming in joy. They stayed true friends even after leaving the school.

#### James Rhodes

Much to James's sadness, Catherine constantly ignores him. Not to the point of leaving when he enters the room, but enough to not exchange a word in any other place than the class forum, or even send a single look. She realizes James does regret things he done, but she cannot just forgive him ruining her life and creating her trust issues. Furthermore, when a time of mass argument amongs the class appears and everyone takes a side - escape from the school or fight the mastermind, she leads the escaping faction and acts openly agressive towards James. As much as he doesn't want to, he does the same, for the sake of defeating her faction and saving everyone, not just his followers. Due to that Catherine was accused of killing James as the first victim of the killing game, which later has been proven ultimately wrong.

#### Alfred Reville

Similarly to Klaudia, Alfred helps Catherine regaining her trust abilites, although he focuses more on helping Arthur with his own issues or spending time with Klaudia. They also often spend time together with Arthur and Klaudia at the recreation zone.

#### Arthur Pohl

While Cat is friends with Alfred and Klaudia and is neutral for the most part towards others, she holds grudge towards Arthur for saying she deserves the Supervillain title she hates after (in her opinion) reasonable abandoning him in the escape room on the beginning of The Mastermind's Challenge. Also, when Arthur was insecure about his usefulness during the game, especially when his friends put faith in his abilities (since he was a crime fiction writer, an Ultimate one), he did his best as a detective. Catherine viewed this as playing a hero and got really awful flashbacks with James as the main character. Some of the grudge she held towards the now-deceased Azure Thunder was transferred on the young writer. In return, he only ensured himself about her evil deeds and did his best to be the one who's right on a class trial. Their conflict went on, along with the killing game and the challenge, until the sixth trial, when Catherine realized he isn't playing a hero, but really is one, doing his best to help everybody, and that he's better than herself, since in a similar backstabby situation he, unlike her back in the day, hasn't gave up. She realized he's a good man and decided to save him during the seventh trial from erasing all his memories and help him in investigating the final murder, the mastermind and the killing game itself. She was also impressed by his determination to defeat the mastermind during the last trial. They left the school as friends.

### Others:

#### The Mastermind

Just as every other survivor, Catherine hates Yorukibo for masterminding this horrible killing game and other crimes he commited towards them. When they regained memories about their times at school and The HPEBS Purge, she and the others temporarily fell into despair, soon to be saved by a certain angry German.

## Trivia

* She loves Japanese indie rock, especially the band Polkadot Stringray.