Who is the most powerful out of the Invictus crew? (Patreon)

I might as well answer this question properly, as there seems to be a few misunderstandings about how strong the characters are, especially with regard to John.

First of all, what happens in a training exercise is not the same thing as actual combat. It's a bit like saying a barber would beat a Navy Seal in melee combat, because he could just cut his throat while giving him a razor shave. When John is sparring with the girls, he is ALWAYS holding himself back. He never goes all out against them... ever... so you can't use what happens in the Dojo as a measuring stick to determine their power relative to each other. 

Now a few caveats before I begin. If they were all connected to the psychic network, John could kill each of the girls instantly by turning them into a husk. He would never even consider doing this in the story, but none of the girls would want to attack him either. So for hypothetical purposes, I'll describe 1v1 duels, with everyone cut off from the psychic network, otherwise it's John vs the entire crew's psychic energy reserves which isn't exactly fair. All personal equipment is allowed, but Sakura can't use the Valkyrie and Calara can't use the Invictus. In terms of personal psychic energy reserves, Alyssa has the most, then John, Jade, the Nymphs, and finally the rest of the girls to lesser degrees.

Round 1 fight!

John vs Calara: She activates prescience, he activates psychic speed and creates a hex barrier. She uses full auto with runic penetrators to burst through his shield, but it takes a few seconds as his shield is spinning. She would then have to switch to tachyon bolts to take out his Paragon suit's shields, at which time he immediately creates another hex barrier. Meanwhile, John opens fire on full auto with tachyon bolts, wiping out her Paragon suit's shield and kills her before she can even hurt him.

John vs Dana, Jehanna, Helene, Jade or the rest of the Nymphs: John activates psychic speed and creates a hex barrier, opens fire on full auto with tachyon bolts and kills them without taking a hit.

John vs Irillith or Tashana: The twins creating hex barriers would stop John taking them out immediately, but with the advantage of psychic speed to dodge incoming attacks, it would only be a matter of time before he wore them down and won.

John vs Rachel: John activates psychic speed, fires all his runic penetrator ammo to wear down her shields and use up some of her psychic energy. He then draws his runesword, closes to melee and wears her down until she's tapped out... then he kills her. All without taking a hit.

John vs Sakura: They're as fast as each other, but John hits 10x harder and can regenerate injuries. They wouldn't be able to kill each other at range, because every time they knocked out a hex barrier with runic penetrators, they'd have to switch to tachyon bolts to take out the Paragon suit shields. As soon as their opponent did that, they'd create another replacement hex barrier. That means settling the combat via melee... but John has far greater psychic energy reserves than Sakura and would simply be able to outlast her. They're evenly matched with his telekinetic blast waves vs her ice attacks, but the more psychic energy she uses, the quicker she'd end up tapped out. As soon as Sakura ran out of psychic energy and her hex barrier disappeared, then the fight would be over.

John vs Alyssa: This comes down to her formidable offensive powers vs actually being able to land strikes when John is dodging whatever she throws at him using psychic speed. Alyssa has impressive psychic energy reserves, but going all out with her powers would drain her very quickly, especially as she wouldn't have access to the rest of the psychic network. She also can't heal herself, whereas John can regenerate. Alyssa is by far the most potent psychic out of the entire crew, but that also means she's heavily dependent on the energy reserves she can tap into from the psychic network. In a duel, cut off from the girls' energy reserves, Alyssa would be fighting at a massive disadvantage and would almost certainly lose a prolonged battle. 

So that's basically a clean sweep for John. 

In many of those fights, John would win in seconds due to using psychic speed in conjunction with a Tachyon Rifle, but even if he was limited to just his runesword, the results would still be the same. He states in the story that the only girls capable of defeating him in a duel are Alyssa, Jade, or Sakura, but that was with the proviso that they stripped him of weapons and armour. 

I'm not sure where this idea came about that John's a pushover in combat. The fact is, that he's by far one of the deadliest combatants aboard the Invictus. There are numerous examples of just how powerful he's become on the battlefield, slaughtering thousands of Kirrix in the recent battles to liberate Terran colonists. Examples include: knocking over a hiveship just using his runesword, killing a trio of Hive Queens alone, and lobotomising a million Kirrix with a psychic shockwave.

In a 1v1 fight, John is also extremely dangerous. Armed with his runesword, he was able to drain psychic energy directly from an opponent when striking a hex barrier... which makes him a massive threat to any psychic adversary. Just because he isn't sure how he did it when venting his fury against Rachel's hex barrier on Arcadia, doesn't mean it's not going to happen again! ;)

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