Pocketbrat

There have been a few times people encountered a strange player on their server or even in their singleplayer world since update 1.20.4. The player's nicknamed pocketbrat, and is actually a very rare and dangerous entity trying to hunt you down...
== Appearance ==
Pocketbrat looks like a player. Normally it has one color bright pink skin (the color's the same as enderman eye), once had been seen with a completely black skin. The nametag above the head says "pocketbrat". When you look at it, the game starts to lag, and the closer you are, the less FPS you have. There is no known explaination for that, but it might be because it somehow has a skin that is hard to render, and while the game tries to render it, it shows pink color instead.
== Behavior ==
=== First signs ===
At first, everything seems completely normal, the game runs as usual. Pocketbrat joins the game silently, and doesn't have any admin rights at all. When it joins, the first signs vary between a world hosted on your computer and a server.
In a singleplayer world, you will encounter FPS drops and microfreezes more often, and the game will seem to glitch sometimes. If you have a weak PC or laptop, it might even crash before you encounter the entity, but these cases were obviously not documented.
On a server, TPS rate will drop a few TPS, and the player's ping might be higher.
=== Sightning ===
Pocketbrat doesn't have operator rights in the player's world/server, but they somehow find player and watch them from the distance for some time. The player might not notice them doing that, but when the player is looking at pocketbrat, their game starts to lag, as rendering its skin is very difficult by an unknown reason. The closer you are to the entity - the more game lags. After you saw it, pocketbrat usually runs away, but because of framerate, people normally think it just disappears. Sometimes when you notice it, you might look away yourself, and when you look back - it's goneBehind the gap, in the warped forest, there was something bright pink standing. [...] But then a crossbow piglin hit me! I looked at it and killed it. But when I looked back, I saw that the pink thing was gone! 
=== Luring into a copy of the world ===
After pocketbrat disappeared, you won't encounter it for quite some time. But pocketbrat will try its best to make you cross some unknown line between the worlds. It can happen differently, for example, in "I saw another player in the singleplayer world" report, entity tracks the player down and makes them run through a specific place by scaring them, so they would go through the portal to a pocket dimension pocketbrat made to be able to crash user's computerI saw a player figure in the dark, very close to me. And the nickname: pocketbrat. This made my game lag so much [...] I just ran away as fast as possible, while my FPS was not quite "0", but very low. I ran up to the surface, when I decided to look back, and for a split second, I saw the blocks in the end of the stairway turning into pink concrete powder., as in real player's world, it seemingly can't control the enviroment. 
=== Fake world ===
The fake version of player's world might vary a little bit from the original. For example, some builds might lack or objects might be where they were never placed or even generated. For example, ShadyCat1930 noticed that her storage was absentAnd then I looked around, and what I saw made me feel very scared. I was in exact place, where I wanted to build my storage, but it was empty! And the house I built had a tree in front of it, that I never planted, and never seen before. - "I lost my own hardcore world to a player" or the player from "My Minecraft account with old capes got permanently deleted by no reason!" report noticed that they had green sheep in their penWhen I looked around, I realized, that in my sheep pen with multicolored sheep, I never had the green ones., and the stick to emerald fletcher was converting gravel to flint instead of selling arrowsI didn't even notice, that he now converts gravel to flint instead of selling arrows. But when I exited my house, I understood it. Escaping the copy is possible, if you go to the nether.I teleported just in time! I was in the normal nether, without pink sand or black figure. The world was just usual. I wanted to break the portal, but then thought, that it will get me before I do that, so I ran away. [...] I broke the cobblestone that covered the portal and went in... When I spawned, I saw my world, without any damage, with the tree behind the mine and the grass under me. I looked at the roof - there was no black player watching me, then opened the chest with pickaxes - it had 5 stone picks. Just like it was before I left.
=== Endgame ===
Normally, pocketbrat just attacks the player right after they enter its pocket dimension, but sometimes, it might play with them before. When the entity attacks player, it first scares them, then attacks. When attacking, it can, and will crash your game, as it is pocketbrat's end goal. Normally, it turns the world into pink concrete powder, making the player's game crash, but sometimes it might blow the player upI heard TNT fuse sound. I looked behind and what I saw shocked me. Pocketbrat was floating in creative with flint and steel. [...] The last sound I heard was explosion, and my client just crashed. - "Unknown hacker ruined my SMP" or do something else. In very rare cases, like ShadyCat1930's, it can just kill the player by melee attacks, then the game won't crash, but will result in losing your account. In an unverified case (CatFisher7000, "Untitled"), it can teleport you into an alpha world, that is the only known sightning of this ability But when I finally reached the portal, I didn't see pocketbrat. I teleported, AND WAS SHOCKED BY WHAT I SAW! I WAS IN MINECRAFT ALPHA, WITH A NETHER PORTAL BUT WITHOUT BIOMES!!! My inventory was clear, so I quickly closed Minecraft and now I'm here, messaging this to you.
=== Consequences ===
After the game is crashed, some of victim's computer components will be very damaged, normally CPU and graphics card. Sometimes the player also loses Minecraft account, and if it is a server, it will also have weird messages in logsThe logs were full of weird messages, they were in english, but 75% of the text was shortened, letters were replaced and some weird symbols were in the end of every message. And one of them still makes me feel anxious: "its c0ming, run". - "Unknown hacker ruined my SMP". The world might be damaged and impossible to start up, and if it is a server, it can also change something on the dashboard and even lock online mode to false, like it was in "Unknown hacker ruined my SMP". Leaving the game will save you, as pocketbrat only attacks you in game.
== Finding victims ==
There is no known way pocketbrat finds the world to join, but seemingly, it only appears on 1.20.4, other reasons are not currently known.
== References ==