Slavering Rust

Slavering Rust
Everyone wanted everything to be gleaming again, or maybe they just wanted their evening back. When rust came, it ate most of our part, even the metals that don't normally succumb to just plain rust. Ordinary rust, that is, without the capital "R."
When it started, when it first drifted into the window like a cloud of brown-red spores, we were at first glad it wasn't Fire. Fire is cruel, prickly. It can touch anything it wants, with enough motivation. But Rust eats only metal.
Unfortunately for us, it was the year's Gala of the Gleams, so practically everything was metal. Most of the building was metal, even, for it was built with the specific purpose of holding the Galas. The entire structure was steel, with the majority of the ballroom coated in chrome or gold leaf. The golden lights in golden chandeliers gave everything a warm glow. The reflections on the shining walls gave the room a limitlessness, gave us a limitlessness; we felt as though our riches and our strength flowed on forever into the distance.
Rust started with the chandelier. He came in through the large window facing the setting sun, drifted past the turkey and currants and pies set on shining silver plates, and went straight for the giant chandelier in the center of the ceiling. Perhaps because it was such a measure of opulence, perhaps because it shone so brightly. We never know how an elemental chooses its targets, but Rust began with the curling, intricate arms of the chandelier.
We were lucky, perhaps, because Rust started with the bottom of the chandelier. It gave us time to move out of the way. Some of us moved rather slowly, for many of our men were in full plate armor of titanium, our women in glinting chain mail dresses made as light as possible, yet still heavier than a simple dress of silk. Rust worked its way from the bottom to the top of the chandelier, and when he reached the top, when he ate through its moorings, it fell like a bloody comet and smashed into the floor, sending flakes of rusted metal cascading over the dance floor. Many people jumped at the sound. Some of the women cried, knowing their evening was ruined; most people stood stoically by, with grim expressions on their faces.
Rust followed the chandelier down and began eating at the dimpled chrome floor. At this point, we were sure it was there to stay for some time, and gave up on regaining our evening. Elementals are forces of nature as much as storms and earthquakes. Sometimes, like clouds, we can see them coming on the horizon. Sometimes they strike without warning.
We have no way to combat them. Not that they seem interested in actual fights. Well, it's really more that there is absolutely no fighting them. They simply move on, inexorably. Fighting an elemental is like trying to fight the tide. You can strike them, block them, shoot them, anything. They take no notice. Rust eats through guns and armor, Fire simply burns and melts, and Rot and Air do pretty much whatever they want.
Old myths say we used to be able to fight them, or at least drive them away. There are even some myths that say we could force the useful elementals to work for us: to make Water turn a wheel or Air a windmill; to force Fire and Hate against our enemies. But whatever methods existed then are gone. They disappeared sometime before the Crusades, if they ever even existed.
Our party died. The plates crumbled, the food filled with rust, and many people ended up near-naked. Our celebration of our riches destroyed by nature, we were forced to flee into the night, running from Rust and speeding away in our cars with the hope that it would not follow, eating at our bumpers. We hoped it would stay and be sated in our palace of shining chrome and not follow us to our homes.