Hey, I grabbed this story last night not really expecting much, just exploring stories to see what was there to read about. But i found stuff to like! Mentions of the Whirl Islands, some very good setup for worldbuilding, and a Typhlosion being awesome!
In my opinion this story so far does very well with the pacing (except at the end of the Lanturn fight where I feel like the pacing is broken and the next Pokémon brought up too abruptly, but then again I foresaw that it was going to be the Tyranitar and expected some more dramatic juice). The Pokémon when fighting do what they have to do and fights feel active and strategic while keeping up with the general model of a turn-based system. When not doing battles, the pacing in the interview between the mysterious crater boy and the also mysterious military general is also pretty good, with each character pressing into what they want (answers, from each side) without falling into treating the situation like this would be the "last" meeting.
My chief concern with the story so far, if anything, is the idea that a trainer with a sole Pokémon can fight their way through things like this and reach any far into a tournament; I feel like because of the very premise of how a tournament is set up (bringing up the best in the Trainer marketplace) that is something that would simply not work - no matter how good you are, if you are one you only have to lose once, and the opponents are far more numerous and have a good number of Laws of Statistics -not to mention their skill- to their advantage. But, honestly, I am quite willing to let any more deep analysis pass for the time being just to see some more awesome Typhlosion screentime. So keep doing that good part of the good job!