The manta had no dreams growing up of being a bandit.
He had always been a composer first. It was around six years ago when the manta heard two classmates climb to the rooftop of their middle school to belt out a cappella of Calamari Inkantation. It would've been miracucous for anyone NOT to hear them. The duo and the manta eventually recorded several demos together, but the manta had set his sights higher.
So instead of joining Deep Cut, the manta moved to Inkopolis.
The boatload of scholarships his clan had successfully negotiated for the manta set him up for a prestigious university. His lodgings, however, were in a poor neighborhood by Inkopolis Second Dam. The neighborhood is split in half by a large spillway meant to divert excess floodwater safely. The majority of this veritable cordon sits below the waterline, but the property values were blessedly low. It was like a miniature walled city.
The manta recorded this demo based of an antedilulvian folk tune that survived the centuries and influenced much of manta ray culture. The "ays" were a regional dialect of choice that the manta ray chose to forgo for this session. The meaning behind the lyrics have been lost to time, but the manta knew that old songs like this had power. If Calamari Inkantation could change a society overnight (as was rumored back in the Splatlands)… what else could music do?
The manta considered himself rather lucky to live on the second floor of his rental apartment building, until the water rose and engulfed his room and then the whole complex was condemned in the aftermath of the flooding and he realized that maybe he wasn't so lucky after all.
It is an enforced misconception that the results of the Order vs. Chaos Splatfest is what sparked the mass exodus of Inkopolis' lower class to the Splatlands. In reality, it the political and media shitstorm surrounding the Barclay Street Flood (as it came to be known) and the mismanagement and inequality of all that came before. The Splatfest simply offered the perfect impetus.
Along with them came the manta, with no prospects to his name other than a clan he was too ashamed to return to. He had lost all of his previous music — including this very demo — to the floodwater. The scholarships were withdrawn. His family stopped answering his calls.
And then he reunited with Shiver and Frye, and the three turned to banditry during the rapidly-developing societal upheaval in Splatsville. At first it was for self-sufficiency, and then for more heroic purposes, and then Big Man's new music caused them to be thrust into a very inopportune spotlight and skyrocket them to fame. Somehow the bandit trio have not been found out and arrested yet.
Inkblot Art Academy is a decent enough alternative, though Big Man attends remotely and doesn't know if he'll still get the chance to take Splat History 101 once the Big Run is over.
It's not a bad lot in life, all things considered. He has two of the best friends he could ask for; a passion he's in the midst of fulfilling. But...
Sometimes, in quieter moments, Big Man thinks about the higher education he never received and the aspirations left to drift out of reach. He thinks about whether or not his family would really be proud of him, and he wonders if he ever could have been more.
