Nett: the tech whiz who turned the Kids Grid into a news channel

Nett doesn't battle: he plugs in cables. In Pokémon Colosseum, this computer prodigy holds the technical post in the Kids Grid, a collective of informants in the Orre region. Five years later, in Pokémon XD, the same network has become a TV channel and Nett is its administrator. In the first game he hacks Cipher; in the second he watches his sister become a bargaining chip.

Contents

• The Under, a Rotating Dish and a Lost Signal
• The Hack That Exposes the Shadow Pokémon
• The Voice That Lays the Groundwork
• From Amateur Network to ONBS
• The Data ROM: Decoded, Lost, Rebuilt
• An Investigator Who Delegates
• Nett at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

The Under, a Rotating Dish and a Lost Signal

In the days of Pokémon Colosseum, Nett runs the computer infrastructure of the Kids Grid from a house in The Under topped by a rotating antenna dish. He's one of the group's main members, and his contribution is entirely technical.

When Wes meets him, the network has gone silent: the connection has been lost, and Nett suspects Venus of jamming the signal. The hero then brings him the Powerup Part, sent by Perr.

The device does exactly what it's supposed to do, boost the transmitter's power, and the link comes back. Nett immediately announces the next step: break into Cipher's machines and pull information out of them. That's the starting point for everything Orre will learn about Shadow Pokémon.

The Hack That Exposes the Shadow Pokémon

The intrusion works. Nett gets into Cipher's database and comes back out with the complete inventory of Shadow Pokémon: at a stroke, the organization loses the protection of secrecy.

Wes then brings him a disc stolen from the Shadow Pokémon Lab. Nett decrypts it byte by byte and sends his progress to the hero's P★DA as he goes.

Intel flows both ways: it's when he learns from the player that the subway runs to the Shadow Pokémon Lab that Nett understands which route the organization had been using.

🖥️ The Pokémon he tracks have their own section: see the Pokémon figures.

The Voice That Lays the Groundwork

The Kids Grid lives on tip-offs. Nett relays alerts about abnormal Pokémon passed on to him by visitors from Pyrite Town, then hands the information on to whoever can act on it.

Before the Deep Colosseum tournament, he gathers intel on the man who calls himself the Deep King and details his Pokémon, starting with his Shadow Shuckle. He also warns that Agnol has entered and asks that he be forced out into the open.

In The Under, he points the player toward Teug, the local who hangs around outside the junk shop and who supposedly battled a suspicious Trainer. Later, he and the Kids Grid send Wes to the Outskirt Stand, which helps foil Fein's schemes.

From Amateur Network to ONBS

In Pokémon XD, the collective has changed scale: it has become ONBS, an investigative channel known all over Orre, and Nett is its administrator.

Its headquarters is the Pyrite Building, which the former Kids Grid has converted into TV studios, and Nett's office takes up the top floor. The channel now sends crews into the field: one of them is shooting a report on wild Pokémon at the Poké Spots, where it runs into Duking.

Bitt, introduced as his friend and partner, works alongside him and sums him up better than anyone: once Nett is focused, he doesn't hear a thing. Battle CDs, for their part, interest Bitt less for battling than for their technical ingenuity, to the point that he has written a study on them.

The Data ROM: Decoded, Lost, Rebuilt

Professor Krane announces the arrival of Michael, who brings Pyrite Town the Data ROM stolen from Cipher's Shadow Pokémon lab. Nett cracks it, just as he had cracked the disc in Colosseum.

His victory doesn't last. Exol demands the disc in exchange for releasing Megg, Nett's younger sister, and the Cipher Peons wipe the extracted data while they're at it: the computer whiz is left with neither the disc nor the files.

Still, he keeps the essentials in his head. Cipher is targeting Phenac City, a city that is indeed in the organization's hands when Michael gets there, and it's behind the disappearance of the S.S. Libra. Nett will eventually rebuild all of the lost data, and ONBS will get its programs back on the air.

An Investigator Who Delegates

Once Phenac City is freed, an old man shows up at ONBS. His Bonsly was traveling aboard the S.S. Libra when the ship vanished, and Bonsly was at the time a species nobody had recorded: a Pokémon that looks like a bonsai tree.

Nett doesn't head into the field himself. He hands the case to Michael as soon as he gets back and suggests he drop by Perr's so his scooter can handle the desert route. When word comes that the S.S. Libra is lying in the desert, he sends a team to investigate.

He also knows how to report what he can't find. On the theft of the Snag Machine, his research turns up nothing new, but it establishes one point that matters: Team Snagem is acting on its own, with no link to Cipher.

Nett at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Who is Nett in Pokémon Colosseum?
  The Kids Grid's computer expert, based in The Under in a house topped by a rotating antenna dish. The Powerup Part that Wes brings him lets him restore the network's connection, then break into Cipher's database.
• What happens to the Kids Grid in Pokémon XD?
  It turns into ONBS, an investigative channel known all over Orre, based in the Pyrite Building, which has been converted into TV studios. Nett becomes its administrator and works with his partner Bitt.
• What's on the Data ROM that Nett decodes?
  Enough to establish that Cipher is targeting Phenac City and is responsible for the disappearance of the S.S. Libra. Nett then loses the disc, demanded as ransom, and the data, wiped by the Cipher Peons, before recovering everything later.
• Who is Megg?
  Nett's younger sister. Exol demands the Data ROM in exchange for her release, which deprives the computer whiz of the disc he had just decoded.
• Why does Nett send Michael to see Perr?
  To get his scooter overhauled. Without that upgrade, the desert route stays closed, and the investigation into the S.S. Libra, lost in the desert, can't move forward.

In short

Nett has no Gym, no badge, and not a single documented Pokémon: all of his influence runs through a keyboard. He restores a cut-off network, breaks into a database, decodes two stolen discs and turns a collective of informants into a regional TV channel. Without him, Cipher would have kept its lists to itself.