Pivoting, who handles the grunt work?

Hello HTB

As I continue studying, more interesting situations crop up, and recently I was looking into using Netcat to Pivot around my home network.

However, if for example I used a Pi or some other low powered device to exploit a target, for example brute forcing, is it my kali machine that does the grunt work and pipes through the pivoting device or is it the pivoting device?

I will look forward to your reply

With Regards
Chris Russell